After washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus spends the next while comforting his disciples.  He talks about how he will always be with them, and how they will be sent the Holy Spirit after he is gone.  But then he breaks into a reality check.

¹⁸“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. ¹⁹If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. ²⁰Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’^[b] If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. ²¹They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me. ²²If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin. ²³He who hates me hates my Father as well. ²⁴If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. ²⁵But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’^[c]

- John 15

I was thinking about my class on the Gospel of John that I am teaching right now at church.  I am introducing a family and a friend to the truth about Jesus and what he taught us to believe in the Gospel of John.  It’s already been an exciting journey with them and I have been praising God for their enthusiasm and interest.

I was doing my prayer/dog walk this morning and I began to think about how it is important that as they recognize what Jesus us calling them to, and decide to follow him, that I be clear about the consequences of that decision.

In other countries around the world, the cost is clear.  In many countries the cost is brutal – government harassment, persecution from Hindu or Muslim extremists, jail, even death.  What we face here in Canada is not nearly as bad (though it is proceeding apace with restrictions on public speaking about the Bible where the Bible disagrees with “accepted truth” about certain things.)  However there is a cost.

It got me thinking about my own life and the cost that I have paid to follow Jesus.  To be sure, there have been many – far too many – instances where I have to my shame not stood up for Jesus.  Yes, I avoided consequence for that for the moment, but it weighs on my heart and drives me forward today to live my fiath more publicly.  In that way I can sympathize with Peter’s denial, and how it drove him into leadership in the church, never wanting to feel that shame of denial again.

But I have paid several times.  I remember the first job I had after my paper route – at McDonald’s.  I had worked there 6 months, and I had fallen into the trap of following the crowd.  We had developed a routine of snitching small things to eat while on shift – we were supposed to pay for all food (at a small discount).  I don’t absolve myself of guilt on that count – I made the choice to break the law.  However, one day, we got caught.  The assistant manager lined us all up and asked us to own up to the theft (of a Chicken McNugget to be sure).  I was the only one who confessed, though I knew others had done the same that day.  A week later I was out of a job.  I could not lie about it, and I can only blame the Holy Spirit for convincting me of that.

A year later, I was working at Little Caesar’s Pizza.  I was the day shift guy, on solo most of the time.  One afternoon, a man came in with a 4 year old boy, and the boy had to use the bathroom really badly.  The only bathroom we had was in the back of the store, and we were not supposed to let anyone behind the counter for any reason.  I took pity on the kid and let him come back there to use the bathroom.  A month later, my boss told me that the same man had returned to the store with his kid and asked to use the washroom again.  When he was refused, he got offensive, yelling that he had been allowed to before – a quick deduction by my manager labelled me with the offense, and I owned up to it immediately.  It cost me my job again, though my manager in this case was much more sympathetic and wrote a glowing referral letter for me.

I say this because I recognize that hardship has come from my decision to make Christ Lord.  I don’t hold perfectly to anything but I do my best.  That best will conflict with the world.  The world wants me to compromise, to not rock the boat, to cheat, to deny, to be “safe”, to not offend.  Jesus wants me to love him and love his people.  Jesus want me to do good, and to accept consequences without grumbling, for I know what I deserve.  These two cases are part of a much broader journey of employment, and caused me for a long time to doubt my worth as an employee.  In some ways I still struggle with doubt.  But I have confidence that as Jesus taught, that in the world I will have trouble, but I take heart because he has overcome the world, and one day this will all pass away, and I will receive the crown of glory that he has waiting for me.

Check this link out – the pictures are stunning.

Dreaming…

Care to dream with us?  Can you picture yourself there yet?

The Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches holds annual regional focus retreats where pastors and elders can get together and encourage each other and build relationship.  The Northwest Focus Retreat is just the Northwest District, so most everybody knows each other… except us.

This was the first retreat where we as Community of Hope’s leadership board attended.  Not the whole board mind you – I think it mostly had to do with availability.  Myself, Gord, Ken, Jason and Philip left immediately after church to drive down to the Clear Lake Bible Camp near White Pass, WA.

Jason was going down to finish up his Licensure review.  You may ask, “What is licensure?”  It is the process of a church organization authorizing you to marry and stuff.  It is also the first step towards ordination, or the recognition and commissioning you as a shepherd of a church.  Jason had already been licensed in the church he was at before but he was asked to be licensed by the Grace Brethren.  It is a two stage process – first they give you a long written test that basically covers a ton of theology.  Then they have an oral review where a board of other pastors asks you questions based on what they consider your weakest written areas.

Part of the reason Ken and Gord and I went was because we are going to be seeking licensure soon and it would give us an opportunity to see what the oral reviews were like.  The other part was it was a great opportunity to get to know the other guys in the district.

So we drove down Sunday afternoon.  Monday all day was a teaching session led by John McIntosh, the lead pastor of Simi Valley Grace Brethren church – a pretty big and pretty successful church.  He is also this year’s moderator of the FGBC.  He was a fantastic, gentle, challenging speaker.  I was very blessed by our study of 2nd Timothy.

Other blessings: spending a little time talking with Greg Howell, pastor of Goldendale Grace Brethren.  What an encouraging man.  Greg Stamm, talking a little about his son and hearing his enthusiastic support for our work in Canada.  Scott Avey, and his heart for the Brethren and seeking where God would have him next.  Hiller Payne, my new friend from Mukilteo, who I will not allow to forget his offer of gumbo!

Can’t wait for the next retreat with these gentlemen!

• Speaking blessing to someone in prayer is immensely powerful.  My wife blew me away on Monday night with that one.
• Repentance works.  I laid my bad attitude at work before the Lord in prayer this morning as I drove.  I’ve been incredibly, illogically upbeat ever since.
• Sometimes, even when you think the worst of someone, they really do follow through.
• I can’t believe I am going to have six sons!  I mean, it really is beyond belief!
• I need to be more deliberate about connecting with all the men in my community group.
• I need to initiate the next step with my neighbours.

How about you?

• What have you learned from God this week so far?
• What blessing do you have, when you think about it, is unbelievable?
• What have you been letting slide?
• What do you need to initiate?

You can answer in the comments if you want, or not, but if you just take these questions and think about them, and act, you will be blessed.

As a service to those who may be considering joining our team, I thought I would begin to collect links to Medicine Hat so you can read about the community – what it offers and its needs.

I will create a link at the top to the page. Enjoy!

Here it is: Medicine Hat Links

Ran across this youtube from Medicine Hat’s News.  It is about their school system, and how they need more.

I present this here because this represents important information for us.

1. A high demand for schools means growth, and young families.  We relate, and that is a big segment of the people we are hoping to reach.
2. It sounds very much like they have a good shot at getting some more schools.  They mention in the video that specifically, the Hamptons and Ranchlands and Southridge need schools – what do you know?  Those are our most likely targets for planting!
3. New schools means an opportunity to rent space.  While it isn’t guaranteed by a long shot, and from reports like our friends, the Wilks’, it may be difficult to comply with school district rules but… with new schools means new opportunity so we can be prayerful for that.

It seems like my graduation represented the opening of some kind of floodgate to evangelistic opportunities.

Last week, I had two people contact me through Facebook whom I didn’t really know that well, who came to me for advice and I was able to share much of the Gospel with each of them.  It was amazing.

Then around the same time, my sons got invited over for the first time to the neighbours who live kind of behind us.  They have a couple of girls (which kind of explains why they never got invited over – young boys and girls typically run in different circles with different interests), but this time they did and that opened up an opportunity to build a relationship with that family.  We sent them cookies as a thank you, and they lobbed back with some brownies (which Cheryl said were excellent) and we now have their phone number and their names.  Cheryl and I are plotting our next move…

Now, with our membership classes kicking up, Philip has put me in charge of our Gospel of John study, meant to introduce people to the truth about Jesus.  I will be leading an entire family through this class (a husband and wife, both of Catholic background and their two teenage daughters) and another lady I have known for years.

It is such an honour to be used for such a task.  But what I am really feeling the weight of is doing well – the one place where I have been uncomfortable with this journey towards church planting is bearing fruit in terms of sharing my faith.  I really haven’t had a lot of practice or opportunity in my life to date.  Recognizing that if you are going to start a church from scratch, you need to be telling people a LOT about salvation, has caused some trepidation.  So I pray that these opportunities would be blessed, and that my comfort would grow through these challenges to the point where it becomes second nature.  I want to plant a church that saves people, not a church that offers a “better brand” than the other churches in town and attracts disgruntled people who are looking to “get the most” from their church.

I should post more often so that I don’t end up trying to summarize an intensely busy week in a post short enough not to bore you all to tears.

Let me quickly summarize the events of the past week:

Wednesday – Staging for 1st Community of Hope Leadership Retreat.  Phil tasked me with setting up the “hike”.  Realized I couldn’t prepare adequately without actually looking at possible trails, so grabbed a friend of mine (Brandon) and hustled up to Harrison Lake after work.

Thursday – Planned to make up for taking off yesterday by spending the evening with my wife, but then Harry called me with tickets to Game 1 of the Canucks’ 2nd Round!  “No” is not an option with Canucks playoff tickets.  Man do I owe my wife.

Friday – Leave for the leadership retreat.  Yay!  We have a 4×4 to get to the hiking trail!  Good drive up with Jason and Juan-Carlos.

Saturday – Challenging day, fascinating how God had been speaking to many of us about the same things before we even left.  Ron Helmer (Bread Garden Catering, Surrey) makes some serious gourmet vittles.  Not home until after bedtime.  Owe my wife even bigger.

Sunday – Church, then our “Discover Hope” Lunch.  Met 7 people interested in pursuing membership.  Then shopping for Awana, then Awana.  Cheryl has a stomach bug.  I still owe her big time.

Monday – Finally got some yard work done – cut the front lawn, raked, seeded ripped out moss patches, fertilized.  Made supper, and then Small Group Leader meeting.  That makes 5 nights in a row unavailable to Cheryl.

Of course, one more thing on the docket tonight to bring the total to 6.

What I learned this week:

• My wife is amazing and despite her discomfort with the growing twins (see sidebar), her heart is behind me.  I am so grateful for that.  She also told me this week when I mentioned I think I need some fulltime ministry experience this winter, that she will sacrifice again for me to be able to do a few hours each day after work at the church offices.  What a blessing she is!
• Our leadership team here has a huge heart for people which really helps when you are planting a church.  If you don’t have passion for the lost, you are going nowhere.  Plus, they are fun guys to be around.
• I am the best pool shark of the bunch!  Heh.  I dare you to dethrone me!
• God is so working.  What a blast to see it happen.
• I need to apologize to my oldest, Dylan.  I was hard on him last night about leaving tasks unfinished.

More later.  Next post will be about evangelism – God is opening some doors!

Some time back I signed up for some free podcasts from Nelson Searcy (incidentally, the sheer volume of advertising I get from that guy, I wonder if he is more about the selling of how to build a church than he is about churches… but I digress) and as a result I get emails from him. The one I received this morning was about maximizing growth in the summer months for church plants. A good subject area – one that strikes close to home for me as we will be staging our “Great Canadian Adventure” in June to kick off a summer of reaching out into our community, serving and hopefully gaining the opportunity to share Christ.

What popped into my head, though, was, “What about Summer Vacation?” I was thinking about my future – moving to Medicine Hat to plant churches, I will be entering “vocational ministry” – in other words, doing God’s work for bread. It remains to be seen how much we will be supported financially and how much I will need to be working at a regular job to make ends meet, but regardless as the lead pastor of a church plant, my responsibility will be to train and equip people to be the church and grow the church. Summer won’t be a season of rest. It can’t be. People need Jesus – that need doesn’t suddenly abate with the long summer days and warm summer nights.

For some reason I found myself wrestling with feelings like if I go through with this I don’t get to take time off anymore. This really struck me emotionally. Then I realized, I am already on the job. Being on mission for God means that my whole life becomes his and my purposes become his purposes. It doesn’t mean I can’t “take a break” or choose to do something that I want to do, to recharge, but to also recognize that what I choose to recharge with 1) had better be honouring to him; and 2) that I hold on to my “me” time with an open hand, recognizing that even through that, God can use me for his purposes.

A good example of this was Cheryl and my own trip to Rwanda in 2006. We originally intended to go to Mexico, but really felt like God wanted us to do something for him with our vacation time so we sought out a short term mission trip instead. It was incredible, and in many ways that one choice to use our vacation for his purposes started us on the path we are on today.

Another example was something that Cheryl and I talked about the other day – using gardening as a mission. I don’t really like to garden, or do lawn maintenance. But you know what happens when I am outside on my lawn? I am meeting people. I am meeting all the dogwalkers, all the exercisers, all my neighbors who are out doing their yardwork. I am building relationships, and getting into people’s lives. I am creating room for God to work and draw people to himself through me. People don’t see me and suddenly drop to their knees, praying to God. But that first hello, that casual conversation, that discussion about the weather are the first steps towards friendship and trust and the place where we can talk about spiritual matters.

Suddenly mowing the lawn takes on a new priority. And suddenly, the summer doesn’t seem so daunting. I can be used of God while fishing, hiking, or touring the Royal Tyrell Museum with my kids. I still get my break. My tireless God will continue to work through me even in rest.