Godgrown

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  Mark 1:29 pm on February 10, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  Gathering the Fragments 

  Worship is the substance of life within a church body. It gives meaning and purpose to the individual disciple, as well as the community as a whole. But assuming that worship is more inclusive than just a weekly corporate event, what shape might worship take?

  Worship is the cleansing of toxins in the Body of Christ, creating a semi-permeable membrane that holds tightly to the essential DNA of Christ; his message, his lifestyle, his resurrection, but filters out the lies of the world and the Evil One.

  Worship is the evaluation of God in the presence of a community; publicly affirming that God is good and is the center of the community’s identity. The nature and function of that worship will always be centered on God, but its shape and expression will be wildly diverse.

  The Church is built on the trillion cells of local churches scattered throughout time and space. Each local community of faith must find worship not only as an event, but as a way of life. Throughout the week, each follower of Christ is attentive to the guidance of Christ in prayer and in Scripture, and then gathering with other disciples to discern collectively what the Lord might be saying to them, as well as to collectively express heartfelt devotion to him.

  Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

  The Apostle Paul saw worship as participating in the life of the next age. At the apex of time, Paul conceived of the Church as God’s new humanity, and believed that Christians in worship was the realization of God’s eschatological work, where worshippers can actively participate in the new aeon to come. Under the influence of this new age, the worshipping Christian will be transformed; a complete metamorphosis of thinking, willing, and conduct. This change is external (lives) but springs forth from the internal (renewing of one’s mind). As children of God, the mind is no more ruled by the present world but by the will of God…

  …And God’s will is to be discerned by the community, and becomes one of the centering practices of the Church. Paul is mysterious about the process of communal discernment, but denotes the adjectives (good, pleasing, and perfect) that sum up the transformed life of a Christian community that focuses on worshipping God and discerning his will together.

  Implied in this text and other Scriptures is that while the Christian is engaged in worship and discernment all week long, it culminates in the gathering of the community. Each person having been listening and responding in worshipful action to the direction and inspiration of the Lord throughout the week then brings their discoveries to the common worship event to share. In this all parts build up the body, edifying and strengthening the whole.

  Learning God’s will happens when the lives of a community of believers meet together to share the fragments of God they’ve discovered throughout the week – instead of creating a culture of consumerism (where each person comes to receive the latest and greatest spiritual resource) each person brings a new picture of the Gospel and listens for what God is whispering to the group.

  What group couldn’t try this? I can imagine a house church making this their weekly practice, but I can also see organizing an event with hundreds gathered together to listen to God and share what they’re hearing.  World Cafe is a good model of this practice.

  The Anabaptists had a saying,

  “We don’t want to get rid of the clergy…we want to get rid of the laity!”

  Learning to worship in community and to discern God’s will in community can be a project in dismantling passivity in the church – and inviting each follower of Jesus to be a “priest” of God to the world…

  1 Peter 2:9 …For you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

  
   

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  Mark 8:27 am on February 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  The Raw Materials of Diversity 

  I am a part of a house church, which is a part of a network of house churches.  This organic relationship between individual/family/tribe is essential for spiritual survival in this postmodern world. Let me explain.

  Last Sunday our little network of house churches (the Underground Church Network) met for worship and fellowship in the basement of a family’s home.  We chatted and enjoyed some appetizers, we met new faces and reconnected with familiar ones.  We prayed, we listened, we read Scripture, we sang.  It was a full montage of spiritual ascent and a beautiful mosaic of an extended family of faith.

  So many churches, regardless of their size or model, don’t have much interest for linking arms with other communities.  ’Why do we need to play nice with others in the sandbox when we’re barely treading water on our own?’  Exactly.

  I was watching another great Nova science and nature documentary a few nights back – and something struck a chord when the narrator said,

  “We need bio-diversity precisely because change is constant and frankly we need the raw materials of diversity to help life adapt to that change.”

  That’s it.  While you are an amazing deposit of beautiful characteristics and traits flowing from a seemingly limitless strand of DNA, your amino acids have their limits.  If everyone had your characteristics, though I’m sure we’d survive for awhile, we simply couldn’t handle an outbreak that specifically broke through your immune defenses.  Not to mention the beauty in diversity we’d lose!

  In our worship, in how we hear from God – if it always sounds just like we like it, who are we really worshiping? To defend against the viruses of the Evil One – we need the “ecclesio-diversity” of a extended network of faith – a family of families that love and trust each other and know how desperately we need to hear God speak through the other.

  Life is constantly in flux – change is the only constant.  If you only rely on yourself and your own particular pathway to God, you may always be happy, but you’ll never be satisfied.  God wants to speak to you through the network – through the MACRO.  Engage the full Body of Christ, discover your own blind spots, and listen to the LORD in fresh ways!

  
   
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  Mark 7:56 am on January 27, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  You are Whose You are 

  Someone else gave you your name.  Think about that for a moment.

  Among the items that make up the most central part of your identity, of who you are in this world – your name might be at the top of the list.  Who are you without your name?  And yet – you had nothing to do with the name; it was given to you.

  At your center – you are not own; you are whose you are.

  Naming someone is a tremendous privilege, and must be seen as one of the most holy things a person can do.  Hopefully the one who named you followed up with a relationship of intimacy, care and commitment.  All too often, those who were rejected by the one who named them have at their core a “missing piece” – their name becomes Rejection, Absence, Abandonment.

  And even more so in Isaiah’s day, given names told folks something about who you were at your core, what your personality was like, and maybe even what your mission or role was in society.

  So when God starts giving out new names to the Jews that returned to Judea from exile, he’s marking it as important as him giving birth to a brand new identity.  Yahweh looks right into the eyes of the Jewish remnant and boldly proclaims,

  62:4 Never again will you be called “The Forsaken City”

  or “The Desolate Land.”

  Your new name will be “The City of God’s Delight”

  and “The Bride of God,”

  for the Lord delights in you

  and will claim you as his bride.

  What is your name?  Who gave you that name?  What is your relationship with them like today?

  Does the statement you are whose you are bring dread or delight to your heart?

  Many followers of Jesus have a retreat where they head out on their own for a few days to listen to God and discover their true, “spiritual” name. It is a weekend to discover the name God gave you – a time to reorient your core identity as coming out of intimacy with Papa God.

  May you find the name you’ve been given by God, and live under his delight!