When young children are showing the aptitude to become chess masters, they sit them down and show them all the chess pieces, where they sit on the board and how they move.  All the pieces except the Queen (if you don’t know chess, the queen is a very powerful piece that can move in all sorts of ways).  As they play people and learn the strategies of chess, no one gets to play with a queen.  They learn all about chess and develop strategies using the full abilities of all the different pieces without being dependent on the queen.  Once they have come to a point of mastering these strategies, they are thrown for a loop when their next opponent comes in and has a queen and they still don’t.  They must continue to play without a queen while their opponent gets to use this very powerful piece.  They must continue to play until they develop an understanding of how to use all the other pieces strategically to still win the game – even against their opponent’s queen.  It’s only until they continue to play other players who have a queen and win repeatedly that they are awarded a queen to then play with.

In the church planting context – you might consider the Queen to be Sunday Morning.  In the past, many churches have started with a Sunday morning only to be try and make Sunday morning do everything – build community, discipleship, worship, etc.  Sunday is weighed down and if there’s something wrong with Sundays, then the church doesn’t make it.  But what if in our church planting strategies, we start out not dependent on Sunday mornings.  While Sunday mornings can create numbers quickly, many sitting there are only keeping the pews warm.  What if we instead concentrate on the different aspects of church and only introduce Sunday mornings once these other things are in place?  What kind of life transformation would happen then? Anybody out there seen this lived out and would like to comment?

Here’s some of my perspectives with the contrasting of  God’s reality:

• I sometimes feel alone and isolated BUT the reality is that God is always with me and He has given me a great family, friends and co-workers.  I’m not always physically by them (well, except God) but they are there with me – praying for me, thinking about me.  If you’re reading this, then you’re “being with me” right now.
• I’m the only one who can do the work I do BUT the reality is that God could raise up anyone to do what it is He has me doing – but He wants me to do it.  For some reason that is beyond me, He has called me to do what it is I do.  I am blessed, not burdened.
• I’m tired and overwhelmed by what God has called me to do and don’t see how God expects me to do it all BUT the reality is that He hasn’t called me to do it in my own strength but by His strength.  This is the reason I have a sign in my office that says “It’s the Holy Spirit working – not YOU!!” which I try to read to remind myself every day.
• Sometimes I feel wronged by someone wondering how God could allow that person to do that to me BUT the reality is that that person is also loved by God (whether they’re a Christian or not) and that God may be looking to me to show some of the grace that He has shown me plenty of towards that person trusting Him that any wrong doings will be taken care of as God is the God of justice but that He will do it in His way and in His timing.
• I look to the future and can’t see a way for things to work out well BUT the reality is God sees (and is IN) the future and is taking care of it for me.  I’m just suppose to obediently trust and follow Him into that future.  Trust is the key factor there.

So sitting here today – here’s my perspective:  This is the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing my parents & sister and know that it will be a while before I will see them again face to face.  With the economy & spiritual situation here in Europe (and beyond), requests for help have multiplied considerably causing me to feel overwhelmed by the lists of “todos” that surround me and moving so fast is sometimes causing friction with the other people I work with.  I’m looking at our bank account and will have to make some serious decisions about the future.  Decisions that I don’t want to deal with.  This is my perspective BUT the reality is I’m in God’s hands and as I listen to Joan Osbourne’s “One of Us”, I’m reminded that “God is great, God is good.”

[Note:  If you are wondering how do you find out what is God's perspective? - talk to God, read the Bible and be a part of a community of believers.  Over time, you'll begin to see it too]

My original status line:

Been hanging out talking about how to reach those that want to know God but can’t stand the church.

Comments afterwards (names have been changed since this is a public place vs Facebook – not as public anyways):

MA: Who are you meeting with and what is your response to them? I am running into that with many folks myself.

My reply: Its the initial talks with several missionaries that live in the area and some house church advocates. To bottom line it, the reality is that you don’t do church, we are the church. Church is a life style not something you do on Sunday morning and that doesn’t mean having to talk about God every moment of the day but it means that you live life, pouring your life into others and having them pour their lives into yours. God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit will seep into your conversations as life continues. Remove the institution that is church to reveal those who have Christ as the church and people will understand it. Its a hard concept for many in the West to understand as we have church as an institution made up of programs and schedules which makes our walk with God compartmentalized and therefore to an outsider – our lives are compartmentalized and that makes our relationship with God only a part of our lives (and therefore hypocrites).

Ooops. I think I stepped on a soap box.

OH: Thanks for that Courtney. Well said!

MA: No this is very good Courtney. I thought that’s where you were going with this, but wanted to clarify… This is more appropriate than you know brother. Two weeks ago my family stepped out of the institutional “expression” of church, but we could never step out of the church because we are the church. This is a whole new journey for us, and what we are convinced Jesus has called us into. There is far more than I can go into here typing on my phone – but the Father has given me encouragement every day since we left the institution, and little did I know it would come today from missionaries we support. Thank you brother – and please pray for us as we walk into this journey with Jesus and a few others who are coming alongside us and loving us… There is SO much rest in this brother.

My reply: Hey MA, be sure to catch the blog of a guy named Tall Skinny Kiwi (Andrew Jones) as he is a good advocate for what you are being called into. I’ve been reading his blog for a while now and he brings in some good resources for you to look at. http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/

KB: This is encouraging to me as well. I’ve been a Christian since the age of four … yet, 18 months ago, I began really, seriously questioning the “institution” of church.

One Sunday morning, I was sitting on the front row of the church I’d been attending for a year-and-a-half … and suddenly, I found myself looking at everything as if I were brand-new to the concept of “church”. And I didn’t like what I saw.

So I started visiting other churches … with much the same result. By the middle of last year, I was so fed up with the “institution” of church that I said to someone, “If my relationship with God were dependent on the church … I would quit.”

However, my relationship with God has actually deepened since I began questioning what “church” is … or should be. I’m not following what any human being thinks I should do; I’m seeking God’s will in every area of my life and letting Him transform me into who He wants me to be. It’s an amazing journey so far!

JM: If you haven’t seen this already–this website is all about this topic: http://simplechurch.com.ua/content/view/177/71/lang,en/
There are a lot of very thought-provoking articles here.  Courtney, you will notice it’s based in Ukraine.

Honestly, when I posted my status line I really didn’t realize the interest people would have in it.  Yesterday, I spent the day in meetings that were centered the concept of planting house churches.  Now I’m still new to these ideas but let me share some things from yesterdays meetings and I would love your feedback on them:

“Church is not something you do, its something you are” – Wolfgang Simpson

“Lower the bar of what it means to be church but raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple” – (somebody said it but I don’t know who)

“OOCC – Out of Church Christians – people who have to leave the church to keep their faith”

“Church happens where life happens whether its McDonald’s, coffee shop, bowling alley, bar, etc “ – (ok this one is a thought I had during the meeting)

I’d love to hear from ya’ll about what you think church is, how that looks and plays out and how people can come to know God intimately through that concept!  Please comment below!

But this got me thinking about how the term “cold” is a relative term.  How 32 degrees F (0 C) is “cold” compared to our body temperature of 98.6  F (37 C) but 32 degrees F (0 C) is much “warmer” than the -90 F (-67.8 C) that was the recorded low in Siberia.  “Heat” however is an absolute term.  There’s just heat and then there’s less heat or there’s more heat.  Then there’s the term of “absolute zero” which is the removal of all heat and now that’s COLD as nothing can be relatively colder!

Now from there that got me to thinking about the terms “Good” and “Evil”.  I think sometimes that people think that “good” is a relative term.  You know, the whole comparison thing of “I’m better than that person”.  However the clincher is that at the same time they think that “evil” is an absolute term.  Therefore they live their lives trying to remove evil so that they reveal the good.  Then to obtain absolute good, one must remove all evil just as to have “absolute zero”, you remove all heat.  To me, this is what causes people to focus on evil and how we are to remove it from our lives just to obtain “good”.  This is just exhausting.  Scientists spend a lot of time and energy to get close to absolute zero but never quite make it.  It’s just not currently within our abilities as human beings to do this.  In the same way, if we look at Evil being absolute then isn’t that just down right tiring even thinking about trying to remove ALL evil from our lives.  I know I can’t do it.  Can you?

However I believe that we’ve got this reversed.  I believe “Good” is the absolute term and “Evil” is the relative term and instead of trying to remove all of the absolute (Good), we’re trying to get as much of it as we can.  As more and more Good is put into us, Evil (being relative) is dissipated and ignored in our lives.  The awesome thing to think about is just as when you add heat to something – say water, at different stages of adding more heat, the water is transformed (in this case to steam).  We too are transformed as Good is added more and more into our lives.  We become different, we are transformed.  Just as steam and water are made of the same molecules (H2O), there’s something radically different in how they look, work, act and fundamentally in their construct.  A bucket will no longer hold the steam as it once did the water.  As we apply more and more Good in our lives, we will still be the same essence that God made us but our construct is different so that we operate differently.  Therefore we are freed from the constraints that once held us and are now living in different principles that govern our lives.

How does one go about adding Good into your life?  Just as the water can’t light the fire that burns beneath it that causes it to boil, we too are not capable of injecting ourselves with syringes of Good.  We need something on the outside of ourselves.  My belief is that only God can do that.  God who is Good, i.e. God = Good, provided the way to infuse Himself into our lives.  He doesn’t force us to accept it, but He does give us the choice.  By accepting Jesus Christ as the one responsible for bridging the gap between God and us, then God is there with us and able to inject His Holy Spirit into our lives therefore causing this transformation in us as His Goodness builds up in us.

The really cool thing is that our souls are designed to have unlimited capacity for Good.  This means we can never get enough of God (=Good).

Everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy – Louis CK, comedian, on The Conan O’Brian Show

Isn’t that the truth these days?  If you can find the video of Louis CK on Conan’s show (google:  Louis CK Conan), it’s absolutely hystrical in light of how our world economy has turned.  Louis CK talks about how he was on an airplane and they had high speed Internet access while flying.  Then the access broke and they guy next to him used some expletives.  The idea is that as soon as something new comes about, we feel like its owed to us – once we have it you can’t take it away!!

Being in the IT industry sometimes people think that I’m like a magician.  People don’t understand technology but they know when it works and they can be very vocal when it doesn’t. Most of the technology we are using is only a few years old (if that) but people are dependent upon almost immediately and if it doesn’t work, they stand up in their chairs and scream “Help!!”.  (well, maybe not to that extent but it can feel like it at times).  Someone recently could not get their email working and was stressing trying to get me to help them correct the situation.  I was very tempted to hand them a pen and paper and say “Write it down and mail it.  It was good enough for the hundreds of years before the Internet so it could be good enough for you now.”  I mean, when I was young, who would have thought that I could live in Europe and instantly turn on a video screen and see my parents (i.e. that’s called Skype) or even that I could send them a message that can go around the world in a few milliseconds and be delivered into their email inbox?  Things are awesome these days however it not enough for most people.  They’re waiting for the next “great” thing and won’t be satisfied until they get it.

In a blog discussing our economic times, Brian Mclaren talks about everyone waiting for “Economic Recovery” and he suggests two definitions for that -

Economic Recovery 1: Getting things back to the way they were before our current economic crisis

Economic Recovery 2: Facing our addictions and seeking to be restored to sanity.

I would pray for number two for us all so that we can get to a place where we can see that everything really is amazing – not just in technology, but that all of life is hugely amazing and incredible and that you just want to walk around the world with your jaw dropped wide open going “God, you are so awesome for making this world into what it is today!!!!”

Two things I ask of you, O Lord;  do not refuse me before I die: Keep falshood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise I may have too much and disown you and say ‘Who is the Lord?’ or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God
- Proverbs 30:7-9 (NIV)

Agur prayed these things back in the day.  Agur prayed not for poverty or for riches, but just what he needed.  Think about what life is like for a person that can pray this prayer – this is a person who sees things all around them and appreciates them for what they are:  A gift from God!

Are you ready to pray this prayer? Its not easy but as Brian Mclaren’s definition puts it – this is on the way to sanity.

There was something that drew me in to want to look at this further. The idea of the ‘incarnation of Christ’ is a major motivation for what it is we do here in Europe so to explore it further is always a passion of mine.

The first thing I did was to take a look at the two words and looked them up on the Merriam-Webster online Dictionary, after all – I’m a computer geek and not an English major. Prismatically is the adverb form of Prismatic which has several definitions but I think the best definition for us is 1b “resembling the colors formed by refraction of light through a prism.” The second word is Encapsulate which is “to enclose in or as if in a capsule.” Now as I think about these words in relation to who Jesus is, I don’t see this ‘prismatically encapsulate’ as the made up words of a raving lunatic emerging church pastor (even if he is).

My son has been a fan of prisms ever since he first saw the movie “Pollyanna”. Even now we have a prism hanging in our kitchen window which spreads rainbows through the room every evening. Its amazing to know that the light (that we can’t see but is just this energy moving through the universe) can be broken up into visible colors that we can understand and comprehend. Now when pure light is broken up by a prism, we see the colors of the rainbow but that’s not all that light is made up of but only the part our eyes can see. Pure light is made up of much more than just the visible color range but a prism allows us to see what it is we are able to comprehend.

Now our prism throws multiple rainbows around the room. But what if all these rainbows were focused together to form a single, powerful, vivid rainbow? (You know that’s what a laser partially does – it concentrates wavelengths of light into a single stream). Jesus is that singleness that concentrates all that the prism reveals to us into a solo, tangible form. He encapsulates all that is understandable of God as He is fully God and fully man.

Jesus Christ isn’t only the encapsulation of the comprehendable, vibrantly colorful ‘rainbows of God’ but He is also the prism that layouts out the ‘parts’ of God into a way that we can begin to understand. (These ‘parts’ don’t add up to the whole of God but are the parts that we can understand and take in).

Scripture is full of times when Jesus would say “Heaven is like…” or “God is like…” but He not only spoke His rainbows; He lived His rainbows. To look at how He lived His life here on Earth is to look at how He took the power of God and transformed it into forms of energy that we could feel, touch, sense, comprehend, and learn from. He spoke to people giving them hope, He ministered to the poor and those in need, He listened to those that needed an ear, and He gave of Himself so that others could live. Jesus Christ prismatically encpasulates God here on Earth for us so that through Him, everyone in this world might know God.

Cobb’s Seven Rules of Love

Real
Love must be felt, not simulated, not imagined or faked. This is the first and most important thing about love.

Real love is a choice. God doesn’t just love us because we exist, He loves us by choice. And God has given us the choice about whether to love Him or not.

True
Love must be singular. There can only be one object of your loving affection. Love must be faithful, gladly.

True love is about only One. Love God with all that you are, have and will be. It is by loving God alone, that in turn we are filled with His overflowing love to divert towards others

Free
Love must be voluntary and not coerced. You should not feel obligated to love but genuinely desire to love.

God has the power to force us to love Him. He chose not to use that power as He knows that love is meant to be freely given just like when a child says to his parent’s “I love you” and they haven’t given him or promised him anything (something of my experience there)

Pure
You must love the person for who they are and who they want to be, wholly. Not because of their car. Not because it feels good to be in love. Not for whom you wish they would be.

Love for God is not about what He will do for you, get for you or promises of heaven. Love for God is because He is an awesome God who is pure, holy, righteous and just. Normally, those who choose not to love Him because they don’t understand who He is

Hot
You must desire their physical company. You physically change in the presence of your lover.

For those of you who love God, do you desire to be in His presence? Do you long for Jesus’ return? Think about the story of the virgins (bridesmaids) waiting for the bridegroom in Matthew 25. Do you have your oil?

Deep
Love must affect you profoundly, make you willing to make sacrifices. You cannot merely turn it on and turn it off, it must be something near the center of your life.

Do you love God because its convenient? Is it a love to get what you want but when there’s a choice to be made, the love subsides? Loving God requires that you give up your “rights”. He alone is what matters. In many countries today, to love God (the true God) – you have to be willing to sacrifice all that you have. Now that’s love

I hope that these definitions make you think about what you believe is love and how to live that out.

“Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Clarence Roddy was an old-time Baptist minister from Maine who taught preaching at Fuller Seminary when I was an undergraduate there 40 years ago. The notes I took in his classes filled no more than two pages in three years, but the inspiration he gave to budding young preachers filled heart after heart. He spoke little about how to prepare and deliver sermons, focusing instead on the person who was doing it. “Preaching is you,” he said—over and over. Patiently, daily, he listened to our struggling beginners’ efforts, always encouraging us to believe that we were gifted to fulfill the marvelous opportunities before us. “There is no higher calling than that which God has given you!” he insisted.

I wondered at his optimism. There was little about myself that I could see to justify it, but I decided to believe him. Being yourself is enough . . . Your way is the best way . . . They expect judgment; give them grace . . . The high road gives the long view . . . No higher calling!

A few years after I left seminary, Roddy died. At his memorial a member of one of his former churches in Maine told this story:

Let me tell you something about Roddy. . . . My wife and I had a son who was institutionalized for many years because of a brain injury. It’s hard to admit, but we had stopped loving him, wife and I. We visited him often, but our feelings for him had begun to die. Then one day when we came to see him, we found Pastor Roddy in our son’s room. He was talking to him—as if our son could hear. He read the Bible to him—as if he could understand. He prayed with our son—as if he could share in the prayer. My first impulse was to say, “Roddy, you fool, don’t you know about our son?” Then it dawned on me. Of course he knew. But he cared for our son as if the boy were whole and well. He saw him through eyes of faith. . . . Roddy renewed in us something we had almost lost, the capacity to love our son.

Then I knew why Roddy had been such an encouragement to so many of his students. He saw us through eyes of faith— sure of what he hoped for each of us and certain of what none of us could yet see. Faith views others not as they are but as they can be. There is no higher calling.

today’sTHOT============================

Keep the faith…just not from others.

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This was from a daily feed called www.mikeysFunnies.com

Lord, help us the next time we see someone to view them through the eyes of faith and not the eyes of judgement

This was not a time for me to practice my German. As the man clearly did not like the way I drove in his country, I do not believe he would have taken kindly to me butchering his language. Its hard to find the right places where its safe to practice German. You are looking to converse with someone who is understanding and forgiving. Who will gently correct you when you say something wrong. Who will help fill in the word gaps that you have when you are trying to say something. And above all they have to be patient and willing to take the time to have a conversation when speaking takes three or more times as long.

Then it dawned on me. We need a safe environment in which to learn German just as a new Christian needs a safe environment to learn what it means to be a follower of Christ. And the environments are the similar in nature. Just as we need to be able to speak with people who are willing to answer our questions (no matter how simple they may be) and with people that set a tone that any question can be asked. And the same thing holds true for a new Christian. We need people who have the patience to listen to us and help us fill the word gaps in our speech just as a new Christian does. We need someone who is going to show us grace when we mess up and in a nurturing way show us where in our text book (or other reliable literature) we have gone astray just as a new Christian, who is pursuing living a life as a Christ follower, needs people to surround them, encouraging them, and showing them grace when they mess up and in a loving way, show them where in our life’s manual (i.e. the Bible) they have gone astray.

Is your community of Christ followers a safe environment for a new Christian?