Cleared for Drywalling

I got to Java Journey shortly before 8 am to let 82-year old volunteer, Joe Guthrie, in so he could frame the doorway for the French doors. I knew the city inspector was coming later and I had to finish what he was going to review. We met Joe when he stopped by on a Saturday morning on July 18th when the youth from Trinity Church in Greensboro were volunteering. He told me he loved to work on things as a volunteer and gave me his number. After he finished the French door frame he asked: "What else you got?" I told him the other 3 door frames needed wood added, so he did that!

The inspector arrived while Joe was working on the other doors. I fully expected that we would be told to make a few adjustments and then call for a subsequent inspection. I was making haste taking into account the work to tweak everything and then be ready by the end of the week to be given a green light. The concern was brought on by the fact that 20-30 volunteers are scheduled to gather at 2149 N Center St on Sunday to put up sheetrock.

What a joyful surprise when the inspector spent about a total of fifteen minutes before saying: "I'll let you move on with this." Part of the time he looked at plans, wiring and plumbing, and asked a few questions. The rest was filled by conversation of our mutual enjoyment of music (I told him he looked like Peter Yarrow and found out he plays the drums).

Today was another big mile-marker day.

Organic Elements in the Corporate World?!

My friend, Dennis Cheuvront, e-mailed this link to me: The Customer is the Boss at FAVI by Kevin Meyer. Dennis sent it to me as it parallels principles of Java Journey and our "liquid church" gatherings (I love the idea of the "plant manager" in the blog).

It amazingly sounds like a lot of the things espoused by a single individual a couple millennium ago and the earliest form of his community. Applied in today's society, it may look something like this.

Sadly, many of us are indeed "measuring something irrelevant."

Finding Balance

I'm still reading and enjoying the book "The Rabbit and The Elephant - Why Small is the New Big for Today's Church" by Tony and Felicity Dale and George Barna.

In a discussion about "The Values That Define Us" there is a needed caveat for those who may become prone to smugness. But it is followed by another courageous observation about the M.O. most conventional churches operate with.

I must confess that it is easier to view the challenge from an outside-looking-in perspective than it is when trees hide a forest. I recall squirming in my seat hearing such observations during seminars with Reggie McNeal and George Barna when I was in that proverbial forest not that long ago.

Any of us who think that we have all the answers or that we are 'where things are really happening' are merely deluding ourselves. A synergy occurs when we lay aside our differences and work together across the body of Christ.

Christians in the West have followed the gods of the American dream of materialism, or popularity, of numbers. We have become performance driven rather than love motivated. We give Jesus the title of "Lord" or "Head of the Church," but in reality, we devise our own plans and then ask Him to bless them. We build buildings and create programs, following the advice of church-growth statisticians, and then we expect the Holy Spirit to come in power. And when, in His great mercy, He delights to bless us through some of these things, we presume that we have built His dream church. How can we have fooled ourselves so badly?

I would like to publicly acknowledge and express gratitude toward Trinity Fellowship of Hickory - under the leadership of Dodd Drake - for recognizing and proactively supporting Java Journey. TF has prayed for JJ and promoted our cause. Many have volunteered to spend time and energy on the build out effort.

The family of Safe Harbor Rescue Mission has also spent many hours helping JJ prepare to launch.

This is the kind of synergy mentioned in the quotation. Both ministries have not caved into the M.O. of growing big just to grow big.

I pray that more of this will happen across the American ecclesiastical landscape.

Melting Ice Blocks

I'm borrowing a quote from a FB friend's blog (Brad Boydston) that he pasted from the "Out of Ur" (David Fitch) blog posted yesterday.

...Having said all this, the “great halls” (stadiums) of preaching distribution will not connect to the lost souls of post-Christendom. Post-Christian people are not attracted to the sermon as the first place to go in their spiritual distress. We must help leaders understand that if you spend 35-40 hours a week in your office preparing a good sermon on Sunday, making it not only theologically competent (which is worthy) but slick, you are ministering to the dying vestiges of Christendom.

You know my "mantra" that this is all based on a blind dependency on an M.O. we refuse to see and break away from. The paradigm is the old church as a big block of ice sitting at one location never to move. The institutional church is hooked on invitation/attraction and all it is really doing is shuffling a small percentage of society from ice block to ice block. So we persist with the poor stewardship of pouring our resources into the block and expecting someone to sit within it for several hours per week to dazzle the shuffled masses.

Alan Hirsch has stated that in America a large percentage of evangelical churches are "tussling with each other" to reach a small percentage of the population. He qualifies the small percentage by noting the a majority of Americans report an alienation from the current form of "church" where you go to one location on one day a week for an hour or more.

Tony & Felicty Dale (with George Barna) have nailed the problem in their recent book "The Rabbit and the Elephant" with this observation:

"Liquid church happens when we stop inviting others to come to church and instead we go out into every sphere of society as the Lord leads. We reach out to our neighbors or our coworkers, and instead of asking them to come to church, we get together with those people right where they live and work. In this way, segments of society that might never have experienced church life are affected by the Kingdom of God."

May the Holy Spirit's heat once again go to work!

What Is an Organic Church?

-Frank Viola, Finding Organic Church 2009 (pp 20 & 21)

As I have stated elsewhere, I’ve been using this term for over fifteen years now. Today it has become somewhat of a clay word, being molded and shaped to mean a variety of different things by a variety of different people.

By organic church, I mean a church that is born out of a spiritual life instead of being constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs. Organic church life is a grassroots experience that is marked by face-to-face community, every-member functioning, open-participatory meeting (as opposed to pastor-to pew services), nonhierarchical leadership, and the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ as the functional Leader and Head of the gathering.

By contrast, whenever we sin-scarred mortals try to create a church the same way we would start a business, we are defying the organic nature of church life. An organic church is one that is naturally produce when a group of people has encountered Jesus Christ in reality (external ecclesiastical props being unnecessary) and the DNA of the church is free to work without hindrance. It’s the difference between standing in front of a fan and standing outdoors on a windy day.

To summarize, an organic church is not a theater with a script. It’s a lifestyle – an authentic journey with the Lord Jesus and His disciples.

The difference between organic churches and nonorganic churches is the difference between General Motors and a vegetable garden. One is founded by humans, the other is birthed by God. One is artificial, the other is living.

For this reason, church planters are like farmers and midwives.

No Kingdom on YouTube

Matt 24:14
And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come (NIV).

On a piece of paper, write down what you think this statement of Jesus means. (Did you get this from a Sunday School quarterly?)

καὶ κηρυχθήσεται τοῦτο τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τῆς βασιλείας ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ οἰκουμένῃ εἰς μαρτύριον πᾶσιν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν καὶ τότε ἥξει τὸ τέλος

Concept translation:

And this message that brings joy of the reign of God through his Messiah shall be proclaimed throughout the whole inhabited earth leading to a testimony to all various groups of people. And then the completion shall be present.

Kind of a riddle, isn’t it?

Read Luke 17
20Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, 21nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."
22Then he said to his disciples, "The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. 23Men will tell you, 'There he is!' or 'Here he is!' Do not go running off after them.

ἐντός = inside

The Kingdom is NOT observable.

Question: “Can you really see inside you?” Try it.

There’s no “here” nor “there” is there!

Look at verse 37.

37"Where, Lord?" they asked.
He replied, "Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather."
(NIV)

What on earth does THIS mean???

OBSERVATION. “Dead body”/”vultures” "Where?" is the wrong question!

Kingdom cannot be viewed

NIV omits a needed concept in 17:21 that the KJV includes. ἰδού “I-doo” KJV: “Behold” is now “Look!” “Check it out!” - the YouTube prompter.

This buttresses the point that Jesus often made about the "secrecy" aspect of the Kingdom. It's not "can't tell because I'm not supposed to." It's "I cannot present this reign in a tangible form. It is much deeper and runs farther than anything imaginable - because it is life-transforming and eternal."

Saturated Synthesis

Deuteronomy 16:21 Do not set up any wooden Asherah pole beside the altar you build to the LORD your God...

Vent warning - I have a confession. I don't know if I am fueled by frustration or jealousy when I see fellow believers evidencing their passion for play, big toys and self-aggrandisement with photos of huge campers and running around with little ATV's on Facebook. Or snorkeling in tropical waters far off - or even false eyelashes and implants. I realize that the measure I use (no pun) will be used for me as well, but I think it may be deeper than a surface annoyance. It looks like some type of justifying blindness. The justifying usually comes via a 10% check conveniently placed in a plate or box at the one location-for one+ hour-on one day a week. I'm going to once again place blame on the cultural condition we find ourselves in (therein the blindness).

A good friend (Jim Black) posted a link on FB that articulates the problem. It is an article from Minnesota Christian Chronicle Online published last month. It is called The good news in the decline of American Christianity written by Greg Boyd

This following insight jumped off the page for me as indicative but also as a personal caveat.

By contrast, whenever Christianity has become popular among those who are part of the dominant culture, it has tended to stagnate. While there are exceptions, the Christianity of the dominant culture has always tended to absorb and even “Christianize” the core values of its culture. It has thus tended to manifest less and less of the unique, counter-cultural values of the Jesus-looking Kingdom—values such as humility, simplicity, self-sacrificial service, community, unconditional love and non-violence.

The unique power and beauty of the Gospel tends to get diluted, and the church gradually is reduced to little more than a slightly Christianized version of the broader culture.

My response was a Charlie Brownian "THAT'S IT!"

Lord, help me to discover the secrecy of the Kingdom virtues of dying to self on a daily basis. Sting me with conviction when I start to erect any kind of Asherim beside the altar I build to you.