For the past several years I have been learning to appreciate the Christian Calendar as a means of connecting with Christ and Christians around the world. As I see it there is an inherent organic nature to the Liturgical Calendar in that it brings us closer as humans to the seasons of the earth, causing us to fast and feast according to harvests, to pray as the sun rises and as it sets, and to celebrate the coming of Christ, Lord of the Earth.

Ash Wednesday reminds us of the earthen soil of which we were born, and gives our carbon bodies a destiny - a reconciliation to the ground. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” How much more organic can you get??? We are truly God-grown; we spring up from the earth, we produce fruit (physical and spiritual), and then we die, returning to the earth that brought us life.

So this Lenten season (which starts February 21st) I am going to begin making peace with the earth. I am prayerfully considering taking a fossil fuels fast over the 40 fasting days in Lent. What does that mean? At this point I’m not sure. It may mean all crude oil, coals, and fossil fuels. Over the past several months I have been strongly affected by movies, websites and conversations regarding our earth’s fragile state. The environment is on the verge of a tipping point toward a global heat wave, and we have no way of predicting just how dangerous this will be to our climate. I wonder: is it possible to live our lives without utter dependency on fossil fuels that emit dangerous greenhouse gases into our atmosphere? I intend to find out.
Our new apartment is now set to run off of 100% wind and solar power. I am close enough to my new job that I can ride my bike or even walk. It’s possible in our town to buy foods that were grown locally and therefore don’t take as much fuel to get here. It’s a start.

This is obviously going to take some more sorting out and thinking through. I am also looking for others who want to challenge themselves to “make peace with the earth” during this season of fasting, penance, and prayer. We can share together what we hope will become a sampling of a better life - a life that is Good News not only to others, but to the earth itself! Feel free to pray about this, and email me or leave on comment on my blog if you want to talk more about this.

As we have been living into this missional, simple Christ-lifestyle, interesting questions have begun to pop up…questions that one normally wouldn’t ask if “going to church” and being a decent member of society was all it took.

In Abilene, I am deeply connected with MRNA, a graduate program functions as a mission-sending agency. It trains students to think missionally, and prepares them for the post-Christian culture of North America. It helps them to ease into a new life with Christ, where he is the head to an organic body, a body that spreads right across the globe - spiritual families meeting in homes and in pubs, others functioning as new monastic communities, and others celebrating God through massive weekend festivals, and more.

So as this year progresses, the MRNA students have been encouraged to begin visiting some of the existing house churches in our city, to get a sense of what is going on citywide. This is where the question comes in:

Does “house church-hopping” make any sense whatsoever in this new paradigm?

ACU students are famous for sampling any number of congregations without ever really placing membership somewhere. And even if they cast their lot with one group, that’s not to say that they don’t have at least two or three other churches where they regularly attend services. In a paradigm that puts the individual first, where spiritual consumerism is top priority, church hopping as a reality makes perfect sense. But when “church” means “family of natural relationships” is there any way someone should even consider sampling from the buffet of choices?

One lady in an organic church here in town told her group that she didn’t feel like her needs were getting met and decided to move to another fellowship. As if severing ties with her family were as simple as showing up for dinner at someone else’s house. In reality this broke the hearts of those in her faith family, and through that conversation they discovered that if her needs weren’t being met, it wasn’t because the church had a problem, but because for one reason or another, this lady couldn’t find the “well spring” inside herself that Jesus promises all those who accept his invitation to abundant life. Through that conversation, life erupted.
First thoughts: Church hopping in organic churches is an echo from a past life. We are still feeling the ripple effects of the “me first” mentality that comes from many traditional churches. In High School, it was impossible for me to skip around between lunch tables looking for who could give me the best lunch and conversation.  I would have been seen as shallow and greedy.  When we begin to see our spiritual families as the organic relationships of our lives, bouncing from one table to the next for spiritual goods and services doesn’t make much sense.

Thoughts?

Well, the big news this week is that we are moving!  Yes, after seven months of cohabitation with another family Katrina and I are moving on.  There is a lot to debrief on this topic, and I plan on doing that soon…probably once I get the server switched over to our new home.  Suffice it to say that the four of us have been in prayer with our friends, family and each other, and God has blessed us, and called us to start a new season in our lives.  There will be more in the way of reflection soon, but in the meantime, some things we’re excited about:

Our new apartment will be located in the “urban” downtown of Abilene, TX close to a half way house and even closer to a homeless kitchen named “BOBS” (Breakfast on Beech St.).  This is ideal for me because I have been visiting BOBS for over a year and a half once a week and have made many friends there.  Now it looks like Father is giving me an opportunity to increase intentionality with that community and begin meeting with them in more regular ways!  And everyone I’ve talked to about this half way house says that God is up to mighty things there as well.  Trina and I couldn’t be more excited.

We have learned a lot from our time in the Green Valley Abbey, and we’ll not be long before we post our reflections on that.  But that will have to wait for another day…

Skype has been a friend as of late. I’ve been able to talk with friends living in Mexico all the way up to Chicago who are trying to show others the joy of living the Christ-life. Skype is a simple “internet phone” tool that anyone with a computer and an internet connection can use and is an incredible means of sharing ideas right across the globe. And I am humbled! Men and women much older and more experienced at life than I am have been cross-pollinating dreams with me and each other and has sparked my imagination more than once. We are truly living in an incredible age.

I’m reading a book right now titled Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (Check out this link to help contribute to the book!). Simply put, it is a book that describes how ideas are shared in the world we live in. Gone are the days of the entrepreneur personality that used his expertise to solve every problem and steer every ship into the harbor. Now we are seeing tools like Skype, Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, and more invade our consciousness - and we will never be the same. Blogs are changing politics, business, the Church and beyond. I liken it to the Gutenberg press that 500 years ago made books commonplace in our lives; finally anyone could be an author…sort of. Now the bar has been lowered once again, only this time anyone who has access to the internet can change the world.

Some call the world we live in the World of the Starfish. The Starfish and the Spider is another book that describes this world we now live in. The metaphor goes: cut off the leg of a spider and you have a lame spider. Cut off the head of a spider and you have a dead spider. BUT! Cut off the leg of a starfish, and what do you have? TWO STARFISH! The starfish has no head and therefore can never truly be killed.

The best organizations in the world we live in today are “starfish organizations”. These kind of organizations have no central headquarters, no visible leader or system of hierarchy, and yet grow and multiply infinitely quicker than any “spider organization” out there.

Recently Congress entertained a bill that would make all identifiable religious organizations on a level legal playing field with lobbyists. Basically, that means that many of the rights and/or privileges of churches today would be taken away (mostly regarding financial breaks, etc). This will probably not pass, but it is a sign of things to come in the near future. The knife is at the spider’s neck.

But, praise God, the Kingdom is not a spider - it is a starfish! Movements of Christ’s body are spreading like a virus right across this country, and right across the planet. More around the world are becoming Christians today than ever before, and the majority of them are poor, DON’T have any church property to be taxed in the first place, and for the most part live under the radar. This is the fire of the Spirit spreading across the earth. These are exciting times.

“…You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to GOD HIMSELF, who is the judge over all things. You have come to the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven who have now been made perfect. You have come to JESUS, the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people…”

– Early Christian Sermon, Hebrews 12:22-24

This being toward the end of a powerful sermon on perseverance, I am amazed at the awkwardity (a new word a good friend mentioned to me and is working to get it into Webster’s!) of the circumstances surrounding this sermon. These Christians, possibly 12-15 men and women are huddled together in a small room of a multi-housing apartment complex. Some have lost their homes because they’ve been rejected by their Jewish parents or their pagan husband. Others have been beaten, lost their jobs, and lost their property (Heb. 10:34).

And yet this is how the preacher-man talks to them? Talking of high n’ mighty mountains, angels, and being in the presence of GOD HIMSELF?!? If I were one of these persecuted, low-life Christians, I’d be just about ready to walk over to the preacher jabbering on about such nonsense and smack him upside the head. The NERVE! And yet these words somehow made it into the Holy Writ.

Maybe its because Christians…the true followers of Christ who were hunted down for their beliefs, knew that it was precisely in their not seeing their earthly power and glory in the following-Christ lifestyle that they saw all the more how amazing was their God of the unseen world. Throughout the sermon, the author of Hebrews prefers the “unseen, unshakable” reality as opposed to the “world that will fall away”.

In the Roman and pagan world of the first century, temples lined the streets, and each of them were embellished with visible reminders of the gods watching over everyone. The simpler, the less adorned, and the humble gatherings of Christian worship that were blatantly lacking icons, idols, and bloody sacrifices may have been what was most inspiring about the early Christian faith. Many non-Christians at that time suspected Christianity to be a simple philosophy, others saw it as a dangerous cult. No one who stood outside the circle understood exactly what this little movement was all about.

Today, Christianity in America has taken on the aspects of many of the pompous pagan religions of the first century. We build bigger and bigger sanctuaries, and have more and more elaborate worship services designed to attract the overindulged, and over-entertained consumer. And we do it well. We truck them in by the thousands, and give the preachers of these mega-temples salaries that well surpass those of their pagan forefathers…TV air time, book signing deals…the works. We’ve bought into the lifestyle that kept so many first century Romans (Jews, and others as well!) so inoculated to the Truth - that this is not about a flashy event; its about a way of life.

We have not come to what is seen, to stages, praise bands, multi-plexes, and unchanged, unfulfilled, mediocre lives; but we have come to what is unseen: to a simple collective of friends who love their Lord, love each other, and are convinced that they are on a mission with their Lord to save the world. When we stop to think of the idiocy of it all: no leader but Christ, no temple but our hearts, no sacrifice but ourselves, worshiping our Lord God may seem simplistic. But do not be deceived. We have come to a mountain that is far more real than anything we can see with our eyes, we have come to the mountain of the LORD GOD.