ethans feet

I just read a book called “How Your Church Family Works” by Peter L. Steinke.  And though at times I wished it was written with more, how should i say, strategy (some sections too short, some ideas repeated unnecessarily) overall I am glad i read the book.  The gist (for me) is this:

All churches are complex social networks (like families).  Anxiety can (and will) enter into these relationships form any number of places, external, inter-relational and personal.  The bad news is that often our church communities do not function as a collection of well-differentiated persons.  But rather, we function as a mesh of dependent and co-dependent interrelated and subconsciously triangled relationships. Therefore, when ever any anxiety enters the system it does not stay isolated wherever it enters the system but bounces and rebounds and doubles and triples itself within the web of relationships.

The good news (all though good news that comes with its own baggage it seems to me) is that the leadership of a community is in a unique position to take the power out of the anxiety by simply not entering into it.  i don’t mean by nonchalantly ignoring the problem or pretending it doesn’t exit, that’s actually a way of supporting it’s spread, but by engaging in the anxiety without being defined by it.

Of course all it takes is for the leader to have a perfect sense of who they are, what they want, who they are in relationship to others, and how their emotions are affecting them at any given moment.

In conclusion, I might say that Steink’s main definition of a leader is to be  a grown up.  They didn’t teach me how to do that in seminary.  I guess I’ll have to learn as i go.

So I had a total hand slap to the forehead moment the other day.

You see I have always used the term “missional church” without really realizing what it meant.  I mean I could have probably defined it in an academic way (I mean I’ve actually met the dude that made up the term) but I hadn’t made it concrete for myself in my setting.

And then, the other day I was thinking about my church and about how we always seem to me to be in danger of focusing on the important internal work of community formation and discipleship at the expense of the work of outreach and service.

And I thought (really for the first time) about how outreach and service, though different, both demand a posture of thinking of the person outside the church.  And then I thought that for all the other things we do well as a church, if we don’t have a posture facing toward the other then we have lost our mission.  And then i thought to myself that having a mission for any church really just means having a focus that lies outside the community that already exists in the church.  And then I realized that is what everyone else means when they talk about a “missional church”.

Duh.

If you are looking for a way to give an alternative Christmas gift, here’s a great place to start:

http://www.adventuresforthecure.com/campaigns/kupendaChristmas.html

Check it out.

For all our debating about atonement theory, reformed theology and the rest of it we often lose sight of the power and beauty of many of the original writings.  When considered with a proper sense of perspective, they are incredible resources for the church.  Here is a money quote from Martin Luther i cam across in my sermon prep today:

The “incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom.  By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh.  And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage – indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage – it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil.  Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own.  Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits.  Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation.  The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation.  Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life and salvation will be the soul’s; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride’s and bestow upon her the things that are his.  If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his?  And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?

Here we have a most pleasing vision not only of communion but of a blessed struggle and victory and salvation and redemption.  Christ is God and man in one person.  He has neither sinned nor died, and is not condemned, and he cannot sin, die, or be condemned; his righteousness, life, and salvation are unconquerable, eternal, omnipotent.  By the wedding ring of faith he shares in the sins, death, and pains of hell that are his bride’s.  As a matter of fact, he makes them his own acts as if they were his own and as if he himself had sinned; he suffered, died, and descended into hell that he might overcome them all”.

– Martin Luther c. 1520

I spent this past weekend up in Boston for my first in person board meeting for the aid organization Kupenda for the Children.  I have to tell you it was an immensely affirming experience.  For one thing I am a nerd so getting lost in the weeds and inertia of budgets and strategy kind of gets me going.  But mostly it was the people.

The Kupenda board is populated with people who have simply fallen in love with this little neighbourhood in the Kingdom of God.  Kupenda supports somewhere in the neighbourhood of 500 children in Kenya born with one form of disability or another.  And every one on the board but me has gone over there (most of them more than once) and the experience has become a calling in their life to dedicate themselves to this ministry.

One couple has raised probably close to fifty thousand dollars by this point doing fund raisers from riding their bikes across the country to having a mustache growing contest in a local bar.  Another couple has planned at least one volunteer trip per year for the last several years, with all the work that goes into something like that.  Another lady has used her connections in local schools to collect resources that teachers are done with to ship to the teachers in Kenya.

And then there’s the director, Cindy, who has simply poured herself out like a drink offering for these kids.  Completely re-arranging her life to fit in the margins around her work with Kupenda.  She has been living this way for nearly a decade now and received nothing in return for it!  Thankfully this past weekend the board convinced her to take a small monthly stipend and set it as a goal to pay her full time soon.

To see these people, their passion, dedication and creativity gave me hope in the possibility of what me and my friends can do when and if we put our minds to it.

If you’d like to see how you can support Kupenda, go here.  But basically the need is money, so feel free to send a check to “Kupenda for the Children” PO Box 473 Hampton, NH 03843.  And put “General Fund” in the subject line.

I am a wonderful creation made to be the perfect image of a beautiful God, broken and inclined to evil all the time.

So we’re sitting on the couch having a toss with this plastic ring when the following conversation ensued:

“I’m tired of this game daddy, I’m gunna go watch TV”

“OK, bye bye bud”

“Daddy, I need you to come with me”

“Oh, bud, I don’t wanna watch TV right now, I’ll play another game with you, or read a book, or play with a toy with you”

…pause…

“OK, bye bye daddy”

A few quick notes from my preaching on Genesis 1 the last few weeks.

1. It’s all GOOD

1. Genesis 1 is a statement about the present – its liturgy.
2. Making that claim has real world ramifications – it’s an act of resistance against hate, fear, hopelessness and revenge.

2. Human beings ARE special

1. We are the IMAGE BEARERS of God
2. That should inform how we behave in the world

3. Garden is not the end of the story

1. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth
2. Revelation 21 – what begins in a garden ends in a city
3. ours is not a religion that looks back but forward

4. We image a God of Sabbath
a. To work hard, and rest well, and to celebrate routinely, is the rhythm of life demanded by the task of being God’s image bearers on earth.

Come have dinner with us at Hank’s Tavern next Tuesday (9/22) as we are joined by author and speaker Brian McLaren as he talks about a christian perspective on care for the environment.

Get details and RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/CollegeParkCohort/

I hope to see you there.

• What is the church? The body of Christ.  The people of God.  Church & Israel. 
• Where is the church? “Whoever hears you hears me.  Whoever visits them visits me.”  So Christ is in us calling us to proclaim Him AND Christ is in the outsider calling us to join Him.  A cyber church would be a church without the Eucharist.  Our “near” senses are under developed and our “far” senses are overdeveloped.  I still believe in the flesh community where we can engage each other with all of our 5 senses. 
• What is the role of the Eucharist? We do not celebrate our theories about his presence but his present.  Let’s start by celebrating His presence THEN we can talk about our different theories about how He is present. 
• The church is both a gathering and a sending.