Opportunity is Knocking

This weekend Harvest Community Church will be highlighting Compassion International and its work around the world. Seize the opportunity to get involved!

Blessed are the Poor...

I just read about a church in Corpus Christi, Texas that is going to give away over a million dollars in prizes during their Easter service.

"Cornelius asked church members to donate during services two weeks ago. The response since has been overwhelming. The plan was promoted as a $1 million giveaway, but the actual value is going to be much higher. The 15,000 gift bags alone are worth $4.5 million if all the goods and services are cashed in." (Complete article here)

So, what do you think about this? Is this something that is beneficial to the Kingdom or is there a better way to wield generosity?  I would be curious to hear what you think.

C.S. Lewis and the Purpose of the Church

The church exists for nothing else but to draw men
into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are
not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions,
sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of
time. God became a Man for no other purpose.

— C. S. Lewis

The Divine Commodity

I just finished Skye Jethani's book The Divine Commodity and found it to be both fresh and convicting in diagnosing much of the state of contemporary Christianity. One of the main characters in his book is the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. Jethani does an excellent job telling the story of the modern church through the works and life van Gogh. Here are a few excerpts from the book that really struck me.

On the church's idolatrous focus of creating a consumer experience:

"Ministries that focus on manufacturing spiritual experiences, despite their laudable intentions, may actually be retarding spiritual growth by making people experience dependent. Like caged animals, consumer Christians lose the ability to do what they were designed by God to do—have a vibrant, self-generating relationship with Christ. Instead, they become dependent upon their zookeeper-pastors for life nourishment. This captive/captor relationship is unlikely to change as long as both the church member and leader are satisfied with the arrangement. But is this what the Christian life is supposed to be?" -pg. 79

On the church's tendancy to practice a form of divination where we try to control God and get him to do our bidding:

"The exchange of an unpredictable God for controllable principles is also common within the church. Our insistence on an institutional and programmatic faith is a savvy new form of divination. Invariably, churches that experience significant numerical growth will publish books outlining their methodology and create conferences so other leaders can reproduce such success in their in their own churches. The assumption is that with the right curriculum, the right principles, and the right programs God’s Spirit will act to produce the outcomes we desire. This plug-and-play approach to the Christian life makes God a cosmic vending machine, and it assumes his Spirit resides within well-produced organizations and systems rather than people." -pg 97

A call to live out the Gospel in the midst of our daily obedience, hospitality and authenticity:

"Our homes are to be hospitals—refuges of healing radiating the light of heaven. And our dinner tables are to be operating tables—the place where broken souls are made whole again. In our churches people should find rest from their battle for acceptance and release from the lie that they are nothing more than the goods they possess. When we lower our defenses, when we remove our facades and our peepholes, and we begin to be truly present with one another—then the healing power of the gospel can begin it’s work." pg-154

Eugene Peterson: Wisdom for Church Planters

I just stumbled upon some letters that Eugene Peterson has been hand writing to a church planter and pastor on J.R. Briggs blog. These letters are full of wisdom to those in occupational ministry. Here is a quote that struck me:

"The killing frost in too much new church development is forming programs that will attract people or serve their perceived 'needs,' getting them 'involved.' The overriding need they have is worship and that is the one thing that is lowest on their 'needs' list. Insist on it: keep it simple – learn to know every last one of them relationally. And call them to worship – and not entertainment worship, but a community at worship."

(Click here to read more)

Innovation3 Follow Up

Ok, so it was very silly of me to think that I could possibly unpack what I heard in the last 24 hours on a blog. It is just not possible. What I will do is try to write out some very brief and pithy main ideas that I am taking away from from specific people who I heard at this conference.

Gary Gaddini- "A missional focus is the greatest discipleship tool for the church."
Brian Mills- God is at always at work everywhere, we must seek him and join him."
Reggie McNeal- "Church is not a "what", church is a "who".
John Jenkins- "The greatest hindrance to the next move of God is the last move of God."
Ed Stetzer- Talked way to fast and said way too much to take away any one thing. He posted his entire notes from his talk at Ed Stetzer.com
Nancy Ortberg- "Innovators should have a great list of failures. We must be cautious not to criticise new ideas too soon or too quickly."
Bob Roberts- "Where Hell is breaking loose, God is already there, so let's join Him."
Kent Schaffer- Regarding the use of technology: "At the end of the day the thing that matters is relationship."
Mark DeYmaz- "1 in 2 people in the United States will not be White by 2047 (this according to the US Census Bureau)."
John Bishop- "87% of churches in the USA have plateaued or are declining in members"
Greg Surrat- "How will the attractional model of church hold up in a resource poor environment?"

100 Things You Should Know

Our church recently started a 100 part sermon series which highlights 100 key parts to the Bible narrative (Click here for sermon podcasts). We will be spending the next two years taking a look at redemptive history from Genesis to Revelation and along the way we will be posting additional relevant information here (things like additional reading, video clips, etc...). Heath Allison is a very talented artist in our church who has been illustrating each section of the story which you can see on this time line. If you have never read the Bible from beginning to end this is a great way to get a glimpse of the big story. Watch out! Not only may you learn something new, but you might have fun along the way.

Life is Ministry: Looking Back at 2008

If you are new to Life is Ministry than I want to welcome you! I began blogging in 2004 on the Swainlife Blog while I lived in Spain as a way of staying in touch with friends and family. Slowly, over time, that blog morphed from a blog about family news and ministry in Spain to more of my thoughts on how best we, as Christians, live lives of ministry in this changing world.

Over the years I have enjoyed this platform as a way of communicating ways that I am personally being challenged in my own journey of faith in Christ. I believe that that ministry is not reserved for an elite few nor is it limited to churchy stuff and because of that this blog looks at a wide range of issues and how they affect Christians in our ministry to others. If you enjoy what you read then I would invite you to subscribe to the RSS Feed (Go here to find out more about that). I was just looking back over the blog for 2008 and wanted to highlight some of my favorite posts from the past year.

Missing the Point- Searching the scriptures and still missing the heart of God.
Food Crime- A connection of food and violence.
Universal Health Care- A good idea? If not, what can we do better than we are doing now?
Pursuing God in a Technological Age and the Secular versus the Sacred- Two powerful Tozer quotes
Practical Ways to Support A Missionary- This will be especially important in 2009 if financial trends continue in the same direction as 2008.
Ministry in Suburbia- Some of the challenges Christians face as well as some ideas for living and ministering in Suburbia.
Is Christ Divided? Rhetorical question by the Apostle Paul. His answer-"No". Reality in today's world? I doubt it.
Human Trafficking- The new lucrative trend in the black market
What is Necessary to be the/a Church? A look at what we have become and questioning if it is what we should be.
Our First Allegiance- Some thoughts on politics
Addicts Make the Best Church Leaders- Hello, my name is sinner!
Faith of a Mustard Seed- A story of faith in inner-city Chicago.
Will the Real JC Please Stand Up?- Molding Jesus into our image (what???)
Low tech Espresso and Making the Perfect Coffee- This is a gift to my friends who love coffee!

Advent: A Lost Tradition

My wife loves Christmas! She loves the music, the festivities, being generous to others, being with close friends and families and traditions. She comes from a Roman Catholic background and with that is a love for some of the traditions that I used to scoff at, but have grown to respect and cherish. Over the years, she has led our family in an annual advent tradition. She always makes sure that during the advent season that we pull out the wreath and light the candles for the corresponding weeks.

Each evening after supper our family reads some of the suggested daily readings together and our children learn the meanings of the symbolism behind each tradition. Children already have a natural anticipation of Christmas and the season of advent helps them (and me) prepare ourselves anew for the little baby who is known as Emmanuel and is a light to this world.

What are some of the traditions you have in your house in the midst of the Christmas season?

NT Wright and the Western Church

NT Wright speaks on the future of the Western Christian Church and discusses his thoughts on what might happen to the church in transition. I always find him very insightful. Enjoy!



Thanks to the Blind Beggar for pointing out this video.

The Prodigal God by Tim Keller

The Prodigal God by Tim Keller explores the reckless abandon with which God loves this world. He shows how this story, which is traditionally referred to as The Prodigal Son, is not really told for the sake of the younger son. Instead the story is told with the elder brother in mind as the main audience. He demonstrates that the sins of the elder son are as much an affront to the Father as those of the younger son. The only difference is that at the end of the story the younger son is participating in the banquet, but the elder remains outside and we are not told his response.

We are not told the ending because it is up to us to decide how this story ends. This story picks up a concept that I originally read about in CS Lewis. It is the idea that those most in danger of eternal separation from God are those of us who think we have it all together. We think that it is merely by doing enough religious activities or refraining from licentiousness that we will enter the banquet. Without realizing it we sit on throne of our own hearts as our on savior, which is the most precarious way to live. I'll leave you with a few quotes that I found powerful:

"The bad son enters the father's feast but the good son will not. The lover of prostitutes is saved, but the man of moral rectitude is still lost." (pg. 34)

"The people who confess they aren't particularly good or open-minded are moving toward God, because the prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know you need it. The people who think they are just fine, thank you, are moving away from God." (pg. 45-46)

"Everyone knows that the Christian gospel calls us away from the licentiousness of younger brotherness, but few realize that it also condemns moralistic elder brotherness." (pg. 67)

The Prodigal God comes out later this week and is definitely worth the read. I especially recommend it to those who have grown up in the church or who have been hurt by church people.

What is Necessary in Order to be the/a Church?

This question echoed around in my head for several years while I lived overseas. As I prayerfully thought through this, layer upon layer of American cultural church baggage was stripped away for me. I began to think of the Presbyterian Church that I was part of prior to going to the field. Obviously certain physical structures began to fall away immediately. Most Christians would agree that while they like their church building you don't have to have a steeple, pews, red carpet or an organ to effectively be the church.

Then I started thinking about the life of a church in a typical week. You don't necessarily need a Sunday school, a youth group, or a benevolence committee to be a church. Those are all great things, but are not absolutely necessary to be the church. Then I started thinking about the way we met on Sundays. Do you have to meet on Sundays? Do you have to have a time of singing together? As someone who was a worship leader for many years I sure do like it, but is it necessary? Must you have a sermon preached every Sunday? This question makes many people very uncomfortable. In our very small body of believers in Spain we went for a long time with out any official sermon, but we always dedicated ourselves to meeting together and to studying the scripture. This study took on various forms, but it did not require that one person study the scripture and spoon feed the rest. Instead, being a small group of believers everyone was responsible to participate and bring something to the spiritual table. We fed, challenged and discipled one another. Were we the church or were we something else?

In my mind I began to compare the church to a house and this mental exercise caused me to do a spring cleaning. I took all of the furniture of this house out into the front lawn along with a bunch of trash that had accumulated in my mental understanding of what it meant to be a church. There are certain things for every house that are absolutely essential for it to be a house. It needs a foundation and walls and a roof. After that, there are some essential pieces of furniture which we tend to place in the house to make it more livable. After we have the structure and the furniture, then we get into the decorations. These are the individual aspects of each house which make it a home. Each house is decorated in a different way, and this may make a house more beautiful (or ugly depending on your taste), but not every house will choose the same decorations.

As we look at the church we must realize what the true foundation of this structure is. After that we should move on to some of the essential pieces of furniture. Then we can move on to decorating, but let us be cautious not to confuse the decorations with the foundation. Also, once we take out the garbage we should resist the urge to bring it back inside and throw it in the closet. That will just make our Church an unhealthy place.

So what do you think? What is absolutely necessary in order to be the/a church? What are some great pieces of furniture that every church should strive for? What are some things that are nice, but merely decorations? And finally, are your answers Biblically or culturally based?

Christian Mega-Church Opens in Indonesia

This definitely raises a lot of questions for me, but it is worth noting that a Christian Mega-Church has opened in the predominantly Muslim country of Indonesia. Visit the Reuters article here.

Friends in Galicia

Now that Lori and I live in the NW Suburbs of Chicago, we continue to follow the lives of our friends across the pond through their blogs.

This week I had the opportunity to talk with a good friend from Spain in person. I was able to grab a coffee with Roberto Reed as he was passing through the Chicago area. Rob lives in A Couruña, Spain. We met several years ago and I always enjoyed when I was able to visit Vida Nueva Church (A church that he helped to plant). Occasionally friends from the church would come and assist us during the opening of art exhibits in cafe Terra Nova. We enjoyed the kind of partnership that happens when Christians take kingdom view of ministry and work to encourage one another.

Last summer we were able connect with Nate and Faith Walter as they left the Chicago area and headed to Galicia with International Teams. Rob and his church graciously welcomed them and have been working alongside of them as they adjust to life in Spain. We are thankful for Rob and his family and the way that God is working through them to reach Spain with the Gospel. If you ever make it to Galicia it would be well worth your time to look up Roberto and the Walters.

Is Christ Divided?

According to Marin Marty in his book The Christian World: A Global History there are approximately 3,800 different Christian church groupings in today’s world. When I was in Spain I once had an agnostic Catholic ask me, “How can I know that the Christianity that you talk about is true when there are so many branches of Christianity around the world? If you can’t agree with other Christians about what is true, how could you ever possibly convince someone who does not follow Christianity?

When Paul came to Corinth for the first time in Acts 18 what he would have discovered a city less than a hundred years old that was bustling with activity. Corinth had an ideal location on an isthmus between two seaports that were four miles apart. Ships traveling from east to west preferred to unload their wares in one port and deliver it over land to a boat in the other port. Traveling south around this isthmus was particularly dangerous so shipping the good over land was the preferred method. This caused Corinth to be a major cross-roads of all kinds of good and services. Along with it’s new wealth and lack of traditions and heritage Corinth was a city known for its licentiousness. It would be comparable in reputation to a modern day Las Vegas or Amsterdam.

During Paul’s time there he encountered opposition among the Jews, but the Proconsul of Achai made a ruling that in essence said that Christianity was a part of Judaism. This legal precedent opened the doors for Christianity to spread across the empire. Paul spent a year and a half in Corinth making disciples and preaching the Gospel before moving on to other ministry fields.

While Paul was ministering in Ephesus he heard reports from multiple sources on the state of the church in Corinth. He finally addressed the church with the letter of First Corinthians. After an initial greeting to the church in Corinth he immediately confronts them based on what he has heard.

It is interesting to me the way in which he confronts them. He begins by saying “I appeal to you…”. He could have said I command or decree but instead he invites, encourages, and implores. Paul follows his own advice of correcting and rebuking with gentleness.

After putting forth an invitation he says the same thing to them three different ways. Whenever something is stated three times in three different ways it is obvious that it is important and that the author wants to avoid any confusion in what he is saying. First, he encourages the believers to agree with one another. Second, he states that there should be no divisions among the believers. Third, implores them to be united in mind and in thought.

The Corinthians had been quarreling and had lost focus on the one thing that they had in common. They began to focus on small externalities of faith and would claim that they followed a particular brand of Christianity. Some said that they followed Paul’s version of Christianity. Some said they followed Apollos’ version. Apollos was reputed to be a great orator and philosopher. Some said they followed Peter’s Christianity, some speculate that he had more appeal to the working class. And then of course there were those who claimed that they follow Jesus. One must wonder if this was a group who was genuinely seeking to be Christ followers or if they were just trying to out trump the others as to who had the best celebrity baptism.

Continuing on in his gentle rebuke, Paul appeals to logic. He asks them a series of rhetorical questions to point out the how ludicrous their arguments are. While they had been focusing on what made them different, Paul brings back into focus what it is that unites us. Again he makes his appeal in threes. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? All three answers point to Christ and how he is not divided. Basically, he is asking, “Why are you willing to be divided over baptism when we all find the same salvation in Christ?”

Then, in verse 17 Paul takes one final blow at the basis of their quarrels. He says that while they were fighting over whose baptism was better that baptism takes a back seat to the Gospel. You can’t have baptism without the Gospel and Paul was sent to preach the Gospel not baptism. They were fighting over a minor issue, a secondary issue and were allowing that to divide them. By focusing their time and energy on the wrong things they were not only forgetting the Gospel but were emptying the cross of its power. Ouch!

Recently I read a book called The Heavenly Man, which was an autobiographical account of the growth of Christianity in modern day China through house churches. This book reads like a modern day story of Acts. One of the things that was very interesting to me was that at the beginning of the church planting movement the only thing these small house churches had were a couple of copies of the Bible. When the Bible was all that they had, these churches worked together in unity, praying for one another and ministering together. This was going on for years and then some well-intentioned missionaries brought along some additional denominational material, which was spread among different groups. As different house churches received books and pamphlets from different denominations something very disheartening happened. They began to say we can’t pray or work with you because you don’t believe the same as us about baptism, or the working of the Holy spirit, or eschatology. As these churches began to focus on their differences factions, schisms, splits, and quarreling became the norm.

As we think about Christian unity we must realize what it is not. Christian unity is not accepting any belief or idea that comes along as valid and true. Christian unity is not a relativistic idea that says whatever you believe is ok for you. Christian unity does not mean that we unquestioningly hold communion with people from every so-called “Christian group, sect, or cult”.

True Christian unity means that should not quarrel and fight with fellow believers over secondary issues when we are all saved through the same Christ. Like Paul we should step above the fray and in humility hold up everything to the light of Christ’s work on the cross. We should be quick to focus on what unites us and cautious about focusing on minor things that might divide us. Focusing on secondary issues weakens the church as well as empties the cross of its power. A church divided brings confusion to the world, to people like my agnostic friend in Spain. However, a church united in the love of Christ is the best witness the world will ever see!

One?

"I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world."

-Jesus the Christ

Clay Shirky: Institutions vs. collaboration

As you watch this think about how it relates to the church as an institution.