The amazing story of God and his people continues...
This was received from a member of our community in relation to sharing a Thanksgiving meal at a local AIDS hospice that is home to 29 men and women living with and dying from HIV/AIDS. I love the honesty. It is inspiring. Loving is not always easy but it is right and it is good. They took a leap into unknown God territory. It takes a leap of faith to follow Jesus into the places that naturally we would rather not go. I am proud to be the church with people just like this.
They say, "Just wanted to let you know that I will be at North Winds tomorrow. I have to be honest with you, I’m excited for the chance to grow and learn and love on people, but I am very anxious about it as well, because I hate to say it, I have never done anything like this before. Is that not crazy? I committed my life to Christ over ten years ago and have never stepped out of my comfort zone enough to love on people...... I am looking forward to it, but I wanted you to know, in case you saw me acting a little weird, or not looking like, I know what I’m doing, it’s because I don’t know what I’m doing. I know it’s just about sharing life with people, which I am good at, but anything you can point out to me would be helpful."
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
The Dangerous Taste of Hope.
"Signs of Emergence" continued.
...if we are seeking the new, then what we were practicing was the old, and therefore God was not in what we were doing anymore.
Such a divine departure is rightly shocking to us. We see an example of it described in Ezekiel 10: God ups and leaves the temple. "No temple, no place, no people, no box, no church, not agenda, no theological position will ever require me to stay where I am don't want, be co-opted into something I only half agree with, be pressed into the service of some cause you made up because I am who I am."
We believe that there is no box that God fits all nice and tidy into...There Is No Box!
To admit that God can and will leave is to allow the dangerous taste of hope into otherwise stagnant waters. It is to admit that the life of the disciples is not sedentary but nomadic - moving on to where sustenance lies, not staying where sustenance once was. It is to appreciate that the journey of faith is not a static conversion but an evolution of the Spirit. The very fact that God can move on means that hope is possible. That we are not stuck with what we have. That this isn't it.
We are beginning to move on, to let go of the side of the pool, to wade into the deep. We at times seems to live, move and be in this place between where sustenance was and where sustenance is. We must keep moving forward rather than lunging back in times of uncertainty. Aren't you glad that in all areas of life, that this isn't it.
...if we are seeking the new, then what we were practicing was the old, and therefore God was not in what we were doing anymore.
Such a divine departure is rightly shocking to us. We see an example of it described in Ezekiel 10: God ups and leaves the temple. "No temple, no place, no people, no box, no church, not agenda, no theological position will ever require me to stay where I am don't want, be co-opted into something I only half agree with, be pressed into the service of some cause you made up because I am who I am."
We believe that there is no box that God fits all nice and tidy into...There Is No Box!
To admit that God can and will leave is to allow the dangerous taste of hope into otherwise stagnant waters. It is to admit that the life of the disciples is not sedentary but nomadic - moving on to where sustenance lies, not staying where sustenance once was. It is to appreciate that the journey of faith is not a static conversion but an evolution of the Spirit. The very fact that God can move on means that hope is possible. That we are not stuck with what we have. That this isn't it.
We are beginning to move on, to let go of the side of the pool, to wade into the deep. We at times seems to live, move and be in this place between where sustenance was and where sustenance is. We must keep moving forward rather than lunging back in times of uncertainty. Aren't you glad that in all areas of life, that this isn't it.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Only Grief Permits Newness.
We continue to look at "Signs of Emergence"...
...the first stage of the waiting process is grief.
There is a spectacular lack of grief in our churches today. The texts of so many Christian magazines, sermons and songs are all woven into an enormous blanket of denial that we wrap warmly around us, smothering the honest doubts with an ever-optimistic hue of "everything is good and God is with us." Hands are raised , but never to ask questions, only in surrender to programs of services, outreaches, prayer meetings, and worship. Eyes are shut, less blinded by glory as blind to the facts that numbers are falling, churches are closing, the "revival" didn't come, society is losing interest, and our circle of influence is decreasing.
This is a moment of repentance. We have allowed our culture and the Church to drift apart. We ought to find truth each Sunday: instead we go for doses of fiction, enough to cloud our perception for the week ahead that everything is OK.
We must do it, we must stop all the programs, stop the meetings, stop the denials, dismantle the structures, face our fears and disappointments, and weep for the absence, weep for the emptiness, weep for the pretense, weep for the fiction. Weep until we can see our barrenness clearly, for only then will we have made room for newness.
...the first stage of the waiting process is grief.
There is a spectacular lack of grief in our churches today. The texts of so many Christian magazines, sermons and songs are all woven into an enormous blanket of denial that we wrap warmly around us, smothering the honest doubts with an ever-optimistic hue of "everything is good and God is with us." Hands are raised , but never to ask questions, only in surrender to programs of services, outreaches, prayer meetings, and worship. Eyes are shut, less blinded by glory as blind to the facts that numbers are falling, churches are closing, the "revival" didn't come, society is losing interest, and our circle of influence is decreasing.
This is a moment of repentance. We have allowed our culture and the Church to drift apart. We ought to find truth each Sunday: instead we go for doses of fiction, enough to cloud our perception for the week ahead that everything is OK.
We must do it, we must stop all the programs, stop the meetings, stop the denials, dismantle the structures, face our fears and disappointments, and weep for the absence, weep for the emptiness, weep for the pretense, weep for the fiction. Weep until we can see our barrenness clearly, for only then will we have made room for newness.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Quotable.
Last night I hung out the backroom at Bridgeway (www.BridgewayChurch.com) and listened to Floyd McClung who is currently living, serving and loving in Capetown, South Africa. You can read more on Floyd's adventures at www.FloydandSally.org. For now, here are the big ideas and thoughts that I scribbled down during the evening.
Floyd and his community are working with a group called African Hope Crafts (www.AfricanHopeCrafts.org) - a jewelry company that employs only people living with HIV/AIDS. Crafting jewelry for two days provides enough money for a month of low-level living. You gathered the feeling that people living with HIV/AIDS have become unemployable in many regards, thus the power of this effort. It causes me to want to spend money with compassion in mind rather than consumption.
He talked a bit about his recent book release, "Starting A House Church" (http://www.amazon.com/Starting-House-Church-Larry-Kreider/dp/0830743650), stating its purpose and premise being to provide principles that encourage the church of tomorrow to do and be church simply enough that it will work everywhere.
I have not fact checked the next series of statements that he made. I only have room to believe they were communicated with integrity and right intention.
"If we don't trust, we will give up."
"We need a values conversion."
"Africa is the only country not experiencing economic growth."
"There are 860 million people in Africa and 460 million claim to be Christian."
"Africa has been evangelized but not discipled."
"We need to serve those that were once enslaved."
"There are 540 unreached people groups in Sudan."
"It is the aim of Islam to have a mosque every mile in Africa."
"What would happen if we sent soldier of love not war to the middle east?"
"Lead by not leading."
"We don't institutionalize community, we inspire it by living it."
"I believe in functional leadership, leaders are those that lead."
"There are 3.5 million whites (total population 45 million) in South Africa that have never been in the home of a black person."
"The strength of the American culture is our initiative, can do attitude, optimism. This is bad if it is not married incarnation, can't do and shouldn't do. Just because you can doesn't mean you should."
"Leadership is more horizontal than vertical. There are times where we are in front of, next to and behind."
"Spirituality in the US is about hype and promotion."
"Church should be done in all spheres of life...church is life."
"Sunday is not the game. Sunday is halftime. And the game is played outside the church walls."
"How does God see his church?"
"Let God breathe on our hearts so that we will hope again."
Floyd and his community are working with a group called African Hope Crafts (www.AfricanHopeCrafts.org) - a jewelry company that employs only people living with HIV/AIDS. Crafting jewelry for two days provides enough money for a month of low-level living. You gathered the feeling that people living with HIV/AIDS have become unemployable in many regards, thus the power of this effort. It causes me to want to spend money with compassion in mind rather than consumption.
He talked a bit about his recent book release, "Starting A House Church" (http://www.amazon.com/Starting-House-Church-Larry-Kreider/dp/0830743650), stating its purpose and premise being to provide principles that encourage the church of tomorrow to do and be church simply enough that it will work everywhere.
I have not fact checked the next series of statements that he made. I only have room to believe they were communicated with integrity and right intention.
"If we don't trust, we will give up."
"We need a values conversion."
"Africa is the only country not experiencing economic growth."
"There are 860 million people in Africa and 460 million claim to be Christian."
"Africa has been evangelized but not discipled."
"We need to serve those that were once enslaved."
"There are 540 unreached people groups in Sudan."
"It is the aim of Islam to have a mosque every mile in Africa."
"What would happen if we sent soldier of love not war to the middle east?"
"Lead by not leading."
"We don't institutionalize community, we inspire it by living it."
"I believe in functional leadership, leaders are those that lead."
"There are 3.5 million whites (total population 45 million) in South Africa that have never been in the home of a black person."
"The strength of the American culture is our initiative, can do attitude, optimism. This is bad if it is not married incarnation, can't do and shouldn't do. Just because you can doesn't mean you should."
"Leadership is more horizontal than vertical. There are times where we are in front of, next to and behind."
"Spirituality in the US is about hype and promotion."
"Church should be done in all spheres of life...church is life."
"Sunday is not the game. Sunday is halftime. And the game is played outside the church walls."
"How does God see his church?"
"Let God breathe on our hearts so that we will hope again."
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
A Dangerous Invitation for Newness.
Thoughts on Advent from Signs of Emergence continue:
...The perception of the new step will come only to those brave enough to stop dancing the old. We fear that if we stopped for a week, a month, a service, a moment, we might be forgotten, or lose our momentum, weaken our profile, appear ill-thought-out and failing.
Our friends at NorthView Community Church recently cancelled their weekend worship services at the church campus and encouraged those in their community to get together in homes so that they might know and be known, life on life. Our friends at Bridgeway cancel their celebration gatherings a couple of times a year. One reoccurring Sunday that gets the boot is on Memorial Day weekend. Services get canned so that people can go play and enjoy friends and family without feeling any kind of obligation to show up. And even in the Mars Hill community, we've shifted gears or cancelled our weekly KAMP's Gathering in order to foster life, not church life, but life to the full. We have to stop dancing from time to time so that we can get caught up in the song of God and his people the church all over again.
We must be brave enough to stop if we are to see change. Our structures must serve us, not us serve them. The only way to consider whether our structures are serving us is to stop and reflect on them. To dismantle them; take them apart piece by piece. Expose them to the air. Lay them on the ground and let everyone walk around them and get a good look at them. This is the beginning of empowerment; we must allow people space and time to return to the deep simplicity of things, and spend time mulling over the fundamentals.
What in your life are you "mulling over"?
To stop people in their tracks, to stop yourself, and suggest that the way to higher peaks is actually to return to the valleys, is a brave act of true leadership.
I hope I am found brave.
This is a dangerous invitation for newness, carrying the risk that those we give such freedom to might freely walk away, or freely imagine something better than we had. But freedom must be what we are about. So the truly free, the brave who truly seek God, will always have periods, commas, full stops, punctuation marks, pregnant pauses, silence. Where those around them are given the freedom to reimagine and rethink.
My hope is that together as the church and together in local communities we can have genuine dialogue, and that we will reimagine and rethink TOGETHER. Pockets of the frustrated and embittered do us no good. The best form of criticism is creativity and the best form of creativity comes out of community.
It seems that at the start of this new century we are living in a particular advent, that we are being called to wait for new birth again. No matter how impatient we get as a society, with processing speeds rising and our whole culture velocity increasing ever faster, we cannot speed up pregnancy. In this advent that we find ourselves in, between the "modern" church that was and is dying, and the emerging church that is not yet, we must exercise patience. We must stop and wait.
The church is experiencing separation, marginalization, trivialization, and exile from the world it seeks to serve. And it is therefore experiencing these things from God too, for if the church is not connected to its host culture and society, it is not where God wants it to be, and therefore not where God is. If the church is not missionary, it has denied its calling, for it has departed from the very nature of God.
So, we seek for where God is already at work among us and we join him there.
If God is doing a new thing, we must apply ourselves to perceiving it or risk becoming custodians of empty stone buildings and historical curiosities ourselves.
...The perception of the new step will come only to those brave enough to stop dancing the old. We fear that if we stopped for a week, a month, a service, a moment, we might be forgotten, or lose our momentum, weaken our profile, appear ill-thought-out and failing.
Our friends at NorthView Community Church recently cancelled their weekend worship services at the church campus and encouraged those in their community to get together in homes so that they might know and be known, life on life. Our friends at Bridgeway cancel their celebration gatherings a couple of times a year. One reoccurring Sunday that gets the boot is on Memorial Day weekend. Services get canned so that people can go play and enjoy friends and family without feeling any kind of obligation to show up. And even in the Mars Hill community, we've shifted gears or cancelled our weekly KAMP's Gathering in order to foster life, not church life, but life to the full. We have to stop dancing from time to time so that we can get caught up in the song of God and his people the church all over again.
We must be brave enough to stop if we are to see change. Our structures must serve us, not us serve them. The only way to consider whether our structures are serving us is to stop and reflect on them. To dismantle them; take them apart piece by piece. Expose them to the air. Lay them on the ground and let everyone walk around them and get a good look at them. This is the beginning of empowerment; we must allow people space and time to return to the deep simplicity of things, and spend time mulling over the fundamentals.
What in your life are you "mulling over"?
To stop people in their tracks, to stop yourself, and suggest that the way to higher peaks is actually to return to the valleys, is a brave act of true leadership.
I hope I am found brave.
This is a dangerous invitation for newness, carrying the risk that those we give such freedom to might freely walk away, or freely imagine something better than we had. But freedom must be what we are about. So the truly free, the brave who truly seek God, will always have periods, commas, full stops, punctuation marks, pregnant pauses, silence. Where those around them are given the freedom to reimagine and rethink.
My hope is that together as the church and together in local communities we can have genuine dialogue, and that we will reimagine and rethink TOGETHER. Pockets of the frustrated and embittered do us no good. The best form of criticism is creativity and the best form of creativity comes out of community.
It seems that at the start of this new century we are living in a particular advent, that we are being called to wait for new birth again. No matter how impatient we get as a society, with processing speeds rising and our whole culture velocity increasing ever faster, we cannot speed up pregnancy. In this advent that we find ourselves in, between the "modern" church that was and is dying, and the emerging church that is not yet, we must exercise patience. We must stop and wait.
The church is experiencing separation, marginalization, trivialization, and exile from the world it seeks to serve. And it is therefore experiencing these things from God too, for if the church is not connected to its host culture and society, it is not where God wants it to be, and therefore not where God is. If the church is not missionary, it has denied its calling, for it has departed from the very nature of God.
So, we seek for where God is already at work among us and we join him there.
If God is doing a new thing, we must apply ourselves to perceiving it or risk becoming custodians of empty stone buildings and historical curiosities ourselves.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Rwanda Clean Water Project.
Just wanted to update our reading community...
We raised the $3,000 necessary to provide clean water to 750 people in Rwanda.
I encourage everyone to read and learn more at http://www.rwandacleanwater.com/.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Advent.
Signs of Emergence...
...But before the church can change, before I can change, before anything changes, comes waiting. A pause. A rest.
I have felt for sometime that I am having to learn, what I refer to as "Slowness". It's not laziness. Not unproductive. Not aimless. But slow. Gradual. Incremental. Subtle. And in this slowness I am finding patience, energy, focus, discipline, growth, change. The more I "slow" down, the more I accomplish. Weeks feel like months.
This is nature's way, decreeing as she does that movement from one direction to another cannot happen instantaneously.
The ship is turning just as surely as the earth is rotating. You don't necessarily feel it but you sense it, know it, experience it.
So against our hasty judgement, before we can experience the transformation that is vital to our survival, we will be required to wait. To be acted on gently, gracefully, and peacefully. Shaped, not crushed; guided, not dragged.
Matthew 16:18 tells us that Christ is building his church. Not you. Not me. Christ. We are caught up in his movement, his story, his work. We are joining him rather than asking him to join us. I really resonate with the author's words, "Acted on gently, gracefully, and peacefully. Shaped, not crushed; guided, not dragged."
It is vital to note that the task is urgent, but if our response is to be anything more than another flash in the pan or botched attempt to become culturally aware, then we must avoid haste.
Good things come to those that wait...strength will rise...we run and don't get weary...walk and not faint...do you not know...have you not heard...our father does not get weary...he brings passion to a willing heart...even when youth get tired and faint...strength will come to those who wait.
We must realize that if we are to see real, long lasting change, then it is going to take time; it is going to be a lifelong quest.
Are you committed to a lifelong mission with Christ in community with people?
Violent change tend to shear, to break the whole as one surface part moves and leaves the rest of the body behind unaltered.
In his seminal work "Future Shock", Alvin Toffler describes the psychological damage that occurs to people when they are overwhelmed by intense change. He talks about future shock being a disease of change, a sickness that people suffer that is not so much about the direction of change as the rate of it.
For our own health, we need change to occur not at revolutionary speeds demanded by power-wielding dictators or company boardrooms but at the evolutionary speeds of the empowered human body.
So, here we are again at the importance of the empowered individual, you. Consider yourself empowered to lead the way, to initiate the changes needed.
Before the church can change, before I can change, before things change - before change, we must wait. Caught "between the now and the not yet".
We wait for the one who whispers, "Behold, I am doing a new thing...Do you not perceive it?" (Isa. 43:19)
...But before the church can change, before I can change, before anything changes, comes waiting. A pause. A rest.
I have felt for sometime that I am having to learn, what I refer to as "Slowness". It's not laziness. Not unproductive. Not aimless. But slow. Gradual. Incremental. Subtle. And in this slowness I am finding patience, energy, focus, discipline, growth, change. The more I "slow" down, the more I accomplish. Weeks feel like months.
This is nature's way, decreeing as she does that movement from one direction to another cannot happen instantaneously.
The ship is turning just as surely as the earth is rotating. You don't necessarily feel it but you sense it, know it, experience it.
So against our hasty judgement, before we can experience the transformation that is vital to our survival, we will be required to wait. To be acted on gently, gracefully, and peacefully. Shaped, not crushed; guided, not dragged.
Matthew 16:18 tells us that Christ is building his church. Not you. Not me. Christ. We are caught up in his movement, his story, his work. We are joining him rather than asking him to join us. I really resonate with the author's words, "Acted on gently, gracefully, and peacefully. Shaped, not crushed; guided, not dragged."
It is vital to note that the task is urgent, but if our response is to be anything more than another flash in the pan or botched attempt to become culturally aware, then we must avoid haste.
Good things come to those that wait...strength will rise...we run and don't get weary...walk and not faint...do you not know...have you not heard...our father does not get weary...he brings passion to a willing heart...even when youth get tired and faint...strength will come to those who wait.
We must realize that if we are to see real, long lasting change, then it is going to take time; it is going to be a lifelong quest.
Are you committed to a lifelong mission with Christ in community with people?
Violent change tend to shear, to break the whole as one surface part moves and leaves the rest of the body behind unaltered.
In his seminal work "Future Shock", Alvin Toffler describes the psychological damage that occurs to people when they are overwhelmed by intense change. He talks about future shock being a disease of change, a sickness that people suffer that is not so much about the direction of change as the rate of it.
For our own health, we need change to occur not at revolutionary speeds demanded by power-wielding dictators or company boardrooms but at the evolutionary speeds of the empowered human body.
So, here we are again at the importance of the empowered individual, you. Consider yourself empowered to lead the way, to initiate the changes needed.
Before the church can change, before I can change, before things change - before change, we must wait. Caught "between the now and the not yet".
We wait for the one who whispers, "Behold, I am doing a new thing...Do you not perceive it?" (Isa. 43:19)
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