Posted in discipleship, Evangelism, tagged Peter Rollins on November 8, 2008| Leave a Comment »
“You cannot hear (revelation) without heading it.” Peter Rollins (ht)
I think one of the great lies festering within the church is that hearing is enough. We can easily leave people with the impression that you can hear the Gospel and that is enough. We don’t communicate well that it is the the fruit (heading) that is always the evidence of that hearing. One proves out the other. But we don’t always tell people that.
Posted in discipleship, humanity, Life, video on October 28, 2008| 2 Comments »
Magnolia is one of my favorite movies of all time. It is one of the best stories of the human condition and the space we find ourselves in. Everyone is searching for love in their own way only they keep bumping up against the brick walls. And what is amazing is how the soul just has to keep going. As human beings in the midst of suffering and our brokenness we find a way to keep searching.
What I loved about it was P.T. Anderson’s subtle conclusion that the movie presents, and culminated in this song.
“It’s not going to stop till you wise up. So just give up.”
May we as followers of Jesus live lives of surrender every single day.
Posted in discipleship, Missional, tagged Thrive Ministries on October 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Posted in church leadership, discipleship, theology on August 28, 2008| 11 Comments »
I’ve always wondered why the church doesn’t teach the priesthood of all believers. (1 Peter 2:9) And then I saw this cartoon. (ht) It says so much in four little panels. And it begs the question inherent in theology that we get it wrong sometimes, which has a label called heresy. Heresy is big for some people. But is heresy really the problem?
So I’m gonna ask a question. What if the problem of theology is not that we’re getting it wrong, which is an inevitability for broken people, but that you are different from me? And I don’t really need to get it right. I just need you to agree with my version of it.
And if I empower you to be a priest, to trust in the Spirit’s capacity to speak to you, to be who you are designed to be in Christ, then you may say something I don’t agree with. And then I will have empowered you to disagree with me, which means that I’ve somewhat approved it.
Again, just thinking out loud.
Posted in communitas, discipleship, Journey, Missio Dei, Missional on July 23, 2008| 1 Comment »
Today I learned a new phrase that really caught my attention. It comes from Len Hjarmalson’s post, Feeding the Beast. He says,
Go on a unique, unreproducible journey with a group of people…
The rest of the post is important too but that phrase caught my attention. You see I’ve been looking for ways to communicate what we do in Thrive, and will eventually do in Tribe. Thrive has been almost like a lab for learning what it means to follow Jesus in a wholistic way. Tribe will eventually become a missional network for groups that want to participate together.
But it is this journey together in missional community that has been my playground for the last five years. And one of the tensions is that no two groups are alike. Some are slow developing, while others move along very rapidly in their own development. Some break up before they even started, while others find the courage to break through the chaos and discover the deeper side of community.
Yet each journey is unreproducable.
This phrase has so much permission built into it. It speaks of the obvious, yet often forgotten fact that each person is unique in the kingdom of God and has permission to discover God in his/her own way. No two journeys are the same. The intent and destination are the same: participate in His mission so we can discover His restoration and kingdom. The process is even similar: three years in a missional community. But no two paths are alike.
And what I realize now is that God has uniquely built into the journey process what is almost like a trail in the sand. Each footprint from others vaguely remains as an outline, which invites us to follow but to chart our own footsteps that God is calling us to take. We all practice love and trust…in familiar ways in our own lives but in distinct situations.
Yes the steps are similar, but no two steps are alike. Each has its own timing and rhythm. Each has its own uniquely imprinted stamp of God on it as we step forward into the Father’s embrace. Each time someone learns how much God loves is truly unique to them, even though it has happened a million times before. Each time someone discovers their own restoration, it has a distinct aroma all its own, even though that aroma has been enjoyed so many times before.
Much of what we do in Thrive is inspiring people to take that unreproducable journey, to discover God’s path for his/her life. And there is an obvious hesistancy to taking the risk with God in something that has never been done before. We want what works. We want to know it’s going to work before we do it. And much of my journey has been to create a framework for engaging the missional journey. But the real work is participating, to take that first step that is meant exclusively for me.
Part of the tension for me has been in releasing what we do in Thrive back into the hands of God. My temptation is to want to be validated by the success of what we do. And the more I focus on the success of the groups the more it sucks. The more I release the outcome, the more God’s Spirit shows up. Isn’t that just like the kingdom of God.
If you are looking to participate in the unreproducable journey, a journey that is uniquely meant for you, feel free to contact me. At this stage we are primarily loking for leaders who want to take the risk to lead a group of people in that journey. Feel free to contact me with the email in my about page.
Much love.
Posted in discipleship, humanity, Life on July 7, 2008| 4 Comments »
Can something be a reality in life that we even agree to intellectually yet have no affect on our life? And if so, what does that mean?
What say you?
Posted in discipleship, Emerging Church, Missio Dei, Missional on June 30, 2008| 12 Comments »
Last night some friends of mine had a date night that turned into a mini meeting about Tribe. Tribe is our dream about what church could look like, one that is bent towards following Jesus into mission. In some respects its audacious, and is certainly bigger than the sum of us, which makes me realize I need to stay grounded in Him as much as possible. It is why I am so blessed to have so many great people already a part of this.
My wife asked the other wives what they felt about what we were dreaming up. It totally surprised me because I got to see the passion and beauty of my wife seriously wrestling with the call of God in her life, one that has pushed her in really great ways.
And then someone said, (I think it was Jeromy‘s wife), “I’m afraid of not doing it.”
And at that moment there was a collective sigh, a pregnant pause that revealed what all of us were feeling. You see, the more we took steps towards participating in God’s mission, the more it delighted us. It stirred our hearts to consider doing something that we believed would reveal a more wholistic way of being the church and participating in what He is doing.
But the risk was that by talking about it we could create a hope that might possibly never be fulfilled. By taking those first steps in some way meant that we were doing it. And what if at some point we decided not to, that it was just too much to do? By talking about it we were exposing some pretty serious dreams that each of us longed for and hoped for. But at the same time we were creating a risk that our dreams would never come true.
Several people at the table said, “I don’t want this not to happen.”
There is a moment of convergence when an idea takes root in a group of people, and the first step is hard. But there also comes a moment when the second person takes that step and the third and suddenly everyone looks around and says, “Are we really doing this?” Last night was one of those moments.
Have you ever felt like this?
Posted in discipleship, Emerging Church, love, Mark Driscoll, Missio Dei, Missional, postmodern, tagged David Fitch on June 13, 2008| 16 Comments »
Mark Driscoll is at it again.
He essentially challenged the idea that Emerging or Missional Communities have converts. This dialog originated when Mark Driscoll made the following quote,
“And all the nonsense of emerging, and Emergent, and new monastic communities, and, you know, all of these various kinds of ridiculous conversations – I’ll tell you as one on the inside, they don’t have converts. The silly little myth, the naked emperor is this: they will tell you it’s all about being in culture to reach lost people, and they’re not.”
David Fitch followed up with a really great response that essentially said, “Yes it is harder to develop a missional community but we actually have more converts based on size.”
I would offer that emerging and/or missional communities actually have A LOT more converts but not the kind of converts you would typically think. And here’s what I mean.
A couple of days ago I stopped by Kathy Escobar’s site because the woman knows how to speak it. And she presented a rather interesting, but condensed chart from this guy. It charted six stages of spiritual growth. I found it interesting but what stuck out to me was that there were essentially two macro stages to his process. The church stage and the following Jesus stage. And the guy was very astute to put a wall right in between the two. I also suggested that discipleship really begins after the wall.
And here’s where I would offer that the emerging/missional communities actually have more converts to the second category because we focus almost exclusively on the second category. When we have a convert, we typically begin with following Jesus into His mission, into participating into the restoration process started so long ago. Postmodern expressions (emerging/missional) aren’t interested in passive experiences that are fake. We’re interested in what’s real. When we invite someone to faith, it’s in practicing love and trust, not in saying the sinner’s prayer that they will forget in a couple of weeks. We’re not interesting in knowing ABOUT God. We’re interested in knowing God.
When we started the original group for Thrive we we’re all rubbing up against the wall and were not finding a way out. We were essentially sick of organized Bible studies, memorizing the right answers, and sitting in the pews on Sunday with blank stares on our faces wondering what we would have for lunch. We wanted to follow Jesus. And yet there was very little if any practical methodologies to do so within our church, nor any of the ten churches in our local area that we had all hopped from over the last couple of years.
You see it’s easy to get converts into the first category. It’s what most churches do because it doesn’t require much more than a well developed four point theology that convicts someone (re: guilts them in) to participating in a Sunday community. It’s easy to systematized, compartmentalize and even create a factory for the process. Is it well meaning? I would assume so, and would even hope so. But does it produce followers? I have my serious reservations.
The second category requires dealing with people’s bullshit, which are the lies that we tell ourselves so we can avoid our brokenness. And this requires love. It requires community in mission. It requires getting messy and crossing over, or even going through the wall. In Thrive groups we call this crossing the bridge of chaos, because dealing with our brokenness means looking at the lies we tell ourselves and the wounds we have accumulated…so we can let them go. It means dealing with fear and taking steps of trust in a God we can’t alway see. It means participating in His restoration process for our own lives, in being loved so we can love. And we don’t like to do that do we. Yet THIS is what it meant to follow Jesus.
To me I’d take ten converts to following Jesus over 100 people saying an organized prayer and then sitting passively in a pew listening to Mark Driscoll. But then again that’s just me.
Posted in church planting, communitas, discipleship, Emerging Church, God's love, Journey, Missio Dei, missional church, Tribe on May 21, 2008| 21 Comments »
Erin started it…but not really. She just said what millions of people where already feeling.
Gary, Barb, Jim, Alan, Jeff added their two cents. Then Glenn told a few people and when all was said and done the idea spread like wildfire. The cat was out of the bag.
Where can we find truly authentic community? Is there a place for those who feel disconnected from traditional church but long to discover an emerging expression of being the church?
I know this feeling first hand as well. Six years ago a group of twelve of us decided to take a journey together. We sat around the room asking what would it mean to really follow Jesus. To be honest we were scared. But what took us past our fear was our sincere desire to find something real. We were sick of the Bible studies. We were tired of the wrote answers we had all been given…that didn’t seem to produce life. We were dumb enough to actually believe that God would show up in our midst, if we trusted.
Within months, we knew that we had been led to something special. I say led because only the combination of people could have put all the pieces together required for the journey. It required a joint effort that could only have been assembled by the work of the Spirit. One guy brought a protocol for operating. One guy brought teachings. One guy brought the focus of trust and love. One guy brought the intensity. It was the perfect storm and we were riding its waves. We had discovered communitas.
About three years ago, God allowed me to focus on developing this full time. And to be totally honest, it took me about two years to get out of the way of what God was trying to do through me. The more I surrendered to what He was doing, the more success we encountered, the more love seemed to show up.
And then I began to hear stories like Erin’s, and Gary’s, and Barb’s, and 12 million others. Authors wrote books about this growing trend. Organizations were started to address it. People criticized it. But we couldn’t push away the growing realization that our hearts seemed to resonate with it.
And I realized that God is doing something in our midst. The question is then do we want to participate? Do we want to take the risk to restore our own hearts, to release the baggage that cripples the best of us? Do we want to discover what God has known all a long, that we really are worth it in His eyes?
About six months ago God took us in a different direction. He revealed that what we were doing was not meant just for us, but for His followers. And so Tribe was born. Tribe doesn’t begin with church. It begins with participating in His mission, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus within a tribe. Tribe is about participating in love and trust? It’s about participating in restoration, redemption, reconciliation and repentance. It’s about finding a wholistic understanding of the journey.
Over the last couple of months a group of six of us have been working on what that looks like and how it will work. Our desire is to create an organization that is bent towards supporting those who are looking for an emerging expression of being the church. I say this as encouragement. Out there…there is someone working to create the mechanisms and platforms for you to discover His mission and restoration, to discover your tribe.
Know that He loves you more than you can possibly imagine. But ask if you really want to take the risk to discover that?
More to come…
Posted in discipleship, humanity, Quotes, spiritual formation on May 15, 2008| 1 Comment »
Skilled Incompetence: An individual who is highly skilled at protecting oneself from pain and threat posed by learning situations (Chris Argyris, Harvard)
Posted in discipleship, freedom, God's love, humanity, Missio Dei, Restoration on April 17, 2008| 2 Comments »
When I was first embracing what it meant to follow Jesus I heard the phrase “God break my heart”. And in some respects I thought this was somewhat masochistic. The only perspective I had was what Kara had done to me in high school when she told me she had a boyfriend…after she had said yes to going with me to the prom. Breaking my heart was not a good thing.
But over time I began to realize that there were these deeply embedded protective mechanisms that surrounded my heart and kept me from feeling the pain from events like Kara…and my parents divorce…and so many other things. And as much as I wanted to protect my heart from the pain, this protective mechanism also kept me from seeing the love of my Father. It kept me from hearing my Father’s voice. It kept me locked in a world of isolation, distant and removed from relationship.
But deep within the cosmos was a still small voice, my Father’s Spirit that drew me in. Love. And as I began to strain to listen to His voice, capturing me in so many intriguing new ways, I could only hear a faint sound. Something was keeping me from hearing it. And as I began to listen I was drawn to the obstacles that had surrounded my heart. And I was left with a question. Do I leave the safe confines of my fake, plastic shell to discover a God who possible love me beyond reason (which brought the risk that He could break my heart like so many other people), or do I remain locked away in the safe confines never really able to enjoy for fear of pain?
And as I began to see glimpses of love that revealed the terrible lies in my life, I began to realize that I could no longer live with the protective shell. Restoration was awaiting me in the arms of my Father. And it looked like Jesus. But the problem was that I could no longer remove it myself. I needed help. God needed to break my heart, at least the protective shell around it.
I remember the day I said the words, “God please break my heart,” which from certain perspectives again sounded masochistic. But I now had a different understanding of what was being broken. It wasn’t my heart, but the deeply embedded, protective containers I had put it in. This was one of the scariest moments of my life, but it was worth it.
And once released I could see the love of my Father so clearly, so brightly. In fact it astounded me in its simplicity and beauty. I could see Him loving me more clearly than ever before. I could see my own heart, flesh and whole. I could see my own dignity, validated by my Father. I could see the dignity of other’s reflecting so clearly my Father’s image. It was joy.
So I invite you to take the risk to let God break your heart, so that you may see His love.
Listening to: He Loves Us by Kim Walker
Posted in discipleship, God's love, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Missio Dei, Missional, missional church, tagged Alan Roxburgh on April 12, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Alan Roxburgh has an interesting article on “What Is Missional Church?” I appreciate his thoughts on the subject because it brings up so many more questions than it answers, which is a good thing. Questions drive us to so many good conversations that hopefully lead us to exploring what God is already doing in the world. And hopefully we can partner with him.
But as I read his article, it got me focused on one question. Why does God call us into mission? What’s the point? At the basis of this conversation is the assumption that God is restoring His creation. I’ve outlined here that God is primarily restoring four relationships in the world by bringing people out of oppression and into His kingdom of love and trust.
Jesus released us to mission in his final words when He said,
Matthew 28:19 – Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
And much of the confusion then becomes what do we do when we go. We’re in, we’re pumped and we’re ready to go. Then the question becomes what do we do at that point. Sarah Jane Walker followed Alan in asking this question. I would offer that at that moment, the moment we begin to participate is when we learn to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit who is already in mission. So listening becomes central. And when we meet the Holy Spirit in the places she’s already working, the purpose is to reveal the Imago Dei, or love.
And I would suggest that God calls us into mission so we can reveal love. It is always love that draws us into the arms of the Father, into relationship. I appreciated Alan’s intro on this. It was love that truly drew him in. Love is so profoundly unhuman, so unlike us, that we realize the presence of something divine. We recognize what we were looking for all a long.
And when we give love we’re revealing Jesus all over again. We’re revealing the Imago Dei, showing the world what God really is like. We’re bringing the sweet aroma that captures the soul.
And when we give love we’re also receiving love because love is the fullest expression of who we were designed to be. We get to see God at work. We become Jesus in the moment. It’s a win-win for everyone.
Posted in church leadership, Conferences, discipleship, postmodern, Quotes, spiritual formation, Willow Creek on April 11, 2008| Leave a Comment »
This is Kara Powell. You probably don’t know Kara but you should. She’s Executive Director of the Center for Youth and Family Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Kara gets it.
She’s presenting at Shift, Willow’s Youth Ministry Conference. She has what I think is a killer observation.
“She says that a lot of what students are fed is a guilt based gospel—what Dallas Willard calls the “gospel of sin management.” Powell compared it to a diet of Red Bull. It’s fast, energetic, and easy, but not very nourishing. And after the rush is over you deflate. We’ve fed students a gospel of rights and wrongs, but nothing nourishing that they can internalize and grow from. No wonder they fall away shortly after graduation. The buzz is over.” (More at Out of Ur)
Love it. Listen up people.
Posted in church, church leadership, Conferences, conflict, discipleship, Quotes, Willow Creek on April 10, 2008| 3 Comments »
“We used to think you can’t upset a seeker. But while focusing on that we’ve really upset the Christ-centered people.”
Greg Hawkins, Executive Pastor of Willow Creek as quoted at the Shift Conference
The article mentions, “But the research shows that it’s the mature believers that drive everything in the church—including evangelism.” It’s hard for me to fathom that it took a study to reveal this.
Posted in conflict, courage, discipleship, Missio Dei, redemption, spiritual formation on April 4, 2008| 4 Comments »
Posted in church leadership, discipleship, humor, Jesus, leadership, pastors on March 26, 2008| 8 Comments »
I was thinking about Jesus and leadership today. I was thinking about what we typically think of when we think of growth in the typical church paradigm. For some, but not all, numerical growth is the obvious standard. And I get this because butts in the seats is measurable.
We celebrate the 101 fasting growing church in America and make lists. And I think about how this would feel if I were number 102. That would suck. The first question I would ask would be, “How do I make that list?” (As a side note, how about the churches that made the list this year and then found out they were not really on the list and had to be removed because of an error. Bummer.)
But if this is the measure we use, then Jesus was a terrible leader, in the short run. He wouldn’t get a job in today’s church marketplace. Think about it. He spent three years with 12 people. He talked to a lot of people but his primary focus was on twelve people who didn’t always get a long and didn’t always get it.
“Where’s the growth” people would ask? “How are we gonna pay the bills” others would say, albeit quietly in from the other side of the room. “This guy just doesn’t seem to get it.”
And yet Jesus changed the world. Nice.
I wonder if those in leadership will someday follow the model Jesus developed. He followed His Father’s voice to transform the lives of twelve ordinary people.
Posted in discipleship, God's love, humanity, Jesus, love, Missio Dei, redemption, tagged Easter on March 23, 2008| Leave a Comment »
This year Easter is different for me. It resonates on a deeper level this year in ways that I have never experienced. I’m beginning to see that God wants to resurrect me. The more that I embrace His love the more I can see it. And it is this deep love that has permeated so much of my life this year. I cannot begin to describe how I feel other than to say, “I am loved.”
You see I think that’s what is so astonishing to me. God chose to love regardless. He chose to love me when I feel loveless. He chose to validate me when I feel worthless. He chose to call me son and invited me to call him daddy. On Good Friday he showed me how far love would go to prove it to me. But today, on Easter Sunday, he showed me what the purpose of that love was, to resurrect me.
So much of this year has been God inviting me to participate in that. He’s asking me, “Will you love regardless? Will you love even when you don’t want to?” And some days I honestly just don’t want to. I want to punch and kick and scream back at the world that seems so callous. I want to yell back at God as say, “There’s just no way?”
And no matter how much I say it, God reminds me, “Yes you can. See my Son. That is what I am shaping you to be. That is what the journey of love is creating. And when you love, when you love regardless, you are showing the world who I am, and who you are becoming.”
Thank you Jesus for showing me how to love regardless.
Posted in discipleship, Missional on March 21, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Why it is so much easier to sit in the pew on Sunday morning and just do nothing?
If we say we believe, we will listen to His voice. But if we listen to His voice He may say something we don’t like. And if He says something we don’t like, we may not follow. And if we don’t follow we may just discover how much we don’t really believe. And we don’t like that, do we?
Posted in Art, church planting, discipleship, doctrine, Emerging Church, God's love, Interesting Stuff, money, movies on March 12, 2008| 1 Comment »
Daniel Tidwell throwing down a fantastic metaphor for what it feels like to be emerging.
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I don’t really know who Clarence Larkin is but I think my parents use to have one of his color drawings in the garage back in the 70’s. He used to be an architect and then became a preacher. Really cool pseudo-retro artwork.
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How It Should Have Ended – Some cool stuff here on how your favorite movie should have ended.
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My good friend Jeromy on how God is NOT balanced. This resonates on some ideas I’ve been floating around on what is true justice.
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A video you really want to watch about debt.
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My friend Rick Dugan offers a compelling idea on how to build churches.
Posted in discipleship, God's love, humanity, Missio Dei, Quotes, tagged The Road Less Traveled on February 24, 2008| Leave a Comment »
“The idea that God is actively nurturing us so that we might grow up to be like Him brings us face to face with our own laziness.”
M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
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Missio Dei 