Been a maddeningly busy week, and even crazier this weekend.  Been doing some training on an upcoming project that could prove to be really exciting…we’ll see how it pans out.

Today Katrina and I met up with leaders from others from house church networks all over the region.  We met very close to O’Hare and chatted about the upcoming Greenhouse Conference with Neil Cole and others.  This is a weekend intensive conference that brings in some great speakers from around the country to share some of their insights into the wild, emerging conversation of viral discipleship and organic church planting.  Its the perfect conference whether you just want to learn about it all from a 30,000ft perspective or you’re ready to dive in head first, OR you’ve been at it for years and need help with the complex issues of leadership and networking.

Wanna learn more about the event?  Check out our new starter website for all organic networks in Chicago.  If you are in a network or know of another one, please contact me and we’ll get ya added!  Want to attend the Greenhouse Conference?  Soon we’ll have a Registration site – but for now you can check all the details for it here. If ya just can’t wait – click “contact us” on my blog’s side bar.

My hope is to get a few more posts up this week – I’ve been missing you blog!

We’re moving!  The new neighborhood is about 10 miles south and one mile west from where we are today in Evanston.  This is a more centralized location to work with the different faith communities we’re resourcing and connecting in Chicago.  The neighborhood is a west side neighborhood called West Town, a diverse district filled with businesses, mixed income households (homeless, immigrants, young professionals and established families), social centers (parks, coffee spots, food distribution plots) and loads of potential.  These are our new neighbors!

There are new friends that we’ve grown to love here on the north side, and we’ll be close enough to them to continue growing in friendship, in community, and in mission here in the city.  We’ll hopefully see more of our friends as we start to see groups meeting together on the larger scale.  For the last year, we’d been commuting down to Hyde Park on a weekly basis (50 to 90 min!), and now we’re located in a much more central location that will reduce travel time and create more space for relationship building.  We’re looking forward to new communities, new relationships, new heart connections, developed training, kingdom dreaming, and of course, coffee!

We’ve been so thankful for our little apartment here, and being right next to the train and easy access to the north side of the city has been a blessing to begin to see our mission field up close. (Katrina really enjoys the trees here!)  We’ve met new people, helped form new communities of faith, come alongside other missionaries and disciples of Christ, and even helped resource and connect individuals and groups with this tool.  We’re taking this to a new level, from a strategically centralized location.

We’ve been up close to Chicago and sharing the Gospel for a year, but strategically moving into the geographic middle of it changes everything…

The second word missional refers to the Latin root missio or “sent.”  We are moving into bold new territory.  We are actively entering the conversation of the city – we are involving ourselves with the big issues facing millions of others.  This includes problems of crime, political corruption, violence, disintegrating public schools and spiritual darkness.

• Oh yeah, and there is an empty lot nearby where someone has already started a produce garden.  I’m all over that like white on cauliflower!

As we prepare for our move – we beg your prayers.  We see our work as missionaries in a city – helping to re-imagine the Body of Christ’s potential to be catalysts for change in the city, and the spark for a spontaneous expansion equal to that of the early church or the modern Chinese underground church.  We believe God is moving his people strategically toward revealing himself in amazing ways.

At this point I can say it:  “We’ve been here in Chicago for a full year.”

Its a completely new place from our previous home of Abilene, TX where Katrina and I met and grew to love each other and our Father in such amazing ways.  The sights, the smells, the sounds of the city fill my senses even as I write this in one of my new favorite coffee shops.  I sit back for a moment to reflect on all that has happened in the last year, and what this work here in Chicago is all about.

This is a movement.  In a culture that says that we must live alone, live for ourselves, breed racism, injustice, apathy and violence in our hearts – this is a movement of love.  Against religious abuses and elitism, we invite people to enter a Family of grace.  Where they can receive and give grace with everything they have.  Where they have a place at the table with God.  This is the Church – the Family of God.

This work is about an invitation to join that movement.  So often the great movements of God have been swept up and kept behind the doors of the seminary, or within a certain socioeconomic class.  But this dream is about crossing boundaries with the good news of God.  Going from rich to poor and back to rich, from black to white and all the colors of God’s rainbow, from coffee shops to barber shops to Polish bakeries to corporate offices and brothels.  This invitation calls out the adventurer in all of us – to cross the chasms and rivers that separate us in this city, and reimagines the city as a mission field to be discovered.

This movement is taking us into the New Age.  Jesus spoke of this “coming age,” one very much available and experienced now, but yet quite elusive and mysterious.  A new age unique to (but not mutually exclusive of) the popular term out there today.  It is a new age of sanity, even in the midst of chaos, an age of family in the midst of fractured tribalism and competition, an age of missional living – actively participating in the mission of God to embody the New Age in our everyday lives.  Yearning for the revolution, and then going to do the dishes and clean the toilet.

This movement aims to saturate the city – every nook and cranny – with the news that this New Age has truly come.  It’s bigger than any church, any personality, and truly bigger than any geographic locale. (but hey, ya gotta start somewhere!  And what better place to shine than in a dark place?)  Authentic communities of faith from every tongue, tribe and neighborhood in Chicago is our strategy, with the goal being the complete transformation of a city from top to bottom.

All this doesn’t mean we don’t live without fear and stress.  I am seeing a pattern: we are given a new insight from God, and then are systematically attacked by the Evil One.  In a faulting, wounded way, we’ve spent the last year planting and resourcing new churches, making friends, getting jobs, and inviting others to join the movement of Christ.  We’re so thankful to be a small part of what God is doing here.  We know that it is because of the love and support of so many that we’ve made it this far.  We’ve seen multiple house churches started, a network of faith worship together, and people come to faith in God.   As I reflect on our year, maybe the hardest of our adult lives, two words come to mind… It’s happening.