An Incredible Moment

OK, so writing with any consistency on a blog doesn't seem to be my strong point.  However, there are so many things that are happening within the local body of believers that I get the privilege of walking alongside that I felt like I needed to try to get some momentum going and write down at least some small part of it...

I'll start with an incredible moment in one of our Sunday morning gatherings.  One of the negatives that come with preaching through books of the Bible is that I'm forced to deal with passages from which I would otherwise stay far, far, far away.  So, as we made our way through the Gospel of Mark this spring, didn't we come upon a whole chapter devoted to the return of Christ.  A whole chapter!  There was no good way to circumvent that one.  Tough to loop an entire chapter into another sermon and, say, focus on the three obscure verses at the end of the previous chapter.  (Not that I spent a few hours trying to make that happen... I'm just saying...)  Anyway, the fateful Mark 13 Sunday was approaching, and we began to discuss the flow of the worship gathering for that morning.

Now, it's important to note that we are blessed to have an incredible team of worship leaders.  Seriously.  I'm not just saying that because a few of them might read this.  Really--they're incredible.  The level of gifting and passion and musical ability and creative energy that they bring to our worship gatherings is seriously impossible to overstate.  Any one of them could be a worship pastor and primary worship leader at some big  church somewhere, but God has graciously allowed us to be led by them for this season.  Granted, that's a slight digression from my point, but it's important.  Here's why...

This Sunday one of our incredibly gifted leaders, Abbie Horsman, was leading.  Now, Abbie has a killer voice.  Like - wow.  It's an instrument in and of itself.  But her voice might be secondary to her gifting with words.  She's a great writer and speaker, not only thinking deeply and poetically, but expressing it in a way that lets us all have a peek at the beauty that's in her mind.  It's a very cool thing.  So, as I was lamenting about how much detail to include in a controversial topic like the return of Jesus that has provided a soapbox for dozens of nut jobs over the years, she was captured by the important part of the text - that Jesus was actually, literally, gloriously coming back.  Like, for real.  And as she thought through that, she had this thought - what about writing a new verse to the Christmas hymn "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus" that focuses on the return of Christ?  And... to add a little challenge... why not write it during the worship gathering?  And... just in case that was too simple... what it we invited the congregation to "write" the hymn by listing words and phrases which captured their feelings about Jesus' return - and then Abbie would write the new verse using those words?

So, that Sunday, we pulled a big whiteboard out with some markers, and invited people to write.

That leads us up to the moment.  It was in our 10:30 gathering, and as always, there were kids galore.  The bane of the existence of many of our young parents is the philosophical decision that we should worship along with our children before they go to age specific teaching - so worship at the 10:30 gathering is always a bit interesting.  At first, a few people came forward and wrote a few words.  Then, a few more.  Then, there was an older woman who came to the front - walking wasn't an easy process for her, but she made her way to the board anyway.  About that time, a five year old boy moved toward the front as well.  Now, five year old boys and whiteboards usually bring poorly drawn cartoons which ultimately become scribbling when the cartoon doesn't come out right.  I was fully anticipating making a move toward the eraser.  But as he approached, the look on his face was serious.  Intense even.  He was in the moment, and there would be no cartoon today.  As I watched from the other side of the room, there was this beautiful moment - an older woman on the right side of the board, a five year old boy on the left side of the board, both of them laying out their longing for the return of their Savior.  My eyes brimmed with tears as I watched.

In a world where children are babysat by video games, teenagers are released into the virtual reality of their virtual worlds, young adults are selfishly captured by their own issues and agendas, parents are competing with one another over the success of their children, empty-nesters are padding their retirement and playing with the big toys that they had to give up for a decade of soccer practices, and older folks are relegated to homes, the church must be the place where we bridge the gaps.  Because we are one in the Spirit and one in the Lord, as the old chorus says, we have the opportunity to value one another as a new society.  We can move past generational preferences and stereotypes, and truly connect to one another.

In that moment, I saw a picture of the possibility.

The verse was written.  It was incredible.  Abbie used the words she was given: the words of the senior saint and the words of the five year old boy.  And we sang them with joy.  A sermon was preached.  It was fine, but honestly, no one remembers it.  The message was already there for all to see - there's a Kingdom that's coming, but in some ways and in some places, that Kingdom is already here.

Several of you have asked for the lyrics that were written that day. Here they are:

Dying once and conquering evil
Dying on a blood-stained tree
Dying to redeem Your people
Risen now in victory
As we look for your returning
Stir in us our need for Thee
May our hearts in joyful longing
Find in You our hope and peace

Fearful wonder, joyful longing
Fill us as we wait for Thee
Face to face on that day dawning
Glorious Hope, we'll finally see
Every sorrow, every tear
Wiped away as we bow at Your throne
Fully free from sin and fear
Fully knowing, finally home

On the road again...

I'm sitting here in the Houston airport, halfway to El Salvador. It's been a year since I've travelled away from my wife and kids, and honestly, it still feels like it's way too soon. I love my friends in El Salvador, and am especially looking forward to seeing our "Salvadoran daughter" Marilene, but more and more I just don't like being away from home.

That said, this trip, while short, is an exciting one! We're looking at the potential of 2-3 trips from York Alliance in 2013 to partner with our friends from Iglesia Communidad de Fe y Adoracion in the ministry that they are doing among the broken neighborhoods on the outskirts of San Salvador. Along with each of these trips comes the opportunity to understand another part of the world, the reality of Jesus in a different culture, and the brotherhood that we share regardless of language and background. As much as I tire of travel, I never tire of seeing people's lives changed through the experience of partnering with our brothers and sisters in El Salvador. The potential of teams mixed together between adults, teens, and kids is incredibly exciting. Serving in another culture is something that I believe that every Christian in the North American church should try to do at least once...

So, it's on the road again. A few short days, a whirlwind of activity, and then another couple of flights back home. In between, a snapshot into another portion of the global church. OK, Lord... I think I'm ready. Or as ready as I'm going to get.

A Writer?

It doesn't take much looking at the inconsistency of this blog over the last several years to recognize that I'm far from being a writer. Now and then I can get some thoughts written down, but that's about as far as it goes. Inconsistent at best. So imagine how shocked I was to see THIS.

An actual book. Published by an actual publishing company. E-books, actual "hard copy" books. The works. And not just on Amazon.  Barnes & Noble.  Google Play. (Cheaper here!  What a deal!)  iBooks on the iTunes store.  Kobo, whatever that is. Craziness.

"Follow Me: Discipleship That Moves Us" is a project that I put together for York Alliance Church, the wonderful group of people that I get the privilege of serving alongside of, learning from, and now and then actually teaching.  We wrestled--as hopefully many churches do--with what it means for us to fulfill Jesus' call to make disciples.  I'm quite certain we haven't finished that wrestling, but this book is the first installment.  Here's what we found: Disciples aren't made through completing curriculum or engaging a program--rather, they emerge gradually based on a series of values which are consistently and progressively practiced in all of life.  Let me say that again, because if you're like me, it's so simple and obvious that I missed it for years: Disciples aren't made through completing curriculum or engaging a program--rather, they emerge gradually based on a series of values which are consistently and progressively practiced in all of life.  Not a "now it's time to do the church thing," but rather, how does the gospel change the way I live every part of my life?  Not a "finish this and you're a disciple" but rather an admission of the reality that the likeness of Jesus is never fully formed in us on this side of heaven.

Now, of course, I wrestle (like everyone who honestly engages discipleship) to actually live these values out. What does it mean to filter my life through the lens of mission, recognizing that everyone that I see (as C.S. Lewis said) is inching closer to eternity with or without Jesus?  How do I live a life that based firmly in the foundation of the Word of God?  That must be more than doing my devotions...  How do I live authentically in community, trusting the people around me with all of who I am?  How do I serve the body of Christ without expectation of receiving back?  These are hard questions--and they don't have one time, simple answers.

But we'd rather have it that way, wouldn't we?  The reality of our lives say that there aren't just simple answers to our brokenness.  In nearly two decades in active pursuit of Jesus, there haven't yet been any easy "one size fits all" solutions.  It's a journey.  It's a struggle.  It's a joy.  It's a pain.  It's the simplest, most complex, most worthwhile, easiest and most difficult thing in the universe.  It's supposed to be.

Tired

As we get toward the end of this week, I’m just shot.  Exhausted.  Worn out. 

Ever been there?

It’s not all bad stuff—in fact, some really good stuff!  And, of course, some really bad stuff.  But mostly just a lot of “stuff” stuff.  I see the brokenness of those around me.  I feel the reality that their brokenness is also my brokenness.  I start to work on crossing things off the to-do list.  More stuff gets added to the to-do list.  I realize more stuff is being added than is getting checked off the to-do list.  I find myself adding stuff to the to-do list that I’ve actually already done, just so I can check it off.  I find that those things are decreasing in their impressiveness—things like eating lunch don’t typically require a slot in Microsoft Outlook.  And I realize that I’m not only tired, but I can now add somewhat unproductive to that as well.

And normally, I just roll with all that.  You probably do too.  But today, I’m just wiped out.  Bodily tired?  Check.  Emotionally drained?  Check.  Spiritually zapped?  Double check.  At least I’ve completed one list for the day.

For years I’ve been fascinated with the ancient church in Ephesus.  It’s the first-century church that we have the most information on—a relatively detailed account in the last 1/3 of the book of Acts, a letter bearing their name that Paul wrote, two letters from Paul to their young pastor Timothy, and finally, the words of Jesus Himself as He addresses the church in Revelation 2.  When I imagine that church, I imagine a well-oiled machine.  They were rockin’ and rollin’ long before the Beatles ever broke onto the scene.  They had solid Elders, strong teachers, watched their doctrine carefully, and were “enduring patiently.”  (Revelation 2:3) The church was planted and set-up by Paul himself, who becomes a sort of consultant for them.  They had Timothy, the young all-star pastor hand-picked by Paul to lead this great church.  And guess what?  Within just a few generations, the church was completely gone.  Wiped out. 

That should make all of us nervous—it certainly does me!  There was far more going for them than we have going for our church… and most of the churches in the world, I might add!  And within a few short generations, it was all gone.  Poof.

What happened?  I think we get a clue in Revelation 2:4-5: “You abandoned the love you had at first.  Remember from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.”  They were chugging away at all the externals, but they had lost their first love.  They were getting the outside right, but missing the core.  And what is Jesus’ prescription?  Do the works you did at first…

Think back—if you’re a follower of Jesus, what did you do when you first fell in love with Him?  For me, I devoured the Word.  I mean, devoured.  Reading, memorizing, studying, cross-referencing.  Devouring.  I loved it.  And you know what?  When I find myself truly weary—not just tired from a long day, but truly weary—I almost always find myself having slowed in those things I did at first. 

I’m so thankful that Jesus acknowledged that we would get wiped out.  “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest…” (Matthew 11:28)  When we’re weary, He’s the only source of life. 

Sure, we can keep plugging away, just like the church in Ephesus did.  We can keep shaping the externals around what everyone expects of us while we fall apart on the inside.  And when we do that, I wonder if there will be a day where we’ll wake up and realize that our faith is going the route of the Ephesian church… slowly disappearing.  External righteousness doesn’t help us, but it does make us tired.  What does Jesus say when He calls?  “Come to me…”  Not check off the moral to-do list.  Not meet everyone else’s expectations.  Not rest inside the mold of cultural religiosity.  Come to me.

I think being weary might be a gift.  It’s in our weariness that we’re invited; and maybe it’s only in our weariness that we’ll truly come.

Rest well, my friends.  I’m planning on it. 

Jesus said, "Follow Me" - Part 3

OK, for both of you that have been anxiously awaiting this third post, I'm a few days late.  I can give you a variety of excuses for that, but honestly, you don't care and I'm not really prepared to think that hard.  So, without further ado, part 3...

Without fully restating what you can easily read yourself with a few clicks of the mouse, I've been working through the idea that Jesus very clearly called those of us who consider ourselves to be His disciples to follow Him, and yet, there are very few lined up behind Him.  If we're going to be honest, which most of us make it a practice to never truly be, our lives look pretty dramatically different than His.  We seem to love different things, connect with different people, base our decisions on a different set of values, and generally look much more like just about any character in the Bible other than Jesus--with the possible exceptions of John the Baptist and Ezekiel during that "lay on your side naked while cooking your food over animal poop" period.  (Ezekiel 4--seriously, that's in there.  The people who say the Bible is boring have never actually read it.)

As a church, we've wrestled with this, and tried our best to honestly study the life of Jesus as well as the teachings of the Bible to figure out what it actually means to follow Him in 21st century North America.  Of course, we all wish that it was a prescribed list of commands and check boxes--not only would that make it easier, but who doesn't love to check things off a list?  That's how I finally got up the motivation to write this blog post--I needed to check something off my to do list, and the rest of what was on there looked to be basically impossible.  But I digress.  Jesus doesn't give us a checklist--He gives us His Spirit.  Which is way better, but if we're honest, is way more difficult to figure out most of the time, because God has this habit of being far more concerned about our hearts than our external behavior.  So, rather than a checklist, there are seven areas that we see Jesus constantly operating within.  In part 1, I talked through what it means to have a lifestyle of worship, live within authentic community, and to build our lives on the foundation of the Word.  In part 2, I talked about what it means to engage in prayer as the first work, recognizing that God is the only one who is actually able to transform us.  Today, I want to look at the products of that transformation: serving the body, engaging missional living, and becoming the shalom of the community. 

Maybe the easiest way to think of these seven areas is in terms of an hourglass:

Within this image, worship, community, and the Word act as the environment for God to work.  However, it's only as we truly encounter Him through prayer that we are transformed.  Within that transformation, something is produced within us, and that transformation is poured out into the world around us through service, mission, and bearing peace.  But what does that look like?

Serving the Body.  I love the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet in John 13.  It's such a perfect picture of servanthood--not just because the God of Creation was willing to do the most menial job known to first century man, but because it wasn't His gift.  So often, we excuse our lack of service because "that's not my gift" or "I don't feel like the Spirit is leading me in that way."  Jesus washed feet for a simple reason: it needed to be done.  When God transforms us, the very first thing that He transforms is our heart for the body of Christ.  Paul, speaking of marriage in Ephesians 5, says, "no one ever hated his own body, but nourishes and cherishes it."  Then, a sentence or two later, he interprets for us: "I am saying that [this] refers to Christ and the church." (Ephesians 5:29, 32)  When we are transformed by Christ, He gives us a heart to serve His body, and we are willing to pour ourselves out to that end.

Missional Living.  One of the remarkable things about Jesus' life is maybe most clearly seen in the gospel of Mark.  In Mark 8, Peter answers a question that Jesus posed: "Who do you say that I am?"  Peter's answer: "You are the Christ." (Mark 8:29)  Simple.  Clear.  And it changed everything.  Mark records that Jesus "began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things..." (vs. 31) and will proceed to follow Him in a direct line to the cross.  The writer to the Hebrews said it this way: "who for the joy set before Him endured the cross." (Hebrews 12:2)  Jesus' was driven by a singular mission, and He's passed that mission onto us.  We are to go into the world around us, and "make disciples." (Matthew 28:19).  We are to be doing "the ministry of reconciliation" as "ambassadors for Christ." (2 Corinthians 5:18, 20)  It's not an activity we should engage now and then--it's a new way of living.  C.S. Lewis once said it this way: "All day long we are helping each other to one of these destinations [eternal glory or eternal horror]."  We are called to live each moment with that reality in mind.

Shalom of the Community.  Can you imagine being around Jesus?  Mark, again, gives us perhaps the clearest picture as he describes the crowd that seemed to be ever-present around Him, pressing in to hear Him, to touch Him, to simply be with Him.  Why was that?  Genesis 3, for all the debate about Adam and Eve and trees and apples, describes a moment in time where everything broke.  All that was once perfectly harmonious in a single moment was completely broken.  I think this is some of what Solomon had in mind in Ecclesiastes 3:11 when he said: "God has placed eternity in each man's heart."  There's something in us that remembers; we long for the harmony that once was.  In fact, Paul will say in Romans 8 that all of creation "groans" as we await redemption!  However, in Christ, harmony is restored.  That Hebrew word is shalom and it's a beautiful fusion of harmony, peace, wholeness, and rest.  Shalom is the gift that is ours in salvation.  Not a trite happiness, but a deep peace, even in the midst of the storm.  And we are called to bear that peace, that shalom, into the world around us.  I wonder if people long to be with you and I the way they longed to be with Jesus?

It's only when we meet Jesus and are transformed by Him that these things are produced in us.  Hear me, dear friends: if we try to produce them on our own, we will become bitter, frustrated, and tired.  However, if we'll take the time to truly encounter Him, we'll find that He's giving us all we need in order to truly follow Him.

Peace to you as you journey with Him.

This material is taken from the forthcoming book “Follow Me: Discipleship that Moves Us” which will be released in early 2013.