I've been reading through Luke and one very interesting theme keeps coming up: perseverance. Basically, it's how we do in the long run that counts, not how we do in the short term.

In Luke Jesus says to never give up but to always pray. Persevere.

Never stop praying comes up a few more times in Luke. Persevere.

Peter denies Jesus three times. Pilate tells a crowd three times that Jesus is innocent and that he doesn't want to kill him. Who obeys in the end? Peter repents, but Pilate relents. (oh no, I just rhymed) Persevere.

On the cross Jesus is dying, and he just keeps saving others until the last possible moment. He persevered.

Jesus comes back from the dead and gets on to the disciples for doubting and not persevering in the faith of God.

Finally, Jesus tells the disciples at the end of Luke and the beginning of Acts to wait until the Spirit comes, and then they will receive power. In Acts Jesus says he doesn't have dates or times for them, and that they just need to simply wait on the Father. They have to persevere.

Needless to say how clear it is that the Spirit is speaking "perseverance" to me, I'm kind of scared when God is telling me to do that. I want easiness, not perseverance. Guess God has other plans for me.

100. Risk and Failure

Back in August we hosted a Student CPx Training in Austin. Since that training we have seen God use the students who "graduated" from SCPx to do some incredible things for His Kingdom. From praying healing over broken bones to Baptizing new believers into new student-led churches these students are really "doin' the stuff"! Morgan and I have the privilege of walking alongside of these students in discipleship relationships now that we live here in Austin. It is so incredible to watch God use them as they obey His voice. Four students got Baptized by other students this past Friday. Another student who had just come to Christ last week was also Baptized by her discipler in the bath tub in her apartment the Thursday night before these Baptisms...People's lives are being transformed, and it is happening at the hands of ordinary followers of Christ - these are not religious professionals, church/campus staff members, or people who get paid to do the works of ministry. These are broke students who have been wrecked by the Gospel, and can't help but introduce others to their king...

Click Here to watch the video...

Don't miss THRESHOLD 2010

Registration is only $45 per person for the entire event (that's unheard of).

Sign up soon as it is filling up fast. Details here: http://www.ThresholdEvent.com

Would if everything you thought threw out the day was posted to your body for all to see. picture it being the same for everybody else too. you could walk down the hallway at work and see what your co-workers where thinking as they woke up and draged themselfs into work. on me there would be bad thoughts and good thoughts. I would see others thoughts and realize most of our thoughts are all the same. people would know how I feel about them the moment I see them. Talking to someone would be totally redefined . so lets say I join Tim in the elevator on monday with the words I really dont want to be in the elevator with mike posted on his back.Then I proceed to ask tim why he thinks such a thing. As tim gives me my answer iam looking for what he is thinking to pop up on his body. He then reads on me that I really want his acceptance and need his approval. We could actually spend a hole day reading eachother as a book to deeply find out who we are. we could go in they way of understanding eachother on a deeper level or run around all day with deep hurting words on us. lets say a young lady was walking down the hallway and notice i have the words Tim is such a jerk. Now she to will have to carry tim is a jerk and whatever thoughts she had about me or tim on her. it could spread to thousands of people in one day. I can see how wearing something that spreads to all who see it could turn out bad. When we talk to people threw out the day our words spread to there mind and most likely stop there. The crazy thing is the words we speak to people never leave there mind. they could think about it years from now. What blows me away is that that person who keeps our words stored in there mind thinks thoughts that randomly appear in there head. We really cant controll our thoughts but after we think them we can accept or reject them. What we are really doing is listening to our own thoughts allday ,so if we accept all the thoughts that say tims a jerk then we paste it to our hearts. if we get to many of these thoughts they explode out threw the mouth into others minds. With this being said lets say iam back with tim reading whats posted on him. I them look him into his eyes and ask him if he agrees with those thoughts. I can actually see tims words have more meaning then a bunch of printed thoughts and half of them not his. The thoughts represent the sin that is all over us each day. understanding that we have have a sin nature helps us in communicating with others. people think evil things all the time and i can say ive agreed with evil thoughts alot in my life. So the next time you see someone try to understand that they are wrapped up in a bunch of thoughts and the words they speak are words that keep you from asking what they are thinking. We have a enemy that throws thoughts at us all day long to get us to worry, fear, hate, and feel ashamed. Think of how people without Jesus feal with no truth to fight off all the thoughts that are sticking to there bodys while they feel like the world can read it on them. This is why the word of God is spoken . Whats spoken out of the mouth is spoken under your controll. Whats spoken out of the mouth of God is in His controll. His word sinks deep into the heart of man. Each word we speak should have to go threw a battle before slipping off of our tounge so easily. Take every thought captive to God.  By M Fasbender

i am “missional” because i love the incarnation of Christ here on earth & think that was the big idea that Jesus was getting at.  he “became flesh and moved into the neighborhood” and calls us to do the same. while i have a lot of friends who i deeply respect in the missional conversation, i am often annoyed because it seems like it’s becoming a new exciting trend for most attractional churches now.  of course there are a lot of fringe conversations i love & appreciate, but it seems to me that there’s a group of “louder” voices that i don’t really identify with because the power & voice tends to rest in the boys.  to me it also kind of feels a little like it’s become a new pet project for evangelicals, to become more “missional.”  sorry if that sounds harsh.  i love the incarnational thoughts but still think so many issues of power & equality & what it means to be “poor” aren’t being addressed.  some of the delivery seems to focus on “we are supposed to help those poor people” instead of learning that “we are those poor people.”

from Kathy Escobar, pastor, The Refuge in Colorado

 

Totally. Kathy, who is a friend of mine and who I will be seeing in just a couple of weeks at Convergence,  is one of the most missional-minded women that I know. A former megachurch staffer, Kathy and her friend Karl abandoned the supersize form of church with all of it's trappings with the hope of creating a faith community in the organic earth of the people who make it so. Thus, The Refuge was born, a church that "serves the suburban poor." 

Missional is likely to become the new darling of Christendom in the US.  This is not a bad thing. I'm not criticizing. I just wanna say that I hope the missional movement will not gentrify like the Emerging Church kinda did.

Gentrify :  renovate so as to make it conform to middle-class aspirations; "gentrify a row of old houses"; "gentrify the old center of town"

There are a lot of amazing missional writers, thinkers and most especially, practioners. Missional practiconers don't spend much time, I've noticed, pausing to analyze their missional strategey. They just do it. They just Be Jesus to the community and people they find themselves with. Theology is a sidetrip, not the whole journey, for people on mission.

Catholics are brilliant at the whole missional gig. They've been doing it for hundreds of years. My daughter attends a LaSalle Catholic high school that focuses on making a college prepartory education accessible for all, especially low-income families. This is because way back in the day in France only the elite and aristocratic were afforded educatoinal opportunities. No money, no power = no education. Jean Baptist De LaSalle felt a calling to enter the margins with the poor and focus on providing education for their sons. (not sure why not girls as well, but hey baby steps people, baby steps)  The point is that De LaSalle got close enough with a group of people that he was able to identify a felt need and then address it. He didn't start a seminary nor a conference. He organized curriculum, secured sites for study, found and trained teachers, and created ways for poor French boys to get an education. And there was resistance each step of his journey, with the academics and tutors of his time protesting and trying to block his way. imagine!

I would love to see a LaSallian mindset in the missional river as it fords it's way through byways and highways across America's landscape of Christians. Let there be radical inclusion of the practioners among us who do not have large platforms nor a large followership of Twitter fans. Let's promote the other rather than ourselves. If you have the mic, hand it off to someone who doesn't. If you have credentials, make room for some poor French boys (and girls) to learn from you. Give it away. To those who can't give you anything back.

The true manifestation of missional, of the Presence of Jesus, ought to bear some degree of obscurity and steadfast resolve to maintain always a posture of humility and servanthood. The best servants are invisible. They clean and scrub and wash up and cook and sweep and quietly do the unglamourous work of life without an announcement. Jesus served under the radar more often than not. He was a cryptic sort of mystic. Not a rockstar.

I feel Kathy's concerns. She and I, women that we are, can sit you down and tell you stories all day and long into the night of how our wonderful brothers unwittingly create brotherhoods and socieities that are exclusive of women and non-professionals. Missional cannot and must not become dominated by academia nor personalities. The Way of Jesus tells us a better way. That is my hope for the winds of change that are gusting up within and outside of That Gloroius Beauty aka The Church.

 

One of the current debates in churchdom will be whether or not Missional is, or will become a movement. Is it here to stay or will it go the way of Emergent/Emerging church, which started with a bang and is quickly becoming the Myspace of the church world—once the leading "next big thing" and now eating the dust of Facebook. My thinking is that what we are seeing with the missional conversation is the beginnings of wholesale change, which will eventually be a true movement. Missional is not mired in the theological debates that have sidetracked the Emergent conversation, and therefore has been able to run swiftly and less hindered by critique. The convergence of house church, simple church, and long-term missional practitioners is coming together and providing not only some solid theology, but also serious training and resources.

-Lance Ford in the most recent Shapevine newsletter

 

My friend Mimi talks about the whirlwind wind fling she had with with the Emerging Church movement. A blip on her radar, and though it was short-lived it was for sure a part of the detoxification she had entered after she left her megachurch career behind.

Mimi and I are part of a rowdy little church in Portland, Oregon known as The Bridge. Planted by Ken and Deborah Loyd, two sages of faith and missional pioneers in the sense of they just did it without talking about it or studying a course, The Bridge has been in existence for eleven years. Ken and Deborah both moved on in the last couple of years, handing over the reins to younger and less experienced leaders.

The Bridge is distinct as a missional faith community in that the Loyd's successfully crossed over into a culture of angsty post-modern, creative-musician Portlanders who cuss. A lot. And drink. And challenge every belief system and insist that God must be able to speak into their effed up lives seven days a week and not just during the ninety-minute holy hour of Sunday morning.

Music is homegrown at The Bridge, lyrics filled with laments and groanings and hollerings that bleed all over the carpet. Todd Fadel, who together with his wife, Angie, are the leading musical force at The Bridge, said in a recent interview that "The things we sing are not what we are aspiring to. They're usually what's actually going on."

(click HERE to see the short video interview as well as hear some of the sound that is the Bridge worship sound)

There has been some resonance at The Bridge with some of the Emerging Church movement. Many in our community have faith backgrounds and most have been in the throes of deconstructing their beliefs to some degree or another. The main drive, though, is not to craft a new belief system, but rather to throw off the trappings of human constructst that get in the way of experiencing God and experiencing one another.

The missional mindset, as Lance writes about in the current Shapevine newsletter, has yet to prove if it will have staying power. As the EMC conversation has grown dull and tiresome, many are now saying, No more talk. Let's do it. That sounds a lot like a transition from a posture of analysis to an active involement of good old "git 'er dun."

The Bridge does not define itself as emerging or post-modern or missional or anything other than as a tribe of believers who have insisted on living out the scandalous grace of God with each other seven days a week.

This has made The Bridge a gut-wrenching collection of authenticity practioners. Many of our Sunday mornings as well as our other gatherings,  often involve whoever is talking - leader or layperson - being vulnerable about the weakness in their own lives. So many of us at The Bridge have barely survived any kind of relationship to the body of Christ because of the acute pressures in the evangelical culture to measure up to some kind of super human portrait of Christlikeness. The disclosure of failure and weakness from the pulpit is a rarity in many churches; at The Bridge, it is the norm.

We're not for everybody. Despite being around for more than a decade we're still on the smallish side, about 50 or so, with dozens of others who float in and out from week to week and month to month. Some have judged us as being unsuccessful or as an ineffective witness of the Gospel and point to our lack of robust growth as evidence. While others, me among them, see it another way. We see the smallish, intimate communtiy of The Bridge as a distinctive. We are not meant to be big. Then we would not be The Bridge. But we have multiplied, with three other distinct churches, not Bridge churches, but three other unique faith tribes that are missional to the people they find themselves serving.

Besides, being small means things get done faster. A couple of weeks ago some of us said hey, why don't we have some morning prayer before our service?  Ok, done. Now we're doing it. Antoher time someone said, Hey, I know some grocery stores that will give us their old food.  By the next week we had drivers to go pick it up. That was three years ago. Food Church was born in the organic bullshit of our everyday lives. And now the anarchists come stand in line every week outside our door waiting for us to stop singing and talking so they can get free groceries. No strings attached. (and they have no idea we are praying blessings for them behind their backs!)

Is missional here to stay?  Does it matter? It's just a word, a label, to identify a group of people who have found a forgotten way of collecting ourselves together to discover the power and presence of God in one another.

***For more stories about The Bridge click HERE to read them at my blog

This past Sunday a few UT students who went through Student CPx back in August hosted a "joint simple church gathering". They wanted to bring the other simple churches from their relational networks together for a time of sharing what God has been doing in Austin through these various lay-led churches, as well as hear from some students who had taken trips overseas during the winter break.

What you see represented in the pictures above and the videos below is the fruit & result of the obedience of students living out the Gospel being the Church. Yes, this entire gathering was student organized & led. Most of the SC's displayed here represent the actual local churches these students belong to. They are seeing much fruit through the individual communities as they step out in faith to obey God. The coolest part is that there were NEW BELIEVERS at this gathering who have recently made decisions to follow Christ! One of them will be Baptized by another student this Friday!

It is so important to recognize what happens when the works of scripture are lived out by ordinary people. (lay-people, students, new believers, unpaid, non-professional, etc.) The growth of the kingdom and spread of the Gospel is no longer dependent upon how much money exists, where we "meet", who will "lead", how "big" are the projects, etc. When a 20 year old college student realizes they have "permission" from Jesus to go make disciples, Baptize them, and watch as a new community of faith (church) is birthed it sparks something very powerful. When several students come to this realization it marks the beginning of a movement...

I captured some little bits of the evening with my phone - let us imagine together this scenario multiplied in homes & cities across our nation!

At Intentional Gatherings we seek to equip, & release ordinary believers to live out their full potential in the kingdom of God. We do that in many ways. Whether it be a Student CPx Training, involvement in a new simple church community, or just walking through real life with someone from our team, the desire is not to build or grow a church or organization. Success in our organization is based upon spiritual transformation in the lives of individuals whom God places in our lives. Spiritual transformation is measured by those individuals ability to hear God's voice, and be obedient to that voice (No matter what that looks like-yes, even if it means they don't "join" our org., or one of our churches). Essentially, we want to disciple in such a way that leads to the empowerment of those disciples to go make more disciples. It's been a long journey thus far, but we're excited about what God has done, and will do in the days to come. Lord, may you continue to release your children into the harvest to fulfill the Great Commission! We are available to You, and earnestly desire Your Spirit to sweep across our city and nation!

“When we are wrong Jesus is right – it’s redemption in action.”

“You see, if we are never wrong about anything then that means Jesus isn’t having to make us right in any areas of our lives…we hinder His redemptive work in us.”

American culture (and human nature) screams that we must never, ever, ever, under any circumstances admit that we are wrong…about ANYTHING, ever. Whether it be a petty decision we made, statement that slipped out, or a huge life decision that did not go as planned, we seem to have an inability to recognize that we just might have been…WRONG. Is it really so bad…to be…WRONG?

I have determined that we, as humans, need to learn, practice, and perfect the art of being wrong; not when we are not wrong, of course. = ) Perhaps our default should not always be that we ARE right, and could not possibly be wrong. Maybe we could re-program our default to be that we quite possibly could have made a better decision.

“When we are wrong Jesus is right – it’s redemption in action.”

“You see, if we are never wrong about anything then that means Jesus isn’t having to make us right in any areas of our lives…we hinder His redemptive work in us.”

We allow our upbringing, traditions, and personal preferences to get in the way of being wrong all the time. These things cripple us from growing into the people we need to be; the people God desires to build us into. Over the past two years it has become increasingly freeing to let go of things I have done to realize they may be wrong, and could be better in. It hurts at first, but the end result is a more perfect you.

In marriage, our spouses have been placed into our lives to sanctify us by the Holy Spirit that lives within them. When we refuse to ever be wrong we disregard that truth, and hinder our own personal cleansing. In our lives as believers we are so certain we are right that we miss out on things God is trying to teach us.

This also plays into how we “do ministry”, church, etc. My friend Neil Cole directs an organization called CMA. In their organization they have what they call a “wall of shame”. On these shelves resides years worth curriculum, strategies, and plans that they had to retire due to their ineffectiveness. They were willing to accept that those things were…wrong. They put them on the shelf, and began striving for better. Of course, it was painful to retire the resources that took so much time, energy, and money to create. However, the end result was so much more beautiful than the tragedy that would have followed had they insisted on being right.

We could go on and on with examples of how this plays into our lives, and negatively affects us. I am not suggesting that we be ok with being wrong all the time, or become insecure in everything we do because we “might be wrong”. I am simply suggesting that we have a much looser grip on our pride that insists we are incapable of making a bad decision…otherwise known as…SIN. If I never realize, and accept the sin in my life because of pride or not wanting to be wrong I refuse to allow anything in my life to be redeemed.

“Jesus, continually reveal to us where we are wrong. Allow Your Spirit in us to more quickly recognize these wrongs so we may invite Your Spirit in to bring us back into alignment with Your Kingdom. If we neglect this longer we continue to shout with our actions that Your work on the cross was unnecessary, and that we do not need it. Set us free Jesus, and remind us of the permission you gave us to be wrong when you died for the fact that we are sinful.”

I leave you with two definitions…

Redeem: Compensate for faults, or bad aspects.

Redemption: The action of saving, or being saved from sin, error, evil.

My friend Jim Henderson of Off the Map fame is very talented at critical thinking, especially when it comes to evaluating churches and their practices.  With his flair for PR and knack for mass communication, Henderson is leading the charge for a structured approach to rating churches for those pastors curious enough to know what the outsider (and insider!) really thinks about them. Introducing Church Rater: Find a Church that Fits:

 

Every Sunday close to 350,000 churches open their doors to the public. How do you know what you’re walking into? What will the pastor be talking about? What kind of people attend?

Church Rater lets you read what others say about the church and rate your own experience. ChurchRater lets you talk back after sitting through a sermon. Church Rater lets you...  find a church that fits.

The seed for Church Rater's birth goes back to an interesting experiment Henderson did in 2006.

He  took an atheist on a tour of ten churches around  America (including mine!) in an effort to see the evangelical world through the eyes of an outsider. That adventure resulted in a book called Jim and Casper go to Church: Frank Conversations about Faith, Churches and Well-Meaning Christians.

I reviewed the book when it came out. Here's an excerpt:

I liked what they wrote about The Bridge. They almost caught the energy of who we are and what we are like. They made a good go of it at taking a quick snapshot of what our Sunday morning gig looks like. I could focus this entire review on The Bridge, and say a whole lot more, but then that would make this a chapter review rather than a book review.

Besides visiting my church, Jim and Casper visited 11 other churches from the east coast to the west and down south in Texas as well as up here in my beloved Pacific Northwest. Their book is an account of what they found, a kind of report and review of how Casper, the friendly atheist, interpreted his observations, unfettered from the bias of an evangelical worldview. Jim, the seasoned vet of the faith, is his tour guide into the Sunday morning culture of church. This book accounts their conversations and questions to one another as they try to hear and see what the other is downloading.  (to read the whole review go HERE)

Jim has tried to launch Church Rater before back in 2006 with writer and Christian thinker, Peter Walker.  Dust storms of criticism rose up immediately. Peter handled it diplomatically pointing out that  "Christians are way too easily offended."

Interest fizzled out as Church Rater struggled for people willing to critique churches in an open forum as well as some potentially sticky legal issues that begin to ominously gather like storm clouds against a Seattle skyline.But over the past nine months there has been a quiet reformation of CR as Henderson brought a small team of church insiders and outsiders together to once again make evangelicals do what most human beings avoid doing - to look at ourselves in the mirror with raw honesty.

Earlier this month, Henderson placed ads on Seattle's Craig's List advertising for church raters... paid church raters.  $50 a pop. Credentials needed - to be a non-church goer and not hate Christians. 

Seattle Times columnist, Danny Westneat recently gave Church Rater a shout-out:

Henderson had to take the site offline for a time because of "slanderous stuff about some pastors." He relaunched a few months ago with more stringent monitoring.

You can't muzzle the crowd, he says. Not in the digital age. Plus there are other church-rating sites (the most popular is Ship of Fools, the British "magazine of Christian unrest," with its cheeky reports by anonymous "mystery worshippers.")

"When people go to church they go out to lunch afterward and they dish about the sermon, the music, whether the pastor was boring that day," Henderson said. "We're just a vehicle to let people do in public what they already do in private."

Seattle television station, King 5, also did a feature about Church Rater. In the comments section of their write-up one commentator said,

Churches have been driving Christians away for years with outdated dogmas and and rules. Not to mention interpretations of the Bible contrary to the scriptures. You go to church for fellowship in the worship of the Lord. Not to be told how to vote or have other parishioners report any activities that the church rules forbid.

(the anchor in introducing the news video said, "where Yelp meets Yahweh. That made me smile.)

What do I think about Church Rater? 

I'm not totally sold on it. It seems gimmicky.  In a world of spinmasters and marketing gurus, isn't CR just another clever publicity ploy to sell books or get web hits?

I texted Henderson today. I asked him, "What's the takeaway message of Church Rater?" Messages are only as relevant as they are heard by the intended audience. CR already has a host of critics who think it's more Church Hater than Church Rater, including those who are friends and fans of Jim Henderson and Off the Map. Like Jason Clark, a progressive Christian leader of church formation and theology who hails from Surrey,  England. At his blog, Deep Church, he offered a gentle yet critical review of ChurchRater:

... there is the nature of ‘rating’.  I know I’m not interested in someone visiting one Sunday service and giving us a 5* rating.  I fear it undermines something else Off the Map was set up for, deep and thoughtful reflection and critique of Church.  Church needs critique and I love the kind that Off the Map introduced me to.  However this way of assessing churches, seems captive to the problem of the way we select out church involvement, and undermines the best (at least for me) of Off the Map..

(read the entirety of Jason's critique here)

I'm kinda on the same page as Jason. Jim and the Off the Map crowd have been some of the most refreshing voices to me and thousands of others in regards to leading the conversation of what needs to be addressed in the modern American evangelical movement. Does Church Rater help advance that effort or take away from it?

Jim texted me back. In less than 140 characters he answered my question about the takeaway message of Church Rater.  "Help people find a church that fits and help churches see themselves through the eyes of outsiders." 

Ah, there it is : helping churches see themselves through the eyes of outsiders.

Some have pointed out that it is not fair to judge a faith community based on a 90-minute Sunday service. But like books that are judged by their covers, Church Rater is simply going for the obvious, the Sunday morning religious theater that happens across America every week.

Henderson himself has pointed out that it's after service during the Sunday brunch that parishioners and congregants review the experience with one anothe anyway. "I didn't like his sermon...the music was wonderful...the prayer was too long...the air-conditioning was too high...there wasn't anyone to greet us today....and on and on and on....Henderson is right. Most of us are guilty of rating a church service... especially when we are on the hunt for a new church. I've joked with friends that it is easier to find a husband a home, then it is to find a church!

Church Rater is just a systamatic approach to doing what is already happening around the faithful's Sunday dinner anyway. Henderson's just being very public about it. And that's what he does best, what Off the Map is genius at: facilitating public discourse for and about Christians on those subjects that make us  oh-so-squirmy.

Church Rater or church hater?  You decide for yourself. As for me, I'll stick to rating the raters.