Posts Mentioning RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Mark 9:17 am on August 29, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Don’t Leave it to the Christians to Plant a Church… 

    Finding myself drinking coffee more and more these days.  I’ve begun to call it my “liquid intelligence,” but I’m not sure if I like that.  Journaling, coffee, prayer, and an active imagination are the things that usually fill my mornings.  Also, I’ve been gravitating more and more to Pandora‘s rockin’ Trance station.  Check out all my fave stations and rock out with me here.  I love the digital age!

    I’m finding more and more in the city and region who are experimenting with communal discipleship, organic church planting, and the like.  Yesterday I traveled out to West Chicago and had spent most of the day at the Wyclife Bible Translation center with other church planter types.  Joe Hernandez with CityTeam Ministries was there, leading the discussion.

    I notice that in this whole church planting conversation, there are two emphases at least that fill the air.  One group sees house churches as a means to develop more authentic community.  Where you take the programs, clergy, and other obstacles out of the way and just have family life together.  The problem I see with this approach is that these groups usually bring in many more Christians than those unsure of their relationship with God.  And more often than not, these Christians have such baggage from their previous church experience that you spend all your time deconstructing and sometimes criticizing the “institutional church” (as if there is ever a “un-institutional church” – a fallacy) that little gets done in the way of loving neighbors, or transforming lives into the image of Christ.

    Besides that issue, there’s LOTS more “authentic” expressions of church than just meeting in a home!  If you want to see a good picture of deep, holistic Christian community, check out Reba Place Fellowship, or L’Arche Communities, or so many other intentional Christian communities.  Why stop at just being “family” when you meet together for worship?  I find that most Christians meeting in house churches either come to it expecting to become the superstar of their little group (thus defeating community), or they are just on the way to the next step of a more full-time intentional expression (like living in a house together, or sharing finances).

    These are all awesome journeys to be on, and some days I wish I could have more than one life to do them all.  But in this life I feel called to go the second path in church planting: the path that brings the profoundly lost into a transforming relationship with Jesus Christ.  Joe Hernandez (like Neil Cole and many others) are focused specifically on this goal too.

    I’ve seen it happen.  Whole communities come to Christ because one person in their group found something amazing in Christ’s teaching.  She found it because someone showed it to her.  Someone planted the Gospel in her heart, then SHE plants the church in her own group of friends!  This is where the organic church has something healthy to contribute to the emerging church landscape in America, and around the world.  Plant the gospel deeply into multiple contexts, worldviews, and people groups (not holding it in just one, and not keeping it for the Christians weighted with baggage.)  It has been almost 180 years since the last real explosion of church planting on this continent.  It’s time to start praying for God’s power to flood our lands again.

    • Share/Bookmark
     

    • millertalbot 9:09 am on August 30, 2008 Permalink

      i wish you could’ve heard wolfe speak yesterday!

      you’d have some out just jukin’

      great post

    • Mark 9:40 am on August 30, 2008 Permalink

      miller – good to hear from you! hope DFW is as pleasant weather wise as it is here!

      do you mean wolfgang simpson?

      what do you mean by “you’d have some out just jukin’”?

    • millertalbot 6:19 pm on August 30, 2008 Permalink

      i meant you’d have come out of wolfgang’s talk all hyped up i think. it was pretty powerful stuff.

    • Mark 11:12 pm on August 30, 2008 Permalink

      sweet! anyone with a cool accent talking about things that matter is cool in my books. can you give me a few of his major points?

    • millertalbot 9:14 am on August 31, 2008 Permalink

      yeah, he really came down pretty hard on the democratization of western faith. how most of us have grown up knowing nothing about lining in a monarchy and therefore don’t really understand what life in the Kingdom is all about. he talked about the need to give Christ our complete loyalty… that we typically decide to do something and ask God to bless is when we should really be looking for what God is blessing and joining him there.

      he also talked alot about the need to place our “isaacs” on the alter. he talked about the way we are accustomed to sacrificing the things we feel the need to get rid of, but we really need to sacrifice the things we are most proud of.

      as usual, wolfe is hard to take! but i think he had some things that were right on target! i don’t think he’s talking about slavishness or returning to legalism in any way… i think he’s still talking about freedom, just a different kind than we know.

      does any of that make sense?

    • Sean 11:40 am on September 1, 2008 Permalink

      Dude I appreciate your post. You’ve given me some clarity on who I should talk to about church planting as of late. I love how your looking for the church planters that are looking for ways to increase the numbers in the kingdom inside North America. Please keep posting about your explorations on this topic. I could use the resources.

  • Mark 6:36 am on August 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Chicago Spiritual Map: Hyde Park 

    This is part of a blog series on the neighborhoods of Chicago:

    Last week I took a prayer walking tour through Hyde Park, a fascinating neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.  (My hope in this blog series on a spiritual map of Chicago is to canvas one north side neighborhood, followed by a south side, and/or a west side.

    The Red Line (north shore) took me all the way down through the Loop to Roosevelt, where I transferred to the Green Line.  I took the Green Line down the east branch to 63rd St and got off at the end of the line.  One of the opportunities in a mostly elevated train line is that you get to see the big picture of the city as you travel to your destination.  As I looked out over the south side, it was like seeing a forgotten, war torn country.  Buildings were gutted and left to the elements, vacant lots with 6ft tall weeds, refuse filled backyards and abandoned factories filled the skyline.  I noticed to that I was now the only white person on my train car, with only one Asian and two Hispanic.

    I could feel myself becoming anxious, intimidated.  I thought about how silly this was, and this fear seemed instantly mixed with a measure of euphoric oneness with all of mankind.  This unity came with conviction – that their plight was my plight.  I realized in that moment how spending more time in these impoverished neighborhoods was going to be better for me than I ever realized, and how racial barriers can only come down when people are willing to sneak over the wall and begin looking people in the eye as brothers.

    I was thankful for all the smiling faces and jokes thrown around on the train, and I heard from the Lord just how much all of us need the joy of others, and how different colors from the rainbow bring greater joy to each other they they cross boundary lines to share it.

    As I got off the train, I continued to ruminate on the north side and south side racial tensions over the years: German Protestants in the south, and Irish Catholics in the north, Blacks, Whites, gangs, it doesn’t matter who “the others” are – what matters is that we CHOOSE to treat “the others” with love and not fear.  I looked around at my surroundings and felt how society feeds this divide, this “other-centered fear;” in architecture, government funding, schools, retail…most of it is put into one ethnic group’s hands, giving the others something to hate, which breeds despair and crime.

    The sense of community and catharsis was so present I could taste it in the air.  I walked past a guy with an electric guitar and an amp singing and jamming along with the listeners.  I saw children playing “basketball” with a honest to goodness basket.  I saw men and women displaying flagrant emotions of all sorts – anger, laughter and joy, sadness… I thought I’d see more beggars, but I guess this is not the kind of neighborhood where beggars go looking for money – either that or they’ve all been taken off the streets and now have a couch to bunk out on.  Everyone was outside, and I began to feel strangely welcome.  I got honked at a few times by cars as they went by, and my mind began to play fearful tapes of violence and gang colors, etc.  I wondered what my red t-shirt might mean…

    I tried as hard as I could to fight the fear inside me, and continue in prayer for the residents on S Cottage Grove Ave.  It’s certainly the first time I’ve ever not felt safe in broad daylight.  But just about the time I felt I was feeling free to walk without the Spirit of Fear, I stumbled across the University of Chicago.

    UofC is a world renoun school, that has more Nobel Peace Prize winning alumni than any other school.  Its highly regarded as a intellectual stalwart, and draws in a most diverse crowd of students (its mostly grad school studies).  My good friend Trevor Thompson and his family live in Hyde Park, while he finishes up his PhD work on early Christianity and New Testament studies.

    When I stepped on to the UofC campus, I felt a Spirit of Isolation and Emptiness.  Everyone was out, but they were all walking somewhere with eyes straight forward.  I have explored this campus before, and just as before, I could not find anything in the way of common space besides their on-campus Barnes and Noble bookstore.  I was writing in my journal reflecting and praying for the campus when a guy named Belle walked by playing on his Irish flute.  I complimented him on his playing and he stopped to talk.  We chatted about the importance of putting life into every step, and taking time to get to know people on your path.  As he left, he called out, “Keep spreading the positive energy!”  I’ll try my best, Belle.

    I came across a sculpture which heralded this spot as the location of the first contained nuclear release of energy – or atomic bomb.  This is the place where we moved into the atomic age, and ushered in so much fear and capacity to destroy ourselves as a whole planet (America has enough nukes to blow up the earth not just once, but almost 30 times over!)  I sat at its steps for about 15 minutes and cried and prayed.  Where will we go from here?  When will there be peace?  When will we rid ourselves of this madness???

    Got to talk and pray with some Jehovah’s witnesses.  I told them I was walking through the neighborhood, canvasing the streets and asking God’s peace on the city.  They told me about how this very world would be redeemed by God and that a righteous humanity would be resurrected and live on this earth in communion with God.  I didn’t disagree with a thing they were saying, but they were talking to me with this trepidation that any moment I would begin to argue with them.  Seems to me that heaven on earth is exactly where this whole thing is headed (Revelation 20-22), and that we as followers of Christ have something to contribute to the redeeming work!  We ended up eating gyros together.  Good times.

    Finally, I met Rick in a small food market.  He was drinking a free sample of wheatgrass.  He was a tall, skinny guy, with strange stretch marks all over his face and body.  I later found out he used to be over 300lbs, but after congestive heart failure, decided to put his faith in God and get start fresh.  His life of transformation is inspiring, and his positive attitude toward life (at 65 years old) is inspiring!  You go Rick!

    I feel there is more happening in Hyde Park than first meets the eye.  There needs to be more prayer and more research done into what God is up to in this area.

    • Share/Bookmark
     

  • Mark 7:03 am on August 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Off the Blogger Bench 

    Thanks to Jenna for getting my butt off the blogger bench. :)

    Today I spent almost the whole day doing some of my favorite things: traveling and networking.  My little dirty secret:  I actually LIKE public transit – it gives me great delight in playing the game of transferring buses, deciphering train map puzzles, and timing the whole thing just right.  Today I took Pace Bus 250 all the way from one end of the route to the other – all the way to O’Hare Airport’s Kiss n’ Fly.  The bus driver looked at me a bit suspiciously as I looked longingly into his eyes… :-)

    From there, I met Dave Rudin, who is pastor at Summit View Christian Church in Hoffman Estates, and we carpooled it the rest of the way.

    It’s amazing how church planters are really most interested in the same things.  They are interested in how to bring someone in desperate need of Jesus to a place where they are ready to follow him, and grow them even beyond that to the point where they are a mature believer helping others come to know Christ.  This process of reproducing disciples is the heart of what church planting is all about.  In fact, most of my interactions with the term “church planting” have left me somewhat wanting, since Jesus never asks us to “go into all the world and plant churches” – but rather make disciples.

    Today’s group conversation however centered around our own discipleship.  The process of spiritual formation and personal growth is a favorite topic of mine – especially when talking like this in groups.  It’s inevitable that people will start throwing resources and new ideas around, and I’ll start writing them down like a crazy person.

    Speaking of sweet resources: check out 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller, and this sweet quote by Kahlil Gibran:

    Work is love made visible.

    And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste,

    it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple

    and take alms of those who work with joy.

    For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread

    that feeds but half man’s hunger.

    And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes,

    your grudge distills a poison in the wine.

    And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing,

    you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

    All work is empty save when there is love;

    and when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself,

    and to one another, and to God.

    What is it that gets your heart racing – that makes the time fly by?  If you’re only working for the money, chances are good you won’t last long in the job.  If you just put your resume out there and hope someone bites, chances are good you’ll hate your job just like the rest of America.  But if you discover your calling – your vocation – and can think of some way in which your job fits into the higher calling, then even cleaning toliets or sweeping floors can be genuine work and worship to God!  May we all find our calling, and enjoy the work God has brought us to.

    • Share/Bookmark
     

    • Rachael 7:49 am on August 27, 2008 Permalink

      AMEN, Mark! I believe that wholeheartedly…in fact, I am in the process of switching career fields for that very reason.

    • Mark 8:17 am on August 27, 2008 Permalink

      thanks rachael! you might check out this podcast by john eldridge – he really helps me see clearly through the smoke the Evil One puts up to see that passion and purpose in this life is possible, and that the work we do can be a form of worship to God.

      http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ransomedheartaudiopodcast/~3/369675618/

Older Posts →

c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
l
go to login
h
show/hide help
esc
cancel