I don’t pretend to be fervent or righteous.  I am a sinful man like the next guy.  However, I have a story for you this morning.

On Sunday we made a public appeal to our church for help – we are 2 weeks away from our self-imposed deadline for listing our house for sale.  Yes, it’s that close already!  We have lots to do to prepare our home, and because of the financial step back we took to give ourselves opportunity to do fulltime ministry, we do not have the cash to do all the repairs we need to, to maximize the value in the home.

So we asked for help in terms of labour, and also in terms of supporting specific needs financially.  We had several people step forward that morning offering their hands and that was a blessing.  We rejoice for the people of Community of Hope who love to give of their hands with gladness.

But we didn’t hear any expressions of help in terms of money.  That was a little discouraging at first, but having come this far, I can’t not trust God to come through.

So a few weeks ago God began to disturb me to pray more – more timewise and also more energywise.  It was that word, fervency that was lacking, the Lord seemed to be telling me.  So that day I got down on my knees and prayed.  It was good – that day was really blessed – I spent so much time in prayer that day (even apart from that time on my knees) and God encouraged my heart – ever just have that feeling that you are “filled with the Spirit”?  That was how I felt that day – like I was in sync with God.  It was very cool.

That brings us to today.  I felt God prompting me to return to my knees again, but I kind of put it off for a bit. Then, as I was doing my usual routines on the internets, I stumbled into sin.  I could pretend it was an accident, but choices were necessary to get there.  After that happened, I knew I needed to get back where he wanted me in the first place.  I prayed and asked for forgiveness for that sin, and asked him to separate me from that sin – as far as the east is from the west.  Then I began to bring our needs to him, and as I was praying for more people to rise up to help, I was prompted to pray for two people in particular, by name.  I did so – not normally praying that way it seemed weird.

As I stood up from the floor the phone rang.  It was one of the men I had prayed for!  What’s more, he was calling to say that he would take care of two of the items that needed financial support to complete!  I praised God on the phone with him and told him he was a direct, immediate answer to prayer.  So I am sitting here a little in awe of my God who loves me so much that he has leaped to my aid even as I prayed.

Be encouraged.  Prayer works, but take a lesson from me.  You need to do your part -

1.  Seek to do God’s will,

2.  Listen for His voice and obey it when you hear it,

3.  Confess your sins that you may be righteous before Him,

4.  And most importantly, PRAY and ASK!

My Bible-in-a-Year reading today took me to the end of Joshua.  Many people have found inspiration in the last words of Joshua, as he confronts the nation and demands that they once again declare and covenant before the Lord to keep him as their God and not chase after the other people who they live amongst.

It certainly is inspiring but for some reason it was another verse that God drew me to this morning.  In verse 13, Joshua writes, “So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.”

It feels to me like what we’re being called to in Medicine Hat is like this.  We are going to a city we did not build and a land on which we did not toil, and we will live there and reap a harvest that we did not plant.

That kind of sounds like a negative, but in reality it is a testimony of the plan of God.  We are following his lead to a land we are certain he wants us in.  It is a land which he has already prepared before us.  It is a land where he has been working for years in people’s hearts, building a thirst and a hunger for himself in them, and we are coming to reap that harvest.  It is a testimony that God is going to build this church, just like he built the nation of Israel.

That is a very comforting thought.

I dropped off our breast pump and some extra diapers with Cheryl today at the BC Women’s Hospital.  Just in time… they were considering transferring them out to Surrey tomorrow. I have such brilliant timing.

She was telling me of a conversation with a lady in there with her new daughter, and how that woman was telling her she doesn’t go to church, has a vague sense of something holy and eternal but very little curiousity beyond that.  Digging deeper, she discovered that the woman was the daughter of a single Mom, and when they went to church when she was young, she was treated poorly because she “didn’t have a Daddy” – both by the other children and by adults in the church.  Subsequently, her mother continued to send her to Sunday school but ceased to go herself because of the people at church looking down on her.  Now, she has much the same desire – she knows her child needs to be instructed spiritually but knows she can’t do it, so she wants to send her to Sunday School – of course, her daughter will value it just as much or little as she does as long as her mother models its lack of importance in her life.

She is not the first person to tell us a story like this.  It is a story that has been repeated so much I seriously question what the heck was up with Christians 20 years ago.  It makes me wonder how much of the spiritual apathy that we are reaping today is the tragic result of thousands upon thousands of people who desperately needed the love of Jesus demonstrated by his body, but were soured. By what?  By  judgemental, sour, unloving people who were sitting in their pews and tsk-tsking the fruits of the “free love 60’s”.  In the meantime, the children of those Hippies, who only had the vaguest sense of church as something important but their parents lumped it into their rebellion, tried to come back to church but were turned away at the door because of sins that they may have not even been aware were sins.

What a disgusting mess we are in!  We are now facing two generations of adults whose experiences with church have been that of judgement and shame.  When Cheryl told me how lucky I was that I was saved in a church that showed real love for each other and the lost, and every church we have ever gone to had done that as best they could, I keep thinking that this is how most churches are.  But they aren’t are they?

I’ve just been working in the last few days on an application for a church planter’s assessment.  In one of the questions they as what makes me so sure that I am called to be a church planter.  Well, this sense of offense, of righteous anger, that so many churches are now continuing this sad trend and people are being driven away from the loving arms of Christ by people who expect the world to REPENT! and be done with sin.  I want to be a part of creating a new body, a body of renewal, that demonstrates this love in such a loud, brash, overwhelming manner to her community that people, even atheists, stand up and point and say, “Now THAT’S what a church should look like!”

It’s a lofty goal.  And if it were simply up to me, I would probably fail.  But I trust that God is in this enterprise, and his will, will be done.

I have been thinking a lot lately (in between worrying about the Twins) about Community Group in the Fall.  We are going to orient this group to not just be a group that is praying and supporting the formation of a core group for our church plant, but also serving Community of Hope by helping to move our group members towards both greater personal dedication to the Lord and also living missionally where they are.  It is hoped then that not only will people be able to support us btu they will become better equipped even if they remain here in BC.

Given the boatload of reading I was doing last year, working on my graduating essay on church planting in resort communities, I think I am positioned to take our group in a more exploratory posture deeper into the idea of missional living.  What does that mean?  It means taking seriously the reality that if we actually mean to follow Christ, we must be about his business – and his business was bringing about the Kingdom of God on earth.  We must be doing what he did – making disciples, each of us, personally, in the place where God has put us.

I love my church, but I recognize that they, like me, have long been poisoned by this idea that doing church is for clergy.  That they are the ones who evangelize, teach, make disciples, baptize, and otherwise grow the church.  That our only obligations are to sing some worship songs to God every Sunday, say Grace before every meal, and do whatever our pastor asks us to do in the name of humility and service.  What a weak, anemic faith that is!

I picked up “Breaking the Missional Code” by Ed Stetzer and David Putman as some thing to read while in the hospital, and it has been good so far because it is putting legs to ideas that need to be explained.  I hope to use ideas from that book as topics of conversation in our Community Group.  They ask some very good questions that we, who hope to reach people for Jesus in our neighbourhood, need to ask ourselves.

One startling thing that they point out is that as a church increases its “evangelism training” the actual evangelism of that church goes down.  Conversely, it appears the most effective evangelists are new converts, with no training.  A comparison is drawn to the Woman at the Well that Jesus met – who went back to town and told the whole Samaritan village about Jesus and saw great numbers believe in him as a result.

Evangelism training has a place, but it really seems that the most effective means of engaging people with the gospel is in two respects – relationally (which takes no training really – but does take a lot of emotional and temporal investment), and holistically.   What I mean by holistically is that your faith needs to be lived out.  It needs to inform your actions, choices and way of life to the point where Christianity is not your religion – Christ is your life.  When this happens barriers start to come down.  Hypocrisy is mitigated, because you are not acting one way and talking another.

How does this happen?  It happens when you are being encouraged, supported and motivated towards greater wholeness in Christ.  It is a happening that I really want to see in our Community Group this fall.

A great article from Penelope Trunk about self-discipline.  Great ideas and a good point about how important this is.

It’s on my heart because I am really beginning to recognize that self-discipline is not just critical for your own personal walk with Jesus, but if you want to do anything of note in life, it indispensible.

Like the President says.

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.

I received a newsletter from Forge Canada today, and it had an interview with Karen Wilk, the leader of the River Community Church in Edmonton.  She talks about how they started as a church plant, and how they moved into a neighbourhood as 5 families with the intent of serving the community and seeing a church rise out of the people they grew in relationship with.  Take a read.

In visiting all these communities, we did repeatedly see some patterns.  Since the communities are all growing like gangbusters, we have definitely seen the truth of how new city planning leaves little room for churches.  When people say that the church is being marginalized, it truly is.  This was especially striking in Lethbridge but was evident everywhere – churches are being built on the fringes of cities, in the middle of farm areas.  Because city planners now make no room for them in the designs of new neighbourhoods.  New neighbourhoods are devoid of spiritual hubs, deliberately so.  It used to be that open lots would be left along the main thoroughfares because that was the lowest land value – no more.

The question then becomes, do you make an effort to focus on communities in older areas of town?  Two strikes against that – first, there are older churches there usually.  They may not be effective anymore (and that is a legitimate concern) but there is always hope for renewal.  Second, the people there have probably been in the community longer, have more connections and established social networks, which means making inroads is more difficult – more like a rural setting.

But, the new neighbourhoods – the ones in many cases still under construction – what about them?  They have nothing – no churches, perhaps except for Mormon churches – I think when an organization can just approach the city at the planning stage and say, “We have 3 million dollars and want a church in your new subdivision.”  Money makes it happen – but congregational church models like ours have to rely on building community first before building a building, which means by the time there are people there, the lots are all gone or increased in price because the neighbourhood has filled out.

The plus side about focusing on these new subdivisions is that there are few churches positioned to reach them, and the people there are generally newer to the community, have fewer social connections and are looking to build new relationships.  That makes them uniquely available to outreach efforts.

What occurred to us as we drove through a few of these was a mix of what Nathan Bryant told me when I visited him before Community of Hope launched, and what Philip has taught us about establishing a church culture.  Let me explain.

Nathan when I was visiting, was living out an experiment he said he found in a book called “The Connecting Church” by Randy Frazee (on my wishlist, by the way).  His premise is that if you have one planting family move into an unchurched neibourhood, their efforts will not yeild much fruit because there is an element of outsider in play.  They are the “religious folks” and are “different” so they are discounted and ignored.  Yet, if more than one family moves in at the same time, to the same local area, then they can form a network and begin to reach their neighbours as a team.  Now, there are more than one family working together to reach their neighbours, and they aren’t “odd” there are others too, and they can’t be set aside.   Also more touches relationally lead to more opportunities.  So there is that.

What Philip taught us about Community of Hope is that the core team is important because it forms the “culture”of the church.  In other churches, they try to move towards the type of structure we have, but it is met with resistance.  For example, small groups are rarely more than an afterthought, only participated in by a small percentage of the congregation.  Sharing meals together is a rarity in most churches in my experience, but in Community of Hope it happens every week.  When our core team forms a culture, then people coming in accept that culture as normal and integrate.

How do these two ideas synthesize?  Well, what if our core team are some of the first people into a new development?  What if our houses are some of the first ones on the street?  What if we adopt the idea of being the unofficial “welcoming committee” in our neighbourhood?  Every new arrival is self-evident – the house is built.  We don’t have to guess about when someone new is moving in.  We can serve them, helping get settled.  We can invite them to barbeques, invite their kids over while the parents get things in order, begin to create a culture of community and relationship right there on our street!  People might find it odd, but if that is what they get from several families as they arrive, then it must be accepted as the “norm” in this neighbourhood.  As others come, they do the same to them – and so on.  It is like transforming your community, except there wasn’t anything there to begin with so it is in fact easier.  And as these relationships grow and bloom, doors open to sharing the Gospel.

One objection to this strategy could be, “but new homes are expensive!”  Ah, but that is if you are thinking about doing this in Surrey!  It is different out here!  My cousins moved to Calgary about 8 or 9 years ago.  They told me that they were havin a house built for them.  I thought, “Man!  My cousin’s job must pay really well!”  They told me that in fact it was cheaper to buy land and build than it was to buy on the resale market!  Of course that was a while ago, but we took a boo at a couple of show homes, and that still seems to be the case.  A typical mid-scale development in Spruce Grove was priced around $350k, including lot, taxes in.  That’s a 1800 square foot house, not including another 700 square feet in the basement (which they will build out to suit for a bit more or you can do it yourself).  Other communities are even cheaper.  Given the markets and the slowness of the oilpatch right now, I almost expect to see more comedowns in price, making it even more affordable.

Having said all this, I am just putting this out there as an idea.  We don’t know who’s coming with us yet, or what their financial picture will look like.  There are lots more to discuss, but it’s a different idea, and one that sounds like it could be effective.

(This was posted first to Facebook, but I thought I would put it here too.)

Driving to work, my mind was rolling over a few things but this one had to be written down.

What is this Christianity thing for anyway?

Jesus taught love, forgiveness, peace, humility. There is nobody in the world that doubts that these are virtues that all of humanity benefits from invariably. There is no doubt that individually, we would all be better off if more people took the teachings of Jesus seriously.

Historically speaking, there is no question that what he taught, at the time he taught it, in the culture he taught it, was radical. It was unheard of. Love without question, putting others before yourself, leading by serving others, laying down your life (not just dying) for others. People just didn’t live this way.

People still don’t live this way. But I digress.

Now, we benefit from his ideas being taught and spread throughout the world. There are 2 billion people who claim to follow Jesus, and missionaries have gone to just about every corner of the world at one point or another. The truths that he taught have now been disseminated so widely and watered down that people now think that you can believe in these truths without believing in the one who taught them.

But can you? I question that. What Jesus taught was inextricably tied to who he was. If you reject who he was you are only accepting a watered-down, conditional version of what he taught. It’s a love IF you are loved in return. It’s a humility that is conditioned on not being treated unfairly. It’s a peace until someone wrongs you. It’s a forgiveness that only comes after you have been mollified.

Jesus claimed to be God. Jesus said that he came to pay the price for everything we have done wrong ever. Jesus did this to model the love that he calls us to. Jesus, being in very nature God, took the form of a servant, and then died the most shameful death possible at that time. He modelled the ultimate humility, the ultimate sacrifice. He modelled the ultimate love, taking upon himself the punishment for the entire world. This was only possible because of his divine nature. We cannot comprehend the full scope of his pain as he was separated from the Father. That pain we will only know when at the end of our life, we have chosen not to love him and accept his sacrifice. At that time, death will lead to eternal separation from the omnipresent God who has always been near to us, though we choose so often to pretend he is not there.

He taught and modelled a no-limits form of virtue that can only be approached through himself. Through turning to him and loving him back, for all that he did and is doing and will do. Through acknowledging we are responsible for what we’ve done wrong and that we sincerely wish to turn away from those things forever. It is in that moment that his peace, and love, and humility and forgiveness become doable, beyond the limitations of our anger and pride. It is then that he gives us a new heart, and begins to cleanse us from the darkness that we know stains more that we’d care to admit.

That’s what’s so hard, I think. Admitting there is someone greater, more important than ourselves. Unseating ourselves from the throne of our lives. It isn’t about proof, it isn’t about evidence. It’s about real humility that is impossible to achieve without acknowledging God. It is a humility that is not forced – it is a humility that is voluntary, which makes it the most beautiful, treasured thing in the world.

I had coffee with a really nice guy yesterday. The more I think about how much time he gave me, a little ole’ misguided Joe who has the audacity to think God might want to use him to plant a church, the more I am amazed. Cam Roxburgh is the lead pastor of the multi-site Southside Church, involved with Outreach Canada and director of the Forge Network Canada. Yet we had a chance to sit down and chat. In my misdirected scattered thoughts I managed to glean some important things from him.

What were they? Mostly in the way of forcing me to ask some hard questions about assumptions. How important are Sundays to new church? How important are big catchment events? How relevant are they to the people we are trying to reach? Is full-time ministry a given, have I looked hard at my reasons why I think that necessary? Those are some of the questions he laid on the table before me and caused me to think about.

Of course, going home, I was prepared to grab hold of such questions and wrestle with them. In my debrief with Cheryl of course, I was still in this “engagement” mindset which rubbed Cheryl the wrong way. She isn’t a debater in that sense, so it took me a bit to get past that and switch gears as it were.

I am excited that he shook the tree for me with regards to getting more information about the settings we will be investigating. I am going to be calling Lorne at Outreach Canada today to see if I can get a better spiritual “lay of the land” for where we are going. Cam also said he would send me some contacts for the communities we are going to, to listen to people on the ground there.