Godgrown

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  Mark 9:44 am on January 18, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill W.   

  To Keep It…SHARE IT! 

  Over the last few weeks I’ve been diving into the life of Bill W.

  Most Americans have either never heard of him or know all about him.  He sort of designed it that way.

  Bill was a up-and-coming stock trader in the 1920′s and was doing pretty well for himself.  He was a risk taker and the life of the party.  Over the years however he found that it took more and more alcohol to really enjoy himself, and before long, he was drinking just to “feel normal” again.  As the 1929 stock market crashed, he took to drinking heavily, and soon his entire life revolved around the bottle.  He scared his wife Lois and regularly promised sobriety only to let her down time and again.

  He was ‘powerless’ in the face of his own addiction.

  He was brought to the very bottom when his wife finally came to her senses and checked him into a ‘sanitarium’ – a kind of hospital and mental institution for substance abusers and the insane.  He was tied to his bed as he wallowed in his own shame.  This, from a man who was topping the charts on Wall Street only a few years earlier.  He better than any of knew the vicious poison…and luring potion of alcohol.

  He found God in that sanitarium.  From that moment on he began to give himself over to a “Higher Power” – the same way he formerly gave himself over to alcohol.  His wife and friends were at first skeptical, then overjoyed!  But he was not out of the woods yet.  His temptations were still there.  He believed that part of his life now was to share the path to sobriety with other drunks – that somehow he needed to keep telling the story of his own redemption in order to hold on to the sobriety he sought out every day – one day at a time.

  Bill’s returned to work – and on one occasion he was sent to Cincinnati, OH.  Far from his routines in New York City, he found himself tempted more than ever to finding the nearest lounge and no doubt falling off the wagon once again. In a last ditch effort he went out in search of a drunk who might listen to his tale.  He comes across Bob S., drunk and depressed as Bill had been in that sanitarium.

  One movie script of their encounter has Bill sitting down with a skeptical Bob, Bob going on and on about how Bill was wasting his time trying to convince Bob to stop drinking.  ”Doctors, shrinks…they’ve all gave me their best, but nothing stuck,” Bob grunted to Bill, “What makes you think you can do anything for me?”  Bill leaned forward with a drunk’s desperation in his eyes and responded,

  “I’m not here to do anything for you, I’m here for me.”

  Thus began Alcoholics Anonymous.

  Sharing the story of salvation from alcohol is the key to keeping your own sobriety.  “To keep it, you have to share it.”  It’s like breathing – if you want to keep your breath, you have to share it – breathing in and keeping it will only kill you!  You have to let it go to get it again.

   This is how it works on Wikipedia as well, if you want to set the record straight on the wingspan of a flying squirrel, you add your tidbit of knowledge to the flying squirrel Wiki page.  But simultaneously, you share it with the rest of the world.

  It’s like our own salvation.  It’s like the mission of the church.  We are simultaneously “re-presenting” the Gospel to ourselves when we share it with others.  And when a church or a Christian fails to share the Gospel with others, they fail to experience it themselves, and they become more of a problem to the world than a beautiful response to the problems of the world!

  So keep the sobriety of your salvation.  Follow the advice of Bill W., who understood more than most how desperately he needed to give it away, day after day…

  To keep it, SHARE IT!

  

  Katrina is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Katrina 1:52 pm on January 19, 2012 Permalink

    Well written!

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  Mark 10:01 am on January 10, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  The Mission of Gardening 

  One house church in the Underground Network has made it their mission to reclaim an abandoned space in a Chicago city park. This plot of land was used as a literal trash dump for anyone passing by, making the quarter-acre of land a blight on the entire neighborhood in which the house church was located. The project was started February 2011, where a few folks in one house church drew up some plans for a vegetable garden in this space – and in April they picked up the trash and filth, and built a raised-bed garden – with fresh, rich top soil.

  Their goal was to follow the spirit of 1 Cor 1: 28, 29 – “For God chose things despised by the world, things considered as nothing, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers to be important…” They invited the entire neighborhood to participate, including several gardeners, many of whom were skeptical of the project’s success. Over the year, more and more volunteers contributed their efforts. There was a good sized harvest (for first time gardeners!) and all the grown produce was enjoyed by neighbors and during the house church gatherings. It was beautiful.

  In November 2011, that house church gave birth to another house church, which brought in the neighbors who had worked on the garden – now they knew that there was a Christian church behind the garden, and they wanted to be a part of that kind of church – so this new house church is planning in 2012 to expand the veggie garden, and they are dreaming of opening up a new farmers market to invite regional farmers to sell their produce alongside this little urban garden’s yield.

  All this, from an abandoned lot.

  “God chose the things despised by the world, the things considered as nothing, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important – so no one can boast in the presence of God!”

  

  Jay Abels is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Jay Abels 12:30 pm on February 1, 2012 Permalink

    There are many ways to sow.   It is always awesome to see the harvest.

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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)