Godgrown

Posts Mentioning RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• 

  Mark 1:05 pm on May 30, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Pray4Chicago (2), prayer walking, UIC   

  Blinds – and Learning to Truly See 

  Life is simpler and easier when you keep the blinds shut.

  Less light, less noise, fewer distractions – you can remain convinced of your own constructed reality as long as you keep those blind shut!  Blinds offer a simpler world that makes sense and never challenges you to adapt.  But if you want to stay alive, adaptation is the name of the game.

  You can live your life with blinders on, or you can intentionally keep pulling back the curtains of your world to see the truth.

  Yesterday was this spring’s Pray4Chicago event – each one is profoundly different from the last one, but all are huge successes – because at the end of the day you can see the blinds have been pulled back just a little more.  Friends went out into various neighborhoods surrounding UIC including Little Italy, Bronzeville, and the Loop to “see with God’s eyes…” and if God’s eyes can offer us anything, they offer us a chance to pull the curtains back and live in the world of the REAL, not my private world of safety.

  Folks that had lived in their neighborhood for years reflected on how little they knew about their neighbors or surroundings.  Others were struck at how easy it was to strike up a conversation (or join a game of basketball), while others were broken by the level of systemic oppression they saw just around the block.  All groups considered just what it would take to SEE a vibrant family of Jesus in close reach of every person in Chicago…

  It starts with new eyes… “eyes to see and ears to hear…”

  What is this world we’ve fallen in to?

  Learning to see — its a skill that most of us are born with…but it takes a lifetime to master.  Where is God at work?  Where are the broken places?  Where are the community wells?  Where is the Spirit at work?  How do I join the Spirit?

  Learning to truly see takes a lifetime – but it starts with a desire to pull back the curtains of your own eyes – to see what is behind the blinds of our daily life, and to fall into the adventure of a Spirit-led, missional lifestyle.

  • 
   

  Reply Click here to cancel reply.

  Name (required)

  Email (required)

  Web Site

  Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

   
• 

  Mark 10:49 am on May 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Foursquare, Pray4Chicago (2), Starbucks   

  Foursquare and People of Peace 

  Tried out Foursquare yet?

  Foursquare is a fusion of online social media and real world engagement.  It allows users to “check in” through their phone when they arrive at a specific location, like a coffee shop or concert.  It is location-based social media – meaning that each and every place has a “social network” embedded in it – you can find the regulars of a bar simply by looking them up in Foursquare, and get special deals if you are the most frequent visitor of a certain restaurant or other social destination.

  Habitue — –noun [huh-bich-oo-eyz, -bich-oo-eyz; Fr.]   a frequent or habitual visitor to a place

  Our Pray4Chicago event (twitter: #pray4chicago) is all about “praying with your eyes open.”  Our goal is to send folks out to discover the “community wells” of a specific part of the city, meet the “habitues” of a barbershop or park, and begin to imagine what a community of faith would look like in that context.  We might use Foursquare to learn who “the regulars” are – or to create prayer walks for future P4C participants.  Could the Foursquare “mayor” of a certain location (the person who is recorded as having visited a specific place the most often) be a clue as to who the person of peace is in that place?

  Can Foursquare help you in your effort to discover your city?  Most Americans, Christians included, are stuck on the treadmill of daily life.  Wake up, go to work, come home, rinse, repeat.  Maybe, just maybe – we can discover our neighbors by stepping off the treadmill and into where the people are.

  Maybe it will transform our zombie-like Starbucks runs…you know, the ones where you duck in and duck out only murmuring your wildly complex coffee order to the barista before hopping back in your car to head off to work?  Could Foursquare…and more importantly, an intentionality on our part, bring us one step closer to meeting the lonely people living all around us?

  Of course, Foursquare is in my mind a crutch for those of us just learning to meet our ACTUAL social circle.  Much better than “checking-in” with the mash of a phone button, is to gird up your loins, walk over to a stranger in a coffee shop and strike up a conversation.  Its amazing how easy it is.  Its even more amazing how ready people are to talk if you can inspire them to step off the treadmill.

  Our default is to live with blinders on.  It is in our nature to filter out the periphery, and to autopilot. Live locally – live  with your eyes open.

  Check out how Paul Watson and others are using this tool already.

  • 

  priest, and Mark are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
  • 

    priest 8:46 pm on May 15, 2010 Permalink

    thanks for the call to engage the local.

    as for the person of peace, right now it probably just means they’re as addicted to their iphone as me!

    t

  • 

    Mark 9:29 am on May 16, 2010 Permalink

    well said T. maybe a great way to set up incarnational engagement would be to set up iPhone Anonymous meetups…only done online through the mobile web.

  • 

    priest 6:23 pm on May 16, 2010 Permalink

    i’m in.

    sent from my iPhone

    seriously though, i’ve begun to explore the world of Foursquare and I appreciate how it calls us to ‘step off the treadmill’ and enter into new arenas. i honestly agree that it could facilitate new relationships that otherwise wouldn’t happen. that’s what interests me–it has an element of incarnation that often other social media lack. interested to see how this new social media unfolds.

• 

  Mark 9:58 am on April 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Eckhart Park   

  …Only Family Can 

  I spent yesterday morning doing some work out in our sunny neighborhood park, pulling weeds and weeding-out trash from blossoming bushes and flowers.  There was quite a crew there yesterday too – some folk coming from the far-corners of the city to help out (about a dozen from a global consulting group showed up for “Earth Day.”)

  I’ve been given a section of the park with a few patch-gardens!  This has been a dream of mine for quite awhile, both to do some real-deal urban gardening, and to break into the neighborhood’s action group (volunteering gardeners, park council, etc).  There are more plants than I can give names to, or certainly more than I can spell.  There was even a secret stash of mushrooms hiding beneath a bale of hay over in one corner of my garden.  It wasn’t until THIS year that I finally saw my first flowers bloom from seed.  I planted some bulbs last fall and to see tulips popping up this past week has been tremendous.

  Being a part of such a tangible day of transformation in my own neighborhood reminds me a bit about why we’re here – we’re here to see vibrant families of Jesus grown in every people group in Chicago!

  Vibrant families centered on Christ is not only critical for individuals living the abundant life, but whole cities are desperate for it too.  No city law can make its citizens love each other – only family can.  No religious creed can reconcile broken marriages, or end homelessness – only family can.  No gang can decrease violence or increase High School graduation rates – only family can.

  Watching folks come together for park transformation pointed me back to this truth – that our goal is to see vibrant families of Jesus in close reach of every person in Chicago — but the OUTCOME of that goal is personal and city-wide transformation.

  •