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The Only Way to Love is to Lay Down

February 14, 2012 in FAMILY, God, Life with 2 Comments

Here is a little Valentine inspiration from Ann Voskamp… Happy Valentines!

Marital love is a demanding and dying thing compared to the stuff of movies and mirages.

The love of imagination — it’s a different beast entirely than love made in the image of a Saviour with nails in His hands.

There are no standing lovers: the only way to love is to lay down.

Lay down plans. Lay down agendas. Lay down self.

Love is always the laying down.

This is how to make love out of a marriage: Love lays down it’s own wants to lift up the will of another.

Love let’s go of it’s plans — to hold on to a person.

Falling in love again isn’t so much about communicating better, but about connecting deeper.

Poor communication doesn’t disconnect souls — it’s the disconnected souls who poorly communicate. When we’re well attached, we communicate well and when we aren’t fully communicating it’s because we don’t feel connected.

No matter our age, it never stops, this need to feel securely attached, and messy marriages can be because of attachment disorders. That’s what good relationships are: safe havens in the world, this base that makes us brave to venture out into the world — and safe to come home.

That’s what He made love to be: for love to bear all things. “Bears,” it’s stego in the Greek — “a thatch roof.”

Love bears all things — love literally becomes a thatch roof.

That’s what real love always is: I become a roof for you, a wing for you, a shelter in your storm.

Come to me. Count on me to hold you.

5 Ways to Fight through to Love:

1. You don’t need honed communication skills —

As much as the will to connect hearts.

2. Get to the tender wounded question behind every fight:

“Can I depend on you? Do my feelings matter to you? How do you care about me? Hold me?”

3. In the anxiety that’s masking as anger, don’t up the ante

Don’t up the ante with name-calling, labels or threats of the D word (divorce).

Critical language can register in the brain as the same area as physical pain — which leaves your spouse dealing with their own pain, instead of caring for you in yours.

4. Be your spouse’s ER:

Emotionally Respond. Listen to the cries of fear behind the fighting. Hear anger as a cry for attachment, this call for connection. Have the courage in the midst of the heat to tenderly reach out and touch the bruised places. Reassure that you’ll always be there, that you care, that you’re in this together.

5. Hold each other close and long…

Love bears all things. Be a roof, a wing, a shelter in the storm.

“It is not your love that sustains the marriage —

but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.”

~ Deitrich Bonhoeffer

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EAT: A Life Rhythm

February 11, 2012 in Bible, FAMILY, friends, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

One of our core rhythms at The Journey is EAT. We tell people that to be a part of this community your discretional spending should go down and your food budget should go up. We encourage people to have 3 meals a week with others… opening their home and their lives.

Tim Chester: “Jesus didn’t run projects, establish ministries, create programs, or put on events. He ate meals. If you routinely share meals and you have a passion for Jesus, then you’ll be doing mission. It’s not that meals save people. People are saved through the gospel message. But meals will create natural opportunities to share that message in a context that resonates powerfully with what you’re saying.”

Meals continue to be integral to the task of mission. Theologian and chef Simon Carey Holt says:

It’s good to be reminded that the table is a very ordinary place, a place so routine and everyday it’s easily overlooked as a place of ministry. And this business of hospitality that lies at the heart of Christian mission, it’s a very ordinary thing; it’s not rocket science nor is it terribly glamorous. Yet it is the very ordinariness of the table and of the ministry we exercise there that renders these elements of Christian life so important to the mission of the church. . . . Most of what you do as a community of hospitality will go unnoticed and unrecognized. At base, hospitality is about providing a space for God’s Spirit to move. Setting a table, cooking a meal, washing the dishes is the ministry of facilitation: providing a context in which people feel loved and welcome and where God’s Spirit can be at work in their lives. Hospitality is a very ordinary business, but in its ordinariness is its real worth.

Elsewhere Holt says: “Whatever it looks like, your own table is a sacred place and one just as implicated by the lavish nature of God’s grace as any other.”

Meals bring mission into the ordinary. But that’s where most people are—living in the ordinary. That’s where we need to go to reach them. We too readily think of mission as extraordinary. Perhaps that’s because we find it awkward to talk about Jesus out- side a church gathering. Perhaps it’s because we think God moves through the spectacular rather than the witness of people like us. Perhaps it’s because we want to outsource mission to the professionals, so we invite people to guest services where an “expert” can do mission for us. But most people live in the ordinary, and most people will be reached by ordinary people. Even those who attend a special event will, for the most part, have first been befriended by a Christian. “For those looking to connect with people in the local community it isn’t that hard if you really want to. Just invite people round, let them know they can go home if they need to and then enjoy a meal together. You’re going to eat anyway, so why not do it with others!”

Jesus’s command to invite the poor for dinner violates our notions of distance and detachment. Mission as hospitality undermines the professionalization of ministry. Mission isn’t something I can clock out from at the end of the day. The hospitality to which Jesus calls us can’t be institutionalized in programs and projects. Jesus challenges us to take mission home. It may be a surprise, given my emphasis on meals, but I loathe church lunches—those potluck suppers in drafty church halls. They’re institutionalized hospitality. Don’t start a hospitality ministry in your church: open your home.

Much is said of engaging with culture—much that’s right and helpful. But we must never let engaging culture eclipse engaging with people. People are infinitely variable and rarely susceptible to our sociological categories.

If you want to understand a person’s worldview, don’t read a book. Talk to them, hang out with them, eat with them.

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Getting Through The Challenges of Mission and Community

February 9, 2012 in church, God, Leadership, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

In planting a church that longs to see its people live on mission, if I am honest, it is super challenging. The cost that people have to count is so much higher than attending a designed program at church. I understand why Jesus constantly is reminded those following him of the cost involved in such a decision. Jonathan thanks for the honesty and the encouragement… as Eugene Peterson says “it is a long journey in the same direction.”

Article by Jonathan Dodson

The popularity of missional community is rising among evangelicals, and yet, the American church is nowhere near a missional tipping point. I’ve faced missional highs and missional lows. Along the way, I’ve considered a number of things that are absolutely necessary for us to endure the transition to missional church. How should we respond to the challenges of missional community? Here are three things to keep in mind as you lead in God’s mission (and thanks for doing so).

1. Building Missional Community Requires Stretched Grace. We need more than a drop of grace to get us going on God’s mission. We need an ocean of grace to swim in to continue on God’s mission together. Do you remember when you knew nothing about “missional church”? That’s where many people are. Do you recall how long it took you to process, assimilate, and live out the principles of missional community? This probably took a couple of years, and if you’re a leader, you are in it “full time”. When leading others in missional community, remember the slowness in your own story and extend others the same grace and patience King Jesus extended you. After all, the kingdom of God is slow, and thank God for that! We need more than a drop of grace to get us going on God’s mission. We need grace stretched across the length of our lives and depth of our missional failures and successes. Jesus secured this grace, so revel in it and splash it on others.

Leader Tip: Try to avoid making mission a new benchmark of religious performance. Instead, motivate people with grace. Grace preached and grace embodied. Embody the grace of Christ, who has put up with our missional fumblings for centuries, as you lead others on mission. When it comes to mission, it’s not perfection overnight but progress over a lifetime.

2. Community is What You Make of It. In order to make progress with your community, remind them that community is what you make it. Community isn’t an idea; its real people, awkward, struggling, weird, different, funny, slow, arrogant, sheepish, humble, curious, skeptical, excitable. You get the idea. Jesus didn’t die to make cliques; he died and rose to form diverse communities. Diverse and different is hard. It requires love, effort, and patience. Community doesn’t just magically appear in a church. In fact, churches don’t have community at all; they are community. The question is, “What will you make of the community?” I’m falling in love with real community, which is really messy, with people who are so different from me and yet so alike in Jesus. There’s nothing like pursuing difficult people, being loved by different people, serving alongside a diverse people. What a display of grace (nothing else could hold us together).

Leader Tip: In a highly consumeristic, individual-centered society, it will take at least a generation to get back to the biblical notion of community. And even then, we will need more than community to sustain community. Let’s all agree to shatter our ideal of community and enter the real community of people God has placed in our lives. Let’s lift Christ higher than the community. Jesus is head not the body. He’s lord of the church. He’s the hope of the community, not the community itself. Community needs a center deeper than connection and a purpose greater than comfort. It needs the Lord of Community, Jesus Christ, to knit unlikely people together as a display of our common need for grace. Insist on this.

3. Labor for the Lord of Mission not the Fruit of Mission. With all the missional hype, our faith can easily slip from trusting in the Lord of the Harvest to trusting in the fruit of our labors. I’ve had several deep relationships with non-Christians dissolve over the past year and a half. This came after spending a lot of time with them over meals, out for philosophy discussions, in our home for counseling, and with our family doing fun stuff. They were loved and heard the gospel in ways that were profoundly relevant to their own fears, struggles, and hopes…and they walked away. They walked away from Jesus and created distance from us. That’s hard. If I’m putting faith in the fruit of my missional labors (at least at what I can see), then I’m discouraged. But if I’m putting faith in the Lord of the Harvest, I can be confident that he has been lifted up and that he is in charge of all salvation. He has endured much more to witness friends walk away from his costly sacrifice. He’s not only a model of missional endurance; he’s the hope for missional endurance.

Leader Tip: Put your faith in the Lord of Mission not the fruit of mission. It can be easy to congratuate ourselves when mission is high and berate ourselves when mission is low. That’s a sign that we’ve misplaced our faith. We put it in ourselves or our “fruitfulness.” Come back to the gospel every single day and ask the Spirit to put Jesus highest among your affections and greatest among your hopes. Keep repenting and putting your faith in Jesus and he will take care of the mission.

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Some Great Links

February 9, 2012 in Leadership, Life with 0 Comments

Some great links I have enjoyed over the past few weeks… well worth your time to read.

1. An Empire Built on Love – Donald Miller – This is especially timely with all the Christianity is masculine conversation that is around the blogging world.

2. Evangelical Reject – Kurt Willems - Kurt I love you! If I lived in the United States I too would be an Evangelical Outsider, but in Canada these views are much more normal or at least accepted… at least that is my experience.

3. How I turned Movement into Mega: The Story of Sheffield – Mike Breen – I can’t hear this too much, this story has inspired what we have become at The Journey.

4. Good for the nuns!

5. If you are not reading Ann Voskamp start today!: Here is a little taste of her amazing prose… “There’s a whole lifetime of memories here at the lake and how many Sunday picnics of fried chicken have we had right up there at the lighthouse? She’d serve extra helpings of green coleslaw and I’d pump the swing high and I could see how we might, soar straight out over the lake. There’s a time when you think nothing will end. I lean into her and she leans into me, and we’re warmer like this, close. Doesn’t there have to be more than a decade left of this? And there doesn’t have to be anything. The waves keep breaking. Couldn’t she stay until she’s 117? When you wake to losing someone, you win love. When you realize that what you have, you will lose — you win real eyes. You win grateful joy. It comes across the water and I turn to face it directly: It’s only when you realize everyone you love will one day leave you— that you really begin to love. I reach over for Mama’s hand and she does that, she squeezes mine softly and that says more… most. Someday, it is possible, I could stand here on my own 61st. I can close my eyes and almost see that.“

6. Byron Borger of Hearts and Minds gives his list of the best Christian books of 2011. Well worth your time.

7. Ten mistakes leaders should avoid at all costs - Michael Hyatt

8. The Missional Renaissance. Pastors: this is a good interview of Reggie McNeal worth your time.

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Building a Family

February 7, 2012 in FAMILY, God, Life with 0 Comments

If we build companies but lose the company of family and if we build visions but lose sight of relationship, have we only built these hollow canyons of pain?

Family is this altar you lie down on and build joy. – Ann Voskamp

A couple of years ago I found myself outside on a very cold December night flooding an outdoor rink. I grew up on a farm, where I could come home after school and head down to the pond after school for a game of shinny. I recall on those cold winter days my dad cleaning off the ice so we could play hockey.

I have a son who loves hockey and a family who loves to skate… somehow they convinced me that this rink was good idea, so there I was late into the night spraying water on snow in the backyard thinking is this worth it? I worked late into the night, and many other nights on that rink. Eventually, we finished flooding… After the first skate Kellan comes into the house, rosy cheeks and all and says “Thanks, Dad.” He just did it. I didn’t ask him to thank me… it just came right from his heart.

There are moments in life that that you wish you could preserve forever, that you wish you could somehow bottle them and return to them whenever you want to.

For all us Dads and Moms creating memories for our kids, Geoff Dresser nails it. The cold nights. The wet boots. The frozen fingers. The ‘thank you’s’.

All that life in their cheeks, all that effort, all that love, it flames with a heat of it’s own.

I sit in the window and I watch how they skate… laughing, playing, enjoying the beauty of the moment… thinking it is all worth it.

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Missional is NOT a Project

February 3, 2012 in church, FAMILY, friends, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

Here is a great post by Michael Stewart. Even missional can become a word that is diluted and co-opted for safe programs.

Living in an under-resourced, inner-city neighborhood I had become accustomed to the constant knocks on the front door. But this was different. As I opened the door I was taken aback at the large group of youth and adults, all swarming around my front door like a pile of hungry ants – all with perfectly matching shirts that had the logo of their church emblazoned on the front and back along with the phrase “Outreach Ministry” in big, bold letters. It was at once a scene that was one part intimidating, one part awkward, and one part funny.

One brave soul in the group who had been convinced of the worthiness of their missional efforts piped up with a semi-rehearsed speech:

“Can we mow your yard? We’re just here to love on you people.”

“You people?” I thought to myself. I’d been called a lot of things in the past. “You people” was not one of them. That was a first.

And it was also the first time that I had ever felt the sting of losing a little bit of my dignity. The first time, as a person of resource, I had ever been on the receiving end of a missional project dripping with good intentions, but bad implementation.

You see, to them I was not “Stew” (as all my friends call me) – I was a nameless project – something to be accomplished. Me and my yard were a benevolent deed in a long list of good deeds to be accomplished that day under the impatient heat of the summer sun. The question seemed harmless enough, but even a sharp knife that comes wrapped in good intentions hurts nonetheless.

Now contrast that picture with this one: A 4-alarm fire ravages an apartment building in ourneighborhood. A single mom with 2 young children is displaced, along with 45 other families, from her home. A friend in our Missional Community at the time lives a block away from the fire, shows up on the scene as the 6 fire trucks are dousing the flames, and feels led by the Holy Spirit to talk to this single mom. He connects her with us and she ends up moving in with us.

5 kids under the age of 6 are now packed into our little house, and in the middle of the chaos, transition, pain, struggle and tears, our little community of believers surrounds this mom and her children with support, affection, listening ears, and everything in between.

The love, sacrifice, and difficulty was not glamorous – it was not sexy – it was not easy – it took time…lots of time – and this family was certainly not a project to be completed, a task to be accomplished. This family had become our family and our family had become their family. It was the weaving together of both families.

Like a fabric, this was a network of relationships weaving their lives, sweat, time, energy, prayers, and tears together. This was incarnational ministry in its essence:

living among
learning from
working with
being shaped by
and walking alongside.

What excites me about the current missional conversation is that it seems to be catalyzing a resurgence for activism. That is a good thing.

“Let’s go!”
“Let’s do something!”
“Let’s be active!”

But the first story is what happens when “missional” is not joined with “incarnational.” Missional is the “what” but incarnational is the “how.” They are inseparable, as they were with Jesus. Jesus was sent by God on a mission, but “how” he was sent was just as important as “that” he was sent. “Missional” without “incarnational” devolves into mere projects. “Missional” without “incarnational” at best will be a passing fad, a short-lived experiment that has no staying power, or a kind of paint that we plaster on our current methodologies until some new, shiny paint comes along to replace it.

But I have a greater hope because of the incarnation of Jesus. Because He accomplished his mission, because he came to live for us, suffer for us, die for us, and be raised for us, now we are freed, because of His work and performance, to purse the long-term, difficult, self-denying incarnational mission to love others for the sake of the gospel.

Dreamer, catalyst, avid indoorsman… Michael Stewart (who goes by “Stew”) is Founder and Director of the Verge Conference and Verge Network, a network created as an advocate and champion for movements of gospel-centered missional communities. He is also Pastor of Missional Communities atAustin Stone Community Church. He has lived in at-risk, inner city neighborhoods in Memphis and Austin where he has, with his family, lived out his passion for holistic community development, advocacy for the poor, and gospel-centered justice. His passion is to see ordinary people radically transformed by the gospel of grace and engaged in the mission of God.

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How You Live Matters

January 30, 2012 in Bible, church, God, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

At The Journey we are continuing our series on life rhythms. As we receive the gospel and allow Jesus to reign in our lives we can’t go on doing the same things. We know who God is by what God does! How we live matters. Too often the extent of our new life is about “going to church” or telling those around us what we are against but it is all to rare to find someone who has genuinely been transformed by the gospel and they live a different life.

Imagine showing up at work on Monday being asked about your weekend and you respond…”I went to church on Sunday”, then silence and you both go on with your day. Your response does not demand further dialogue because you are not living different, you simply attended something.(same response occurs if you say you went to a restaurant) BUT what if you respond “we spent the weekend moving”,- “oh wow did you move into a bigger place?” – “No we moved into a smaller space”, – “really, how come? Are things tight financially?” – “No we desire to live a more generous life so freeing up money going into our mortgage will help us give more to people in need”… – “I have never heard any one doing that before what caused you to make that decision?”… now that is a conversation based on you living out of a new story that allows you to give a gospel answer because they asked! Are you getting the point.

We want to tell others about Jesus outside of allowing our very lives to tell the gospel story. People know who your god is by what you do!

The pastor I was serving under in Vancouver is a great example of this. As Kari and I were living missional in our neighbourhood we came across a single mom in need. She had 4 kids, a problem with alcohol, and very little money. As a group we began to love them, serve them, and care for the kids. To make a long story short things became more difficult and the kids were about to be split up through the foster care system. This is when the gospel of love and sacrifice moved Greg and Debbie to take the 4 kids. Yep crazy… nothing like doubling the family overnight. What would happen if you told people that on a monday morning at work? God is inviting us into a new way of living modeled by Jesus and empowered by the Spirit. We live a different story showing people the trailer to the coming Kingdom of God.

Too often can live in the pendulum swing between being and doing, and miss the point completely. Biblically these two are very integrated. I would like to call it Being In Action… It is a matter of order, being precedes doing but always results in action. It would be crazy to think loving my wife would not result in new behaviours. Love results in a new way of living.

Too often we study God (attributes) apart from what God does. We have divorced the churches nature from her mission. No longer are we the echo, the trailor to the coming Kingdom of God, we don’t show the world a different story they could live their life from.

If you are interested in a new way of living start with the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5. Jesus calls his disciples to follow and then shows them in chapter 5 – 7 how to live. He concludes with this verse:

²⁴ “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶ But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

May people be introduced to Jesus because of the way you live!

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Story-Formed

January 23, 2012 in Bible, church, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

At The Journey we desire to live a different kind of way, showing to the world our allegiance to Jesus and what life in His Kingdom looks like. Too often we define being a Jesus follower by where we attend church or what we are against BUT Jesus says “it is by your fruit you recognize who my disciples are”, it is about how we live.

This Sunday we talked about the first of our everyday rhythms, Story-Formed.

Every person on the planet is living their life inside of and in light of a larger story shaped by the country they live in, the cultures surrounding them, the family they were raised in, the worldview they believe… Until they understand all of this in light of the Redemptive Story of God, they will give themselves to lesser stories that do not work.

A story is just a person that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. And we are all telling stories.

But stories aren’t neutral. The stories we hear change the way we see life. Stories teach us what is worth pursuing, what is worth living for, what is worth sacrificing for. If we are a person that wants a BMW and is willing to work overtime to get it, than the moral of the story we are teaching the world is work hard and some day you’ll get a BMW. It’s not a bad story, but it’s not a good one, either.

As a Christ follower we are a story-formed people who are living our lives based upon and within an incredible story. All of our beliefs, identity and actions are all connected to the dominant story. This is why we need to know it and we are to talk about it when we sit, stand, walk along the way, eat, lie down, etc…

In this case, the Good News is that God sent his Son to redeem the world and create a new humanity. Eventually the whole world will be renewed. Death, decay, injustice, and suffering will all be removed. God is saving a people and sending them out for His Mission so that Christ will be glorified in all things.

The Church has been saved BY God’s work FOR God’s work (Ephesians 1, 2:10,14-22; 2 Corinthians 5:15-21; Revelation 21).

The Gospel is not just about my individual happiness or God’s plan for my life. It is about God’s Glory and His plan for the world.

There is a movement afoot. God is doing something and we have been called to His purposes. The people of God are participating within God’s redemptive plan by being a display people offering a foretaste of what the future will be like under God’s rule. This is an amazing story I am living within!
(Jeremiah 29; Matthew 5:3-16; Luke 6:20-36; 1 Peter 2:9-12).

We are like a trailer to a movie…giving a foretaste of the kingdom fully consummated by Jesus that makes people long for the future redemption of all things under Jesus as King…the difference is that unlike a movie trailer we are often a poor reflection of a far better future.

How is your story connected to the larger story of God? OR Are you living the worlds story of success?

What are some next steps your Missional Community should take in order to be a Story-formed people?

What is Storyline? from Donald Miller on Vimeo.

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Identity as Family

January 16, 2012 in church, FAMILY, friends, God, Leadership, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

One of the greatest compliments you can give me after hanging out in our community is “Your church really feels like family.”At The Journey one of our core identities is Family – We submit to God as our Father and love one another as brothers and sisters.

One of the things I felt like God impressed on me over 2011 was how few pastors really understand how the church is supposed to function… like a family (particularly in these mid-sized, extended family size groups). I wonder if so many pastors, either because they grew up in it or were trained for it, are used to running programs and organizations that perhaps many haven’t developed the all important skill of shaping a family on mission, or maybe they have been wounded and risking relationally again would just cost too much. This quote really gets to this reality:

Many men can build a fortune but few men can build a family.
J.S. Bryan

Mike Breen says it beautifully in a recent post.

The word oikos, which refers to “household” or “family,” is the description for the church in the New Testament. And if we were to dig into the annals of church history, we’d find that almost every time we see a missional movement of God, we also see a missional vehicle being used about the size of an extended family. Coincidence? I’m not sure sure.

What a fully functioning oikos develops is a texture, a feel, a visceral quality that everyone senses (whether you’re “officially” in it or not), but few can really put a finger on.

For example, take away that dynamic oikos/family texture and:

Morning prayer feels like staff devotion
Huddle feels like a stale small group
Missional Communities become forced mission projects

As I’ve observed the “art” of creating extended families over the past number of years, I’ve noticed that it always takes a combination of two things: PLAY + PURPOSE.

Families play together and have fun, both through planned events and through things that happen organically, things you can never plan. But they also have a very clear purpose for why they exist and what God has called them to.

You plan for Play and Purpose, but you also cultivate a culture where it’s happening organically as well. There are some events that serve as a trellis for the growing plant that is your culture, but if that’s it, you won’t get what you’re hoping for.

Here’s some questions you might ask about your Missional Community:

Would I want to go on vacation with them?
Would I voluntarily choose to hang out with them/their family because I want to and not because it’s forced?
Am I doing things that let them into the life of myself and my family?

Here’s the issue: Creating this kind of extended family isn’t something you should do because you are told. You do it because your identity is attached to God as Father and it is He who draws the lonely into families. You do this God created you this way.

Is this the reality we are intentionally trying to create in our MC’s?

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Jesus Society

January 16, 2012 in Books, church, Life, MISSIONAL, Uncategorized with 0 Comments

Jesus did not send his students out to start governments or even churches as we know them today…. They were, instead, to establish beachheads of his person, word, and power in the midst of a failing and futile humanity. They were to bring the presence of the kingdom and its King into every corner of human life simply by fully living in the kingdom with him….

Churches — thinking now of local assemblies of such people — would naturally be the result. Churches are not the kingdom of God, but are primary and inevitable expressions, outposts, and instrumentalities of the presence of the kingdom among us. They are “societies” of Jesus, springing up in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the furthest points on earth (Acts 1:8), as the reality of Christ is brought to bear on ordinary human life.

~ Dallas Willard in Renovation of the Heart

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