I have been fully engaged this morning in reading a book on the Missio Dei (mission of God).  I was reminded that God is first and foremost a missionary God who came to Earth to announce the good news of an arriving Kingdom, and that his will is to see us not planting churches, not spreading the message of Americo-centrism, but making disciples.  The earliest missionaries moved from a periphery like Jerusalem, and arrived at the center of power: a spiritually bankrupt Rome.  For so long missions has been about “sending”, now it is about “going”.  And truly, even more than “going”, because we are always on the go in this culture.  It is while we go that we make disciples of Jesus Christ.  It is in the midst of life that we group together with a band of disciples and live out the subversive, provocative lifestyle that God have designed for us.

I’m not interested in “missions” as something we do during our summer break, or support financially, or even make a career out of.  I will not rest until it is everything that we are and do.

Now I think about Abilene.  In many ways it is out in the periphery of the world.  It is the desert, physically and politically speaking.  My wife and I are heading to Chicago.  In many ways that is the cultural and economic center of the country – and in many other ways, the entire world.  The great cities of our nation are going to be infiltrated with revolutionaries of The Way, and we aren’t going to be preaching a health and wealth Gospel.

It is the small things that make the biggest difference.  Right now people from all over the world – people who just one generation ago heard the Gospel message for the first time from an American – are now migrating to the US to “make disciples”.  African groups like the Nigerian Redeemed Christian Church of God hold vibrant worship, and are connected with home churches all throughout Florida and the Southeast, Christian groups from Ghana are now holding bible studies in the World Bank in Washington D.C., and Asians are grouping together to head for locales a Westerner could have never gained access to.

The shift in God’s mission is taking place – now there is no one center of mission.  We now see an interplay of the Gospel being passed back and forth in a network of cultures and societies.  Each supporting the other, these groups committed to a center-less religion are watching the Spirit move in fascinating ways.

I want to be a part of that network.  I renounce my desire to be the center of power.  I commit to finding myself in the dangerous and amazing mission God has created for his disciples.  Praise be to God!

This morning during the Abbey’s morning vigil, we found ourselves focusing around the idea of living with a conscience toward preserving nature. We prayed about the living, breathing Earth that we have been given “dominion” over, and yet for so long we have in our dominance abused our gift.

We are Shepherds of the Earth. I have been calling myself this all day today. Last Sunday our little community began recycling. We’ve been opening the windows up in the mornings, and keeping the AC off as long as possible. It won’t solve everything, but its a start.

I’m not sure what God has for us to learn in this before we are all finished with this experiment in communal life, but I want to give my all to living it out. I get excited about others who are already catching the vision for a simple space for people to live in close proximity and to care for one another spiritually, and to care for the world about them. Our outdoor garden is growing, and more and more we are finding ways of celebrating our Lord in outdoor spaces.

We are Shepherds of the Earth, and like Tolkien’s Ents (Shepherds of the Forest) if we stand around talking and arguing about whether we should engage ourselves in the battle, we may too quickly find ourselves on the loosing side. I’m ready to start the fight against the Enemy (you don’t think Satan is totally unaware of Global Warming, do you?) - even if that means taking a little longer to seperate out my trash.

Its a start.

Today is a day of remembrance. It is easy to try to push past the hard memories to focus on the superficiality of the day’s urgent to-do’s, but there is something much deeper to reflect on in the human psyche today. What happened 5 years ago this morning was a nation-wide shift in focus and paradigm. Now violence and acts of war no longer happened “out there” but the local reality of terror was made tangible for every American.

Our lives become busy so quickly. We hardly pause for a second to consider the circumstances of our fellow countrymen who died because they chose to go to work that day, and others who died saving them. So quickly we return to “business as usual”, when just a few short years ago we were utterly abhorred at the terrorist’s horrific offense.

I was a freshman at ACU at the time. I was sitting in Speech Class, and I had just given a persuasive speech about the necessities of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich WITHOUT getting PB in the jelly or jelly in the PB (that’s an important tip to remember if you ever want to have friends invite you over for a snack ever again). Our teacher had left the room during one of the speeches, and was gone for several minutes after the student had taken his seat. With a terrified, halting voice, our teacher reported that a commercial airplane had just hit one of the twin towers in New York City, and that many people had died. He admitted that he knew nothing more, and then dismissed our class.

Of course, we all left in a hurry, looking at each other with curious expressions on our faces. I got back to my dorm, and turned on the TV just in time to watch an airplane crash into the second tower. I thought there must have been some sort of mistake – I saw the plane go into the tower, but the other tower was burning and crashing to the ground!?! What was going on here? Then it dawned on me, as it did for every American that morning: this is no accident.

Many months and years have passed since that morning. But I will never forget the attitude of the nation, and even the world, as the day’s events unfolded. Fear, anger, and rumors spiraled like a whirlwind in my own heart, as well as in the hearts of our campus, and our nation. It was a crisis for an entire people, who for a time began to turn their hearts again toward God. What might have happened if there had been wide scale repentance on America’s part? Would it have made a difference in our world and war in Iraq today? Does God still work that way?

Where were YOU when you heard the news 5 years ago? Where was God?

by Peter Mayer

When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
And he would read the Holy Word.
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now.

Everything, everything,
Everything is holy now . . .

When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
that miracles don’t happen still
But now I can’t keep track
‘Cause everything’s a miracle

Everything, everything
Everything’s a miracle . . .

Wine from water is not so small
An even better magic trick
is that anything is here at all.
So the challenging thing becomes
not to look for miracles
but finding where there isn’t one.
Holy water was rare at best
barely wet my finger tips
Now I have to hold my breath
I’m swimming in a sea of it
Used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand me downs
now I walk it with a reverent air,
’cause everything’s holy now.

This morning outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head.
and i remember when church let out -
how things have changed since then,
everything is holy now.

Everything, everything
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything,
Everything is holy now . . .

Getting back into the swing of things at ACU didn’t last all that long before Trina and I were whisked away to beautiful Colorado. The National House Church Conference, hosted by House2House Ministries, DAWN, CMA, and others is basically just a chance to fling wide the doors and let anyone who is interested at a ground level with what a natural, healthy life in God and community looks like.

While it has been been awesome and I’ll be writing some reflections on it soon, I’m sitting here this morning at my wonderful mother-in-law’s new home in Estes Park, CO. Here’s a video, just to make you jealous: