Updates from November, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Mark 9:39 am on November 16, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: John Eldredge   

    What Does Love…Do? 

    Walking through Chicago, you see parents interacting with their kids all the time.  Walking down sidewalks, playing at parks, on the train, pushing strollers and wearing baby-wraps.  Kids being rewarded, and being disciplined.  Parenting styles of all kinds are on full display – some styles absolutely baffle me, others make me cringe…but there are times when you see a partent engage a child in such a way that it inspires not only the kid, but all watching, to live a better life.

    Many parents love their children, but few parents know how to put that love into constructive action.  What I mean is, sometimes we think we’re loving a child when we’re actually harming her.  Love is not as simple as a kiss on the cheek or handing them 50 candy-bars a day just to appease their wishes.

    Not being a parent myself, I can not assume I would be any different than countless well-meaning parents in Chicago – and my heart goes out to folks doing the most important work in the world, raising up the next generation.  It IS the most important work…which is why this question must be asked…

    What does Love do?

    I look to the perfect picture of familial love – the Father God and his Son Jesus Christ.  Review the Gospels to find what the most beautiful, ultimate parenting skills look like in action.  Re-read the Gospels with the eyes of how God ‘parented’ Jesus, and you may find that the Love of the Father sends his Son into Mission.

    I’ve seen some parents walking down the street with their two-year-old running about 20 feet behind them, frantically trying to keep up; I’ve seen other parents let their kids shoot ahead of them unawares, running at full-speed toward busy streets, and still others keep their kids on leashes, never leaving them out of their reach (with literal leashes~ or a GPS on their teen’s cell phone)!

    Watch the Father keep his Son intimately close for years, teaching him who He is and Whose He is.  At twelve years old, Jesus has a better grip on his identity and his mission than most adult Christian leaders.  Speaking to his earthly parents, who had LOST HIM at a city-festival, found  him in the Temple, and Jesus’ pre-teenage voice, cracking as he plainly said, “Why are you looking for me?  Didn’t you know that I must be where my Father’s work is!”  Potent — both intimacy and mission wrapped into one sentence…(Lk 2:48-50)

    As Jesus’ life progressed, he was sent out as the Light of the World, doing incredible work and breaking through the hardest barrier in the Universe – the human heart.  Even still, as a Good Father, God was ever-present and affirming of his Son, attuning regularly with Jesus in times of intimate prayer and communion.

    And it is in fact, the same relationship God hopes for all those chasing after the Jesus-Way.  We have a real opportunity to be “Fathered by God” – to find our true identity, and our true purpose and mission in life.  There are enough voices vying for our hearts and our dollars in this culture – it will take focus and intentionality to be fathered by God, but its worth it – not just for your own life, but for your children’s.

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  • Mark 10:32 am on November 14, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    It is in Our Nature to Nurture 

    I love learning about the brain.  It is so fun to explore the last frontier – to hear from the experts on their latest discoveries of the most densely-packed neural network in the universe!  The brain truly is an amazing thing.  My latest learnings have revolved around the way our brains (and our entire bodies) crave to nurture and be nurtured.

    Studies of eastern European orphanages where babies were essentially not touched (or nurtured) have long proven that nurture is in part what helps us survive – sadly, many of the under-nurtured children died.  Being nurtured, as infants and even as adults, helps us cope with the pains and pressures of this world.  It tells us we are not alone.

    But there is also a deep delight that comes from nurturing!  This impulse seems to come with a nuanced maturity (don’t give a 2 year old a tender orchid to care for) but the process of nurturing seems latent in many kids from the earliest years (baby dolls…pets…Farmville!?!)  For countless adults it brings a deeper sense of purpose and joy.  Nurturing actually boosts the maturity of the one maturing!  Suddenly you’re focus is not only on yourself, but on someone else.

    And this is the basic function of the Church!  To bring people from darkness to light, from immaturity to maturity.  As my friend says, “It is the Family of God, with the elders raising up the ‘youngers’.”  None of us come to faith and maturity in Jesus Christ on our own, it takes the nurturing and tending of a community bringing us along on the Way of Jesus.  And for the elders, the spiritual moms and dads of a church, nurturing others (also called discipleship) is like legal steroids for their own maturity.  This is just how it works in God’s family!

    So why is it so rare in the American Church today?  There is a lot that gets in the way of nurturing – we get side-tracked with budgets, with building campaigns, with so much more.  It is simply more dramatic and impressive to see a new education wing built or to spend our efforts writing a better sermon series.  These things help in the process of nurturing for some churches, but they ultimately are a sideshow to the real project of the Church – to bring the entire planet into a relationship of delight with their Creator.

    And I’d like to think that this organic nurture in the Church is not as rare as we think – it is likely that it just goes on unannounced.  With an older woman taking a younger lady out for tea, imparting wisdom and faith to the next generation.  This is where the real action is – the unspoken heroes of the faith.

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    • H a s h b r o w n 11:29 pm on November 15, 2011 Permalink

      This is a great point/topic.  I remember a church movement to which I once belonged having bowling get-togethers every other week, where older members and younger members were on mixed teams, hanging out and building relationships.  Although people were often drawn to folks in their same age group, there was a degree of elder-to-minor nurturing happening.  Some struggles for many church families, sadly–and a topic worth addressing–are having a balance of (1) interacting with regular people (i.e., non-Christians) and interacting with our brethren in the Lord and (2) interacting with our peers who are like us and interacting with wiser/more mature believers. 
      Some of us lean heavily towards spending time with our brethren in the
      Lord–and, often times, folks around the same age.  Some of us
      lean more heavily towards spending time with regular folks or those new
      to the Church and doing the nurturing.  Many churches of whom I’ve been a part have, at the very least, always taken nurturing brand new “converts” seriously–inviting friends and/or volunteers to stay in regular contact with and support them, inviting newly-born-again folks to join small groups, discipleship trainings, Bible studies, various ministry groups, etc.  Don’t know if a new model/paradigm is needed for older believers and younger believers to see how spending time together can look (e.g., explicitly teaching someone else’s minors/children, beyond just being a role model, can be a sketchy topic for many)…or if folks just need to follow the Spirit leading them to help raise the next generation.

    • Mark W 2:50 pm on November 16, 2011 Permalink

      Well said! The two fulcrums you describe are plainly visible in the lives of most Christians. I’m wondering if you see those two tensions (Christian/Non-Christian) and (peer/non-peer) as balances between “good and bad” – what I mean is, are there seasons we need to be with people just like us, and seasons we need to venture out into diversity?

      I tend to think that just like the High School lunch room – it is “easier” to sit at the table of folks just like me (nerds, jocks, goths, etc) – this carries over into adulthood too – Chicago’s neighborhoods look a lot like the High School lunch room – just as segregated. This is both beautiful and tragic. When folks hang out with people like them, real cultures are created. But there is rarely transformation and stretching unless heterogeneity is encouraged.

      Follow up with me on this – you’ve got my gears turnin’… :)

    • Web Hosting Provider 6:53 am on January 17, 2012 Permalink

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  • Mark 12:19 pm on July 25, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Wolfgang Simpson   

    QSQ – A pathway to Movement 

    We in the West are becoming obsessed with people movements… You see this in church conferences too.  ”Church Planting Movements” are all the rage, and they rightly should be!  But it sometimes causes me to smile – My wonderful wife was in a crowd when the speaker asked the question, “What will it take to see a church planting movement in the United States?”  At which point she leaned over to me and said, “Church planting FIBER!”  I love it.

    It is fascinating to read through the pages of the MONDO Layer of the Church (God’s eternal Church, throughout time and space) to see how others have tried to respond to the movement of the Spirit.  What about our actions could partner with or negatively subvert the workings of the Holy Spirit?

    I have seen movements of God absolutely squelched because:

    • Someone wanted to take credit for it,
    • I have seen other movements maligned because a mutation of unhealthy discipleship began manipulating people,
    • Other movements take on distorted views of Jesus Christ,
    • Still others began paying teachers and preachers exorbitant amounts to pacify the rest of the movement into consumers…whoops – that one might have hit too close to home.

    But the question remains – What is the pathway to a church planting movement covering the face the globe, one in which people from every tongue, tribe and nation are able to see a Jesus-centered community close enough to them that they feel as if Jesus himself has “moved into the neighborhood”?

    QSQ – a Pathway to Movement*

    Quality

    The deep shifts that move us away from “church plant engineering” and “multiplication expectations” and “performance anxiety” among the organic churches is to invite people into a life of QUALITY.  Invite people not into a stifling, dead, or manipulative community, but into a rich, dynamic open community full of the metaphors of family.  Point them to the Gospels and to Acts – and all the ways in which God’s in-breaking Kingdom of God will transform their life and their neighborhood.  Go deep with them, and stay there – don’t let them think you’re in it for more church numbers…because you’re not.  You’re in this community with them for the same reason their in it with you - to discover Jesus Christ together.

    Structure

    As you live out your “abundant life” in community with an expectancy for growth (but without expectation), there is the practical and healthy need for STRUCTURE.  The one house church cannot become 2, then 3, then 6, then 12…and so on without a structure to support the same kind of healthy, dynamic God-centered friendship that you experienced at a MESO Level.   So many organic churches don’t get this, to their peril – they think that no structure is the way to stay healthy and vibrant, only to find that the lack of managing a spiritually nurturing system will always be managing them.  The converse is also true – so many program-based, building-based churches rely on an oppressive structure that squelched the life out of them years ago. We need to find healthy “internal” structures and keep the external structures from stifling the life of a multiplying community.

    Quantity

    As QUALITY and STRUCTURE co-mingle, we watch QUANTITY happen naturally.  It is not an explicitly stated outcome – it merely happens.  We want quantity, yes, but to strive for it will ultimately kill the quality, or unnecessarily burden the structures you’ve developed.  Like watching a strawberry plant – it begins as one single plant, you carefully nurture it to maturity, and it will bear rich, delicious fruit – and in time you cultivate a structure around it that promotes and encourages multiplication – and soon the plant is sending out feeders in all directions – using the soil, the sun, the trellis…anything you’ve put in its path to multiply like crazy!

    If we live out of these principles:  Quality, then Structure, then Quantity — and if the Holy Spirit sees our desire for partnership (regardless of who gets the credit!) then we may just see that often spoken-of but much elusive “church planting movement”…but more importantly, we will see a Holy Spirit movement, even here in the Secular West!

    *read more on QSQ: Wolfgang Simpson’s House Church Book (aka Houses that Change the World)

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