Epic

Making The Move

2006-07-11T11:26:00.000-05:00

Well, it's official. I've decided to make the move from blogger to typepad. There are many more features and it's much more user friendly than blogger.

If you have placed a link to my blog on yours, please change it to the new address: www.epicaugusta.typepad.com.

I've been double-posting the past week or two to make sure that those of you who still come here are able to keep up with the posts. After this one, no new posts will be made here. The graphic below will continuosly scroll the new posts on the typepad blog for those who still drop in here. Just click on the graphic and it will take you directly to the new blog. Hope to see you there!

Why Dreams Die

2006-07-11T10:06:00.000-05:00

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to dreams. Not so much the dreams that we have in our sleep (although I did again have my re-occurring tornado dream the other night) but instead, the dreams that occupy our minds and hearts as we go about life doing the things that we wish we didn't have to do so we could do the things we really want to be doing - all along fearing that time will pass so quickly that we'll suddenly wake up and realize that the entirety of our life has passed and we never lived the dreams we dreamed.

I've come to believe that most people are living a life that is distantly removed from the life that once-upon-a-time they dreamed that they could, should, and would be living. Every day they wake up in the morning and wonder how in the world they arrived at the place of having to spend the day doing the things that drain their souls of life. They lay their heads on pillows and as sleep begins to overtake them, thoughts - nothing more than cerebral whispers of a hoped-for life that long ago vanished from the realm of possibility - drift teasingly in and out of their consciousness. Why do dreams die? Why do so many people exist as nothing more than biological entities plodding along from day to day both fearing and longing for the end of their days?

Every so often somebody breaks free. Like the shadow-man who escaped from Plato's cave to experience the explosive beauty, the cerebral and emotional overload of a world; an existence too marvelous for words and too insanely glorious to be believed by those who chose to kill him upon his return rather than succumb to the risky possibility that something so hopeful could really exist. I know a few of these liberated former cave-dwellers.

There was Ross. He spent his days overseeing a transcription department at a large medical clinic to provide for his growing family. Many times we would meet for lunch and he would talk about how his work parasitically drained the life from him. One day he lost his job. The responsible thing for him to do would have been to send out resumes, go through interviews, and finally land another job that would likely have completed the task of killing his soul. No...Ross ran from the cave and began chasing dreams. He found a handful of impoverished inner-city boys without fathers and spent his days teaching them how to be men of virtue. Today, nearly 10 years later, Ross is no longer chasing dreams. He caught them, or they caught him, and he lives each day with passion.

There was another friend named Kirby who also worked a responsible job to meet the needs of his family until one day he discovered that he was pretty good with some new computer technology with which you could draw cartoons. He quit his responsible job, moved his family to Southern California, and began drawing computer animated cartoons and writing screenplays. You've probably seen his work on television commercials and at the theater. Today he has caught his dreams and is living comfortably as he spends his days doing the things God has gifted him to do.

What in the world would make a guy like Patrick quit his job, pack up his wife and child, and move to Ethiopia to live among starving, diseased, dying people? A dream. A dream that he could spend his days helping a dying child smile.

Mary Lou paid her dues. She worked for years and years as a teacher, pouring her life into educating high-schoolers. It was time for retirement; time for her to take her pension and spend her days sipping tea in the shade of her backyard. But her dreams don't live in her backyard. She has chased her dreams all the way to Ghana where she is serving on a Mercy Ship bringing hope and healing to people who probably have never felt the faintest breath of hope.

I believe that people like this are in the minority. They are exceptions. They are the few who have somehow broken the shackles of reasonableness, common sense, logic, and "responsibility" in order to save their minds, hearts, and souls from the anesthetizing effects of reasonableness, common sense, logic, and responsibility. They have chosen to live, not to simply exist - to flourish, not to simply survive. But what about the rest? Why do so many of us allow our dreams to die? What stops us from dreaming and living?

When we walk through the landscape littered with dead and shattered dreams, we'll probably find that those dreams have fallen victim to one of three causes of death.

The dreamer succumbed to the fear of failure that always comes wrapped in packages bearing the labels of "what if."
The dreamer gave in to the thought that he must correct all of his own flaws before attempting to live his dreams.
The dreamer gave in to the voices of the many "dream-killers" who descend like vultures upon the prey of anyone who would dare to dream that life could be different.

I was sitting in church Sunday morning thinking about these things. I believe God spoke very directly and clearly to me that dreams only die when we allow them to die. Neither of the three causes of death need be so. In the following posts I'll spend some time talking more about these three dream diseases and how God has addressed them in His Word.

Free Books!

2006-07-10T17:49:00.000-05:00

Interested in getting books for free? GO HERE!

Compliment From Across The Building

2006-07-07T08:20:00.000-05:00

A co-worker from the other side of the building said something to me in an e-mail yesterday that, on the one hand, I enjoyed hearing but, on the other hand, made me wonder why I am this way.

She said, "You seem the type to create molds, not fill them."

I've always kind of known this about myself and I admit that most days it is something that I enjoy about the way I am made. It is also painful at times. Those who create molds rather than filling them are often looked upon as unorthodox, sometimes even rebellious. All around are voices saying,

"Why don't you just walk in line with everybody else and do things the way they've always been done."

Living this way would be easier in some ways. I'd have a lot more company on the journey. There are a lot more pieces of pottery in the world than there are potters.

But if I were to follow that advice and simply fill the molds created for me by others, I would slowly and painfully die inside and spend the rest of my days as nothing more than a mass of oxygen consuming flesh. It would be the suicide of the nature that God has given me.

Vulnerability

2006-07-06T07:14:00.000-05:00

"This isn't so bad...what was all the fuss about?" These were my thoughts as the bus rumbled along the paved route out of LaPaz, Bolivia at around 8:00 am. For five years I had been hearing horror stories about the road from LaPaz to Sapecho. But as I sat for about an hour staring out the window at the beauty of the Andes mountains I was becoming more and more convinced that somebody had fallen victim to an overactive imagination. But then the pavement ended.

The ride suddenly got much bumpier and I looked up from my book to see a spectacular view. Right outside my window I saw a majestic view of the jungle-covered Andes and several miles across a chasm I saw a mountain with a thin white stripe running around it. My eye was also caught by the movement of a speck along that line. It was a bus, and the thin white line was the road ahead on which we would spend the next 12 hours or so traveling.

The bus stopped for a moment for us to disembark, take some pictures, and pray a quick "salvation check" prayer before resuming the journey.

"Okay...no big deal. I can do this," were my thoughts as the engine fired up again. I'll just enjoy the scenery. I had utmost confidence in this driver...a stranger whom I knew absolutely nothing about. One of our guides began preparing sandwiches and handing them out and to my horror, she handed one to the driver. Now, I can't count the number of times I've driven through the Burger King drive through, grabbed a burger, and eaten it while driving down the perfectly smooth 3 lane interstate. But I gotta tell you, I began to feel a bit agitated (okay, a lot agitated) when someone who shared my feelings looked into the cab to see him eating with one hand and navigating this road with the other!

You'll have to go to my other blog to see the pictures - blogger.com won't upload them for some reason. Pictures are here:

Epic Augusta

Now I'm a pretty good driver. I can eat, drink a coke, change CD's, and even read while I'm behind the wheel. But a line from one of my favorite movies comes to mind as I reflect on how I felt at that moment. After putting on the black suit "K" says to "J", "I need to tell you something about your skills: As of right now they mean precisely [jack]!

For hour after hour the 15 or so of us on this bus were absolutely vulnerable. Many times I would look out my window and not see the road...just a sheer drop-off of several thousand feet only inches from the wheel. I would instinctively lean away from the window attempting to shift some of my 180 pounds to the safe side of the bus. But several times my efforts were countered by the younger guys on the bus who all rushed to my side to lean out the window for a better view of what was sure to be impending death.

I now know, in a very real way, how it feels to be absolutely vulnerable and dependent upon the ability of someone else to keep me safe. I should mention that we made this drive twice. And the second time we made the drive - about 5 days later - most of the mountainous travel was made at night. There are no street lights or illuminated highway lines on the Yungas Highway of Bolivia which is listed as the most dangerous road in the world. Do a Google search of the keywords "world's most dangerous road" and you'll get to see many other pictures and a few news stories about the 100 or so people who die every year when their vehicles tumble off the edge.

This whole factual account is also a metaphor for life. Honestly, I feel pretty vulnerable a lot of the time. Many days I wake up feeling like, "As of right now my skills mean precisely [jack]". North Korea launched 7 missiles yesterday to provoke a response from the United States, to which they have threatened an "annihilating nuclear attack" if we do anything. Major conflict is erupting in Israel as I write this. Iran would love to play a role in the destruction of Israel...and even America if possible and is developing the technology to do it. China is on track to surpass America as the global economic and military superpower in the next 20 years.

I am paying my bills with a paycheck that comes from a company that finds itself in an industry that is in significant decline...probably only a couple decades away from extinction. The only thing I am passionate about doing with my life is church planting, yet I find myself in a city where I don't know anyone and I wonder how in the world to start.

I am absolutely, totally vulnerable and dependent upon someone else to keep me safe. And that is really cool! Because now that I recognize this I can more fully rest in the reality of Psalm 91:

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, 'He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust."

Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.

If you make the Most High your dwelling - even the Lord, who is my refuge - then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread upon the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

'Because he loves me,' says the Lord, 'I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.'"

Free Fall

2006-07-05T07:12:00.000-05:00

I came across this comment posted to a friend's blog that I read daily. It moved me. This friend is wrestling with some of the same things that I find myself wrestling with here. I want to share it with you. Hopefully the original writer won't mind.

Jim Hemenway writes:

About 11 years ago I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. Standing on the deck, feeling the wind, heart racing, feeling like I was going to be sick was the strangest, most terrified feeling I ever had before or since.

We (the instructor and I) jumped, the wind rushed. It was so loud that had I not been concentrating on all my "keys" during free fall I would have covered my ears (good thing it was loud, the noise masked by screaming like a little girl).

After what seemed like a blink, I pulled the cord, there was a sudden upward pull, and then total silence. Total peace, total calm. I will never do it again but I will carry the lessons forever. When you jump(and I am convinced you will jump eventually, you have been standing on the deck for some time now and did not even recognize it) remember others have jumped before you. We are experienced, we will lift you up in prayer and we will walk next to you as best as humanly possible.

The rush will initially be overwhelming, the noise from those around you will be deafening. A sudden jerk as God reorientates you to living his will rather than [somebody else's] will and then peace, silence, calm. Total freedom.

I will add:

This is an incedibly lonely jump. We stand on the precipice alone, we free fall alone, we experience the eventual peace and calm of the graceful descent alone. Nobody else understands the reasons for the jump nor the ways in which we jump.

Watch Me Daddy!

2006-07-05T06:52:00.000-05:00

I spent most of my years growing up in a little town in Illinois named after some guy with the last name of Willis who had started a coal mine. The town grew up around the coal mine and flourished to a population of a couple thousand. But by the time I arrived, the mine had closed, businesses had left, and a remnant of 600 or so people were living simple lives surrounded by alternating patches of corn fields and jagged landscapes that bore the scars of being violently raped by thoughtless strip-mining machinery.

We lived in a double-wide on a couple acres of land just south of town in a little neighborhood called Dolly Hill (I assume someone named Dolly used to live there at some point). There were four of us; mom, dad, my younger sister, and me. When you walked into the front door of our home you were walking straight into the kitchen. Take a few steps and look to the right and you would have seen the sliding glass door that led into a large backyard. Look to the left, and you would be about to enter the family room; fully equipped with a color console television, an Atari 2600 system, a C.B. radio in the corner shadowed with bulletin boards on the walls holding postcards from people in far away places whose voices had at some point crackled through the radio speakers clearly enough to be able to share mailing addresses, and a big cabinet housing a AM/FM radio, turntable, 8-track cassette deck and an assortment of 8-track tapes by Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Billy "Crash" Craddock, and several others whose music still makes my skin crawl.

Standing in the kitchen with the living room to the left and the sliding glass door to the right, you would then look straight ahead and behold the architecture common to all double-wide homes of that day; the long narrow hallway leading to the bedrooms. This was the place - the hallowed ground of athletic achievement - where I would demonstrate to my parents, my grandparents, and anyone else who cared to humor me, just how fast I could run. I think I even had people clock me with a stopwatch as I would run as fast as I could 30 feet down the hall and 30 feet back . I remember one particular time I had just gotten a new pair of tennis shoes and was sure that these shoes alone would knock about 2.7 seconds off the time it took me to run the orange shag-carpeted track. I remember many times taking position at the end of the hallway and saying, "Watch me daddy," before launching like the six-million dollar man down the narrow corridor.

As kids, we want our parents to watch us perform; but only when we know we are going to perform well. Hearing the loving affirmation of a proud parent is to the soul what oxygen is to the body. I remember a lot of those times when I knew I was doing something well and loved to hear the praise of my parents. But I remember other times when I was ashamed and embarrassed for my parents to be watching. Little League baseball is a good example. I played one season and during that whole season I only got one hit; and that one wasn't quite what the coach wanted. I hit a fastball with my left eye socket. As if my baseball career wasn't embarrassing enough already, I was forced to wear this stupid looking protective helmet for the rest of the season because the doctor said my eye would explode if that happened again...or something like that.

Not only was I embarrassed for myself, but I remember being embarrassed for my parents. I could almost feel what they had to have been feeling knowing that they were surrounded by other parents in the stands who were biting their tongues to keep from saying something like, "Man, your kid really sucks."

I'm 38 years old and I still think about these things. I still enjoying hearing my parents say, "Good job!" or "We're proud of you!" But my thoughts these days tend to go more in the direction of wondering what God thinks of me. There are times when I'm happy to know that God is watching me. I pray, "Watch me Daddy!" when I'm making a strong effort to be more sensitive toward my wife. "Watch me Daddy!" is easy for me to say when I'm standing in church singing a song or when we're going to a particular passage of scripture and I'm the first one in the row to get there. When I received my ordination as an elder in the Free Methodist Church I thought, "Watch me daddy!"

But then there are other times when He is watching, but I wish he wasn't. Like the time (okay...timeS) when everything in me wanted to flip off the guy who was driving like an idiot in front of me. I would prefer He not be watching as my fuse grows shorter and shorter with "Wanda The Wonder Slug" who is taking a half hour to check out the two people in front of me at Wal-Mart. See...I just did it again. I called that cashier a name. Hopefully He won't read this blog.

What does God think of me? I mean really...what does He really, really think and feel when He observes my life, my heart, my mind. I know all of the theologically correct things to think and say. "There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven" (okay, that one's from a bumper sticker). But I gotta tell you, there are a lot of times that I find myself wishing that I could just meet God at Starbucks some morning and spend a couple of hours just laying it all out on the table. Surely there have got to be times when He is just flat out pissed off at me...right? That may have been a bit irreverant. See how adept I am at this?

Mike Bickle asks some of the same questions in his book After God's Own Heart. In chapter four he invites us to ponder:

"How does God feel most of the time? Is He bored? Worried? Blase? Happy? Concerned? Detached? Engaged? Mad, glad, or sad? It sounds lighthearted, but it's one of the most important questions of our entire spiritual journey. How does God feel when He looks at you? What wells up in His heart when His eyes turn upon your life? I have asked many people this quesion over the years, and they usually respond in one of two ways:

God is mostly mad.
God is mostly sad.

And in both cases, they think it's their fault. Many Christians believe very strongly that God is angry and grieved with each of us.

Mike goes on to illuminate passages of scripture that lead us to the understanding that God is not mostly mad with us nor is he mostly sad with us. He is mostly glad! Deuteronomy 30:9 says, "The Lord your God will make you abound in all the work of your hand...For the Lord will again rejoice over you for good as He rejoiced over your fathers." Zephaniah 3:17 is another that he points to, which says, "He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."

These are good. But there's another scripture that pretty much settles the issue for me. It reveals to me the incredibly understanding nature of God. It helps me to understand that there is nothing about me, my character, my weaknesses, my future sins that can surprise God. There will never be a moment when God will say something like, "Well, if I had known you were going to mess up like THAT I would never have wasted my time with you." There is nothing in my past that He hasn't seen. There is nothing in my future that He doesn't already know about. And because of that, I can rest in the reality that the same love and affirmation and acceptance I feel when singing a song in church will be unshaken in my worst, darkest moments of human frailty.

Praise the Lord, I tell myself; with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, I tell myself, and never forget the good things he does for me. He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. He ransoms me from death and surrounds me with love and tender mercies.
He fills my life with good things. My youth is renewed like the eagle's! The Lord gives righteousness and justice to all who are treated unfairly.

He revealed his character to Moses and his deeds to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious; he is slow to get angry and full of unfailing love. He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. He has not punished us for all our sins, nor does he deal with us as we deserve. For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.

He has removed our rebellious acts as far away from us as the east is from the west. The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he understands how weak we are; he knows we are only dust.

Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows and we are gone - as though we had never been here. but the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him. His salvation extends to the children's children of those who are faithful to his covenant, of those who obey his commandments!

Psalm 103:1-18

Relevance

2006-07-02T21:04:00.000-05:00

Buzzwords. You hear them all the time. You know, those nifty little words and phrases that resonate with us at a particular moment and then tend to spread like a virus from person-to-person until finally they become such an over-used part of our vocabulary that they lose any resonant power that they may have once had. We have a lot of them in the church world.

I became a Christian in 1986 and in those days a word was beginning to make it's rounds through the Christian community and at the time it was a word that gave us a light bulb moment causing us to nod our heads and say, "Yeah...that's what we need to do!"

The word was "relevant" with its various forms: relevance, culturally relevant, etc. etc. The perception at the time among church leaders was that the ways in which we were living and gathering and worshipping as the church was not relevant to the culture around us. Therefore, we were having less and less influence on the culture outside of our church because what we were doing inside our church did not make sense or strike an emotional or spiritual chord with those on the outside.

Well...to a great extent...that perception was pretty accurate. So, we took the necessary steps to correct the course. We changed our music to sound more like the music being played in the culture (a change for which I am grateful because I believe that the organ was invented by a demon and is the primary instrument of torture in hell). We changed our buildings to make them look less like churches and more like convention centers. We changed the way we dress on Sundays so that if someone would happen to straggle in from the street we would be dressed alike (another change for which I am grateful because I can't imagine NOT wearing my jeans and sandles on Sunday...and now the trend is to leave your shirt untucked which is great because it helps me to look less fat). We started drinking coffee in church (which I know for a fact is God-ordained).

We did a lot of work to make ourselves more "culturally relevant." And the result? In America regular church participation is at its lowest point in our nation's history. The number of churches closed every year outnumbers the number of churches opened. And both Gallup and Barna research indicates that lifestyle choices made by "Christians" don't differ very much at all from lifestyle choices made by non-Christians. The divorce rate among Christians is almost identical to the divorce rate among non-Christians. Apparently, our well-intended attempts at "cultural relevance" have not had the affect for which we hoped.

Os Guinness wrote a book in 2003 called Prophetic Untimeliness. Listen to the words written on the back of the dust jacket:

"Never have Christians tried to be so relevant. But never have Christians ended up so irrelevant. How can this be? The problem, says Os Guinness, is that our views of relevance and our efforts to redefine ourselves are captive to the seductions and pressures of our modern clock culture. Ironically, we end up as neither relevant nor faithful. And in the process we are in danger of losing not only our identity but our authority, our significance, and even our very soul."

I've been thinking about relevance lately as we've thought about our ministry future here. Being relevant to the culture is a good thing. If you are a Christian in America today who desires to be used by God to impact your culture, you have to start by understanding that you are a missionary living in the midst of a pagan, pluralistic, multi-cultural society. Every effective missionary knows that to reach people, you have to learn the language of the mouth and the heart. You have to understand the prevailing worldview and the cultural customs. And then you have to be able to introduce the changeless nature of Christ into the culture in a way that grips the heart, mind, and soul.

But again (as we seem to be so good at doing) we have missed the point. By focusing all of our energy and resources on things like musical styles, clothing, beverages, building asthetics, 15-minute life improvement sermonettes, and self-help books we have still failed to actually engage the culture in ways that grip the heart, mind, and soul.

Our most obvious mistake has been that we have orchestrated all of these techniques of new & improved cultural relevance in such a way that we still require the culture to come to us to experience them and hopefully be impacted. You see, cultural relevance begins with one simple step. Being there! Being in the culture, not tucked away in our really cool, high-tech, coffee scented clubhouses huddled around hoping a pagan will walk in and sit down with us so that we can celebrate how effective we are at "reaching the culture."

I'm in the middle of a book called "The Relevant Church" by Mike Howerton. Actually, it is written by a group of people who all lead various ministries around the country and they all share their stories in short essays. I hesitated to buy it thinking to myself, "Oh brother, another book on relevance." But after skimming the table of contents, I decided it would be a good buy. And it is! I'm going to let Dustin Bagby finish this post with an excerpt from his essay in this book titled, "God Is In The Pub."

"To make an impact in the twenty-something culture, leaders need to be involved in 'real' culture, not just Christian 'subculture' events. If you are a musician, then you should be in the music clubs performing on weekends, not just at Christian coffeehouses. If you are a comedian, you should be working in the comedy clubs during the week as a way of meeting people and impacting the community. If you are an athlete, join a league and play with a random group of people, not just a church league. We encourage people to use their gifts not just 'in here,' but 'out there.'

Unfortunately, many people who have grown up in church were taught to avoid culture at all costs. They were taught that we need to form an environment in which to live and then invite other people to join. The problem is that the peoople who we are inviting to join are not coming. Now it is time to go 'out there' and meet them. I find that most of jesus' teachings are about going and harvesting. I hear very little about sitting back at an event and hoping people who are not followers will attend. Jesus always went to where the people in need were.

We need to stop inviting people to Christian events as our only form of outreach. Instead, start inviting people to spend time where they already are. There is a choice to be made here. We can either try to bring a person into our setting - however uncomfortable they may feel - or we can spend time with an individual in their setting and sacrifice our comfort. You will find people respecting your effort to get to know them on their turf. This makes the process of getting involved in a church much less intimidating (whether the person is a follower or not) simply because of the relationship and trust that has developed.

For years, we have had an evangelical mindset that says, 'We need to create a cool event that non-Christians will come to. Then we can invite a bunch of non-Christians and share the message on our turf, where we fell most comfortable.' Instead, if we are going to reach people wh are not comfortable walking into a church service on a Sunday; we need to start thinking, 'Who can I invite to grab dinner tonight?'

Cool programs will never do what time with people in a neutral or even an intimidating (for us) environment will do.'"

Your Opinion Requested

2006-07-01T16:44:00.000-05:00

I thrive on change and find it incredibly easy to become bored with the status quo. Keeping up with me is sometimes like chasing a snowball down a hill.

I'm contemplating a change of epic proportions. This change will affect literally thousands of people around the world therefore I can't make it quickly and without advisement. So, I'm asking for your input.

I'm contemplating moving my blog from blogger.com to typepad.com. You thought it was a bigger deal than that didn't you?

Anywho, I do need your help. Blogger is free, Typepad is not. I've spent the afternoon setting Epic up on typepad for a 30 day free trial. I would like for you to visit the blog there after reading this, and then come back here and post a comment telling me which version you like the most. Be honest.

Here's the link: Epic

Behind Fences; A Round-About Way of Examining A Serious Question

2006-06-30T07:34:00.000-05:00

I have a routine. Every evening after I get home from work I change clothes and sit in the recliner to watch television for a half hour or so until dinner is ready. I always watch reruns of Home Improvement on TBS. What a great show! Wilson is the eccentric neighbor who lives next door to Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor and in almost every episode they have a conversation over the fence.

One of the oddities of the storyline is that we never get to fully see Wilson's face. We see him from the nose up, with the rest of him hidden behind the fence. This oddity plays out in other ways throughout the show as well, but it began with the backyard chats. Another piece of this is that the only time you see others with Wilson, in his backyard, on the other side of the fence, they are almost just like him in their eccentricities. This got me to thinking about something.

I am passionate about church planting and am excited to see different associations and networks being formed to facilitate planting through scouting of planters, assessments, funding, and coaching. I've had the privilege of interacting with a couple of these organizations and the people who comprise and lead these organizations are awesome men of God. But I have also seen something that really bothers me.

Some of these associations and networks live behind a fence and only certain people are allowed behind that fence. Everyone else will have to remain on the other side, experiencing only a small portion of the whole body. I'm being cryptic, so let me cut to the chase.

There's a great organization out there called Acts 29. A friend of mine from many years ago is one of the leaders of this organization. The organization began with the folks of Mars Hill in Seattle which is pastored by Mark Driscoll; another pastor and author for whom I have tremendous respect. Acts 29 is doing very, very good work with church planting. I attended a boot camp and a couple of networking gatherings while I was in the midwest. They know how to plant churches and do it very well.

But, if you are not a calvinist and do not hold fully to reformed theology, they will not partner with you in a significant way. If you are more Wesleyan & Arminian in your theology (as I am) then you will find yourself on the other side of the Acts 29 fence. The conversation will be friendly, enjoyable, and helpful at times, but you can't shake hands through a fence.

I've found a couple other associations who have erected the same reformed/arminian fences and though I respect the different perspectives we all have of the T.U.L.I.P., I wonder why it is that we allow those perspectives to divide us into camps as we carry out the most important work on the planet; leading people from death to life.

John Wesley and George Whitefield were very close friends. In fact it was Whitefield who encouraged Wesley to follow his heart and go into the streets and coal fields to preach the gospel to the common man rather than confining himself to the hallowed cathedrals of the Anglican Church. Wesley was arminian in his theology. Whitefield was calvinist. They had their share of debates and even penned some heated correspondence to one another. But they worked together in allowing God through them to bring to England one of the greatest revivals in history. Wesley himself, though remaining arminian in his theology, said once that he "was a hair's breadth away from calvinism."

I wonder if we can do the same? The differing opinions aren't significant enough to give the enemy the opportunity to carry out a "divide and conquer" strategy against us.

"I (George Whitefield) am very well aware what different effects publishing this letter against the dear Mr. Wesley's Sermon will produce. Many of my friends who are strenuous advocates for universal redemption will immediately be offended. Many who are zealous on the other side will be much rejoiced. They who are lukewarm on both sides and are carried away with carnal reasoning will wish this matter had never been brought under debate.

The reasons I have given at the beginning of the letter, I think are sufficient to satisfy all of my conduct herein. I desire therefore that they who hold election would not triumph, or make a party on one hand (for I detest any such thing)—and that they who are prejudiced against that doctrine be not too much concerned or offended on the other.Known unto God are all his ways from the beginning of the world. The great day will discover why the Lord permits dear Mr. Wesley and me to be of a different way of thinking. At present, I shall make no enquiry into that matter, beyond the account which he has given of it himself in the following letter, which I lately received from his own dear hands:"

London, August 9, 1740

My dear Brother (G. Whitefield),
I thank you for yours, May the 24th. The case is quite plain. There are bigots both for predestination and against it. God is sending a message to those on either side. But neither will receive it, unless from one who is of their own opinion. Therefore, for a time you are suffered to be of one opinion, and I of another. But when his time is come, God will do what man cannot, namely, make us both of one mind. Then persecution will flame out, and it will be seen whether we count our lives dear unto ourselves, so that we may finish our course with joy.
I am, my dearest brother, Ever yours,

J. WESLEY

A Mosaic of Expressions

2006-06-29T21:06:00.000-05:00

I mentioned in an earlier post that Lynn and I recently spent a Saturday in Columbia S.C. with a group of church planters. This gathering was brought together and hosted by a new friend of mine named Jeff Shipman. He is an apostolic leader of a church in Columbia and has a great vision for helping church planters live out their calling.

As I thought about what I should write tonight I reflected upon something he said that has really stuck with me. His words stay with me because I tend to be a bit (okay a lot) myopic in my views about church and ministry, and what he said pushes against that tendency in me in a healthy way.

In this blog I've expressed frustrations with the American expressions of church around us. I've talked about ways to do worship gatherings differently. I've spoken favorably of the house church movement while cynically describing the more traditional forms all around us. But there is one truth that I've not done well at affirming. A mosaic is much more beautiful than a uniformly painted wall.

The truth is (and Jeff is so good at making this clear) that if we are going to see the Kingdom of God infiltrate our city, we need a mosaic of ecclesial expressions because different expressions will reach different people. The worship gathering I envision at Epic Church will probably not reach baby boomers. But guess what...Jesus died and rose again for baby boomers too. So as passionately as I am thinking about ways to reach 20-somethings at Epic with a worship "service" that would seem bizarre to boomers, we need people who are thinking about ways to reach 50-somethings with expressions of church that will most resonate with that generation of people.

As intrigued as I am with the house church movement as a means of reaching a generation of young people who search for spirituality in authentic, relational community and through social activism, there are still people who will drive to the First ______ist Church on the corner to find answers for the spiritual stirring that is beginning to happen in them. We need that church to be there and to be missional.

I love Jeff's approach. They draw circles on the map, identify the population and the churches within that circle, and then find ways for all different kinds of churches under different denominational signing to work together in assuming evangelistic responsibility for the people living in those circles. Jeff knows that he needs the other churches, regardless of how their expressions of church life may differ from his.

I (we) would do well to learn from him.

Epic Vision; Why House Churches?

2006-06-28T07:30:00.000-05:00

I have struggled to find the right combination of words to describe this component of what will become Epic Church. On the one hand, I could use the phrase "cell groups" but what we envision is much more than what you typically find happening in cell groups. On the other hand, I use the phrase "house churches" but feel a little uncomfortable with that because there are elements of the house church movement that I percieve as being unhealthy.

I guess what I envision is an amalgam of the two with the lines of definition being a bit blurry.

Many churches today have a small group (cell group) ministry in place. About 20 years ago these churches, after hearing of the huge success of Yoido Full Gospel Fellowship in Korea, added home-based cell group meetings to their format. For the most part, this has been a good move forward. What you typically find in the small group ministry of a church is that they do a really good job with fellowship and relational connection. But most small groups do not have an outreach component. Fifteen people will gather in a home to eat and fellowship and study together but all too often the neighborhood around them and the people living in that neighborhood without Christ never enter into the conversation.

Then there is the house church movement. House churches make up the largest expression of church in countries like China and India, and other places around the world where Christianity is fiercely persecuted. House churches have never played a significant role in the ecclesiology of America, until now. People are disconnecting from church today at alarming rates. The Greco-Roman-Jewish "Cathegogue" expression of church is quickly diminishing from the western scene as the Church begins to emerge and flourish in homes and coffee houses and other public places.

A house church is simply a cell group with a bigger agenda; that agenda being to seek the lost, lead them to faith, disciple them, equip them, and send them out as missionaries to the rest of the city. Rather than simply focusing on fellowship, the house church embodies the fullness of what it means to be the bride of Christ carrying out the Great Commission. In the healthiest of systems, house churches are interconnected in a network that shares a common vision, common praxis, and functions under the leader of house elders who are led by a person or persons who is truly apostolically gifted and all of the house churches in the network gather together regularly for large group worship gatherings.

Why do I want to give myself to creating a house church movement here in Augusta? Look across the panorama of Christian history and you will find that the Church has flourished most and had the greatest impact on culture when two things were in play: The church was scattered. And the lines of demarcation between laity and clergy were erased so that everyone in the church was equipped to engage in the mission.

I believe that house church networks present us with an awesome opportunity to reclaim these two things. Instead of designating a central place (church with a little c) in the hopes that people will come to it, we take the Church into the neighborhoods where people live. We scatter, going where the people are. In a Cathegogue you have one pastor and a few volunteers. In a house church network you have a brotherhood of pastors working together all throughout the city investing themselves in the process of equipping everyone in the house church to be missionaries to the city.

My growing interest in the house church movement isn't so much a reation against anything. I simply see it as becoming a more and more effective way in the coming decades to impact the greater culture around us with the Way of Jesus as the Cathegogue system is already in rapid decline.

The Power Of A Dollar Bill

2006-06-27T14:31:00.000-05:00

I've been following closely the efforts of a friend who is raising funds for a diciple-making movement in St. Louis and Kansas City. He is finding men and women from various places who are willing to quit their jobs, sell their homes, move to these cities through incredible steps of faith and give their lives to helping people find new life in Christ. Finding the money to help put food on these family's tables is proving to be difficult work. With all of the resources that we have here in the wealthiest nation to ever occupy the face of this planet, you'd think we could do better.

I did some math in the shower the other morning. The steamed-up shower curtain makes a good dry-erase board...or would it be a wet-erase board?

Anywho...

George Barna believes that 4% of the American population are truly Biblical followers of Christ. That comes out to about 12 million people.

Out of those 12 million people, if only 8% of them (100,000) would give $1 (yes...one dollar) per month, we could finance 12 church plants each year with $100,000 each.

Bob's vision is to plant 30 new churches between the two cities. If we could somehow harness this power of one dollar bill, he could fully fund this vision in 2 1/2 years.

I believe in the work that Bob is doing in Missouri. If you can give up at least one bottle of Coke per month to help this work, please do. Here are the instructions for you to help:

Contributions can be sent to: Church Planting K.C. & S.L. Midwest District, Missionary Church P.O. Box 94 Bentley, Kansas 67016 make gifts payable to: Midwest District Missionary Church Please put KC & SL church planting in the memo.

Follow THIS LINK to read about the most recent family to step out of the boat and walk on water to reach Kansas City.

technorati tag: church plant funding

The Art of Friendship

2006-06-26T07:10:00.000-05:00

I wonder if I am the only one who feels this way. Is there anyone else out there who feels most often like you have to literally force yourself on others in order for them to take notice of you and make an effort to get to know you?

Relationships are crucial to mental, emotional, and spiritual health. It's easy to understand why God's design for the church is for it to be a community. Yet it seems like that very thing that is so crucial to wholeness is so hard to find, even among Christians...the very setting where it should flourish.

I can't tell you the number of times that Lynn and I have sat in a room full of people and watched everyone around us talking, laughing, sharing conversation and not one person would make the slightest effort to befriend us.

I can't begin to number the e-mails and phone calls to "friends" that go unanswered. The very people who in one moment express their love, concern for, and belief in you yet won't take 10 minutes to anwer an e-mail or return a phone call.

It's amazing to me that in a world filled with 2 billion Christians, one can feel so alone...like you don't fit in anywhere. Perhaps that is what draws people into internet relationships, like the 17 year old Christian girl I just heard about who met a Muslim guy in Israel through MySpace, lied to her parents, flew to Israel, and plans to eventually marry the guy...even if it means abandoning her Christian faith.

After a while it really causes you to examine yourself, feeling like perhaps there is something about you that repels others.

I guess this is kind of a rant emerging out of some personal struggle I'm dealing with. But I seriously doubt that I am the only Christian who feels this way. I believe that you could walk into any church, or Bible study, or small group and among the crowd you will find a number of people who feel as if they don't matter...they don't count...they don't measure up...they aren't worth the time required to get to know them. For those people, life quickly becomes a performance. The simplicity of who they are is not enough to attract friendship, so a persona is adopted and various performances are made with the hopes that they will find one persona or one performance that will succeed in getting someone to take notice and expend the energy required to get to know them.

We Christians do a swell job of teaching our denominational doctrines and inciting our people to raise their fists in the air against things in the culture we disagree with. I suggest that we begin investing equal, if not more time teaching one another the art of friendship. This simple art will do more to change our world than all of our protests, boycotts, and acts of civil disobedience could ever accomplish.

technorati tag: friendship

Church Planting

2006-06-26T07:06:00.000-05:00

I stole this picture from Matt Payne whose blog you'll find on my sidebar. He is so right.

Ron Sylvia, author of "Starting High Definition Churches" said that "church planting is the extreme sport of ministry."

Matt found this picture to illustrate what church planting feels like.

The Purpose of Preaching

2006-06-24T21:21:00.000-05:00

Lynn and I spent the day today in Columbia, SC with a group of church planters from around the region who all came together for a time of teaching, networking, and encouragement. During one of the sessions I jotted down this note to self:

"The purpose of preaching is to open the heart and mind to another way of thinking and feeling so that the will might be changed."

technorati tag: preaching

This Is A Strange Looking Worship Service

2006-06-22T21:09:00.000-05:00

Pick a Sunday, any Sunday and walk into nearly any church in your town and watch closely what happens. You will most likely experience the following:

You will find yourself in a theatre or auditorium like setting. You will sit in rows of chairs or pews all looking forward toward a stage. On that stage you will find individuals who have been selected to carry out the elements of a program for your benefit, which you will sit quietly and observe (except for the time when you are directed to stand up and sing a few songs in unison).

You will notice two distinct groups of people. The audience. And the professionals. Among the audience are individuals who have once again made the weekly trek to the "church" to "be fed" by observing the program that has been developed by the professionals. Among the professionals will most likely be one or more musicians who will direct you in what and how to sing, which verses of the hymn to skip (Let's sing verses 1, 2, 4), which posture to take as you sing, and the duration of your singing. Your posture and duration of singing will also be determined by the socially acceptable norms of the denomination to which the church belongs. What is acceptable in one church may be taboo in the church around the corner. Also among the professionals you will most likely find a seminary trained "minister" who will spend anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour delivering a speech built around Bible verses which he has spent the previous week preparing (or in many cases the previous hour or so downloading from the internet). You will not be permitted to speak or make sudden, unexpected moves or gestures while he is speaking.

This program will likely be designed to consume about one hour of your time, after which you will walk through the exit, shake the minister's hand and tell him how much you enjoyed his sermon, and head to the nearest restaurant.

In America today, this is a pretty accurate description of what we call "church." Now, my tone here is clearly cynical. For that, I offer no apologies. Yet at the same time I must keep my attitude in check by reminding myself that God has and continues to use this way of church and the Godly men who lead this way of church, to bring people into His Kingdom. Some of my closest friends are pastors of churches similar to what I described and God is doing beautiful things in those settings. Yet I struggle, because I then must remind myself of another fact. And that is that in America, the Church of Jesus Christ is not advancing...the church is in retreat. Islam is advancing. Buddhism is advancing. Christianity is closing more churches every year than we are starting.

I know that there are more factors at work in the decline of Christianity in America than simply the way in which we conduct ourselves when we gather. But I also feel that in many cases we are packaging "church" in a way that quenches the Holy Spirit, strips the priesthood of believers of their priestlyness (I made that word up...but it works), and lulls congregations into a deep, apathetic, self-centered slumber.

I believe that the ways in which we package "church" creates several dichotomies . We divide people into two groups: The professional clergy and the consumer congregation. But we also create an artificial division between our church lives and our regular lives. In our regular lives we have meals together, we learn through conversation and dialogue, we sit together in living rooms and drink coffee, we play sports together, we pursue hobbies together, we walk our dogs and meet our neighbors. But then when we think about church we have to - for one hour each week - shift into a totally un-natural mode in an attempt to experience that which I believe Christ meant for us to experience in the most natural of settings and postures; which we feel we must now abandon to engage our spirituality. How strange indeed.

Every man who is called by God to plant and/or lead a church must carefully listen and follow the guiding of the Holy Spirit regarding the way in which they will "do church." We must be very careful to guard against arrogantly believing that the way we do it is the only right way. I take those words to heart as I now share with you the way in which I believe God is calling me to lead a community of believers here in Augusta.

As God adds to our numbers those who will comprise the body of Epic Church we will gather together regularly, just as congregations all over the country do each week. However, the person visiting the Epic gathering that I envision may initially think to themselves, "This is a strange looking worship service."

The best way for me to share with you what I believe God is inviting us to create here is to do so through a story. What follows is a fictional account of a fictional person who is visiting for the first time an Epic worship gathering...which doesn't yet exist. Allow me to introduce you to Brandon.

Hi, I'm Brandon. It was a Thursday evening. A friend of mine from work invited me to come to church with him; something that I hadn't done since attending Sunday School as a child. We got off work around 5:30 and drove downtown. We parked out on the street, went into one of the downtown buildings that vacated long ago when all of the businesses moved out to the new mall.

We went upstairs and walked into a large 3 room loft. As I walked through the door I was confronted head-on with two things: the sound of dozens of people laughing and talking, and the aroma of a home-cooked meal. I was surprised when my friend said to me, "We start every gathering by having a meal together. Some of the women who are gifted in and passionate about hospitality get here about an hour early to prepare the meal for everyone. A lot of the people also brought food pot-luck style to share with everyone.

"There were probably 75 to 100 people there, and we all ate dinner together. The conversations around the table were wonderful. About 45 minutes later six or seven people washed their dishes and went through a doorway into another room. Soon after they left I heard music being played in the other room. It was a live band and they were top-notch.

About time the music started everyone began moving into the other room which they called "The Sanctuary." It was quite large and didn't look at all like a church sanctuary. Instead it looked like a huge family room. There were couches, loveseats, big comfy chairs, end-tables, coffee tables, lamps. And on the walls were paintings, crosses, ancient iconography, lighted candle sconces. The lighting was down low, the room was mostly candle-lit with a few of the lamps on. The band was off to the side of the room playing music that set a deeply spiritual tone to the room. Poignant images were up on a screen near the front of the room.

As the congregation gathered in the sanctuary, a worship time began like I never expected. Some people stood with their hands raised, singing along with the band. Some huddled together in groups of 2 or 3 and prayed for one another and for other needs that they were aware of. A couple of people actually set up a canvas and easel and did an oil painting that depicted what they were experiencing in their relationship with God. One girl sat quietly off to the side writing in a journal. Some people went to special prayer stations built into little alcoves in the wall. One was a "repentance station" and I saw a young guy there write some stuff on a piece of paper and then light it on fire. I then noticed that he was crying as he dipped his hands in a basin of water and then raised them in the air to God.

Everyone kind of did their own thing with God, while the band set the tone of the moment with music and scripture readings. After about 45 minutes the pastor said a few words, inviting everyone to come together for "The Forum." I didn't know what this was going to be. I assumed it was time for him to preach but I'd never heard the term "Forum" used for this. He then explained that this was the time for conversation and the sharing of experiences we've had in our relationship with Christ or with others. It was kind of like open-mic night. People came and read poetry or journal entries. The painter explained the meaning behind his painting and a lot of people cried as he told how the images on the canvas represented how God had helped him make peace with his earthly father...who had abandoned him years earlier.

After 3 or 4 people shared some things the pastor came back and spoke for about 30 minutes. He read a passage of Scripture, taught the meaning of it, and then explained it's relevance to our life. Throughout this teaching time there was dialogue and conversation, not simply a one-way speech.

The forum ended, some music started back up. Most of the people began slowly making their way out to head home. Several just stayed around talking, drinking coffee. My friend told me that the place usually emptied out around 11:00 or 12:00 at night. And this was church.

He told me that they met like this every week. The teaching from the Bible is always centered around one of what they called the "Core 3." The "Core 3" are the three things this church focuses on: Intimacy, Healing, and Purpose. Some weeks the worship and forum time are built around the theme of intimacy with God through Jesus Christ and intimacy with one another. At other times the theme is all about healing...mostly emotional and spiritual healing. My friend said that things can sometimes get pretty raw as people talk and pray through abuse issues, addictions, etc. On some weeks the theme is centered around purpose. The forum on this night is designed to help people discover who they are in Christ, how they are gifted and called, and to equip and train them to live out their life purpose.

After my first visit, I feel like this is a place where I can be me - I can be real - and I can experience God in the unique ways that He's built me to experience Him. I'll be back next week, with my cousin Danny.

technorati tag: Augusta Church

Prayer Momentum

2006-06-22T07:15:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post I spoke about my desire to see God do through Lynn & me and our ministry here that which cannot be explained by human ability, creativity, or ingenuity. Quite simply, we want to be part of a supernatural move of God throughout the Augusta area, one that we cannot create.

If there is one thing that is abundantly clear about the nature of God from scripture, it is that He longs for us to engage with Him, call upon Him, plead with Him, to orient our hearts and minds around the longings and desires of His heart and mind and be carried along by His Spirit. He desires for us to be a people of prayer; not seeing prayer as the means through which we get God to do what we want, but the means through which we align ourselves around what He wants, for therein lies abundant life, fruitfulness...success.

Prayer is the preface as we begin to write with God the story of Epic Church. And with this post I am inviting you into this story. One thing I did not do well with our church plant in Illinois was to, in the very beginning, bring together a prayer team. I do not intend to repeat that mistake. We will never be able to pen the correct words of chapter one without the preface of prayer.

Therefore I am inviting you to be a member of our prayer team. I will be publishing a monthly progress report and prayer invitation. In the progress report I will share and celebrate with you how God is answering the prayers you have been praying. In the prayer invitation I will share with you the current issues over which we need to be seeking God's guidance and provision. I will publish this in three formats:

A blog post such as this
An e-mail sent to members of the prayer team who request it
A hard copy printed and mailed to members of the prayer team who request it

My request of those who choose to be part of this team is that you will take time at least weekly to get alone with God and pray for us through the things I share with you in the monthly report. I am hoping for 50 people to form this prayer team. Will you join us?

If you will join with us, here is how I would like for you to respond to this invitation:

Post a comment to this blog post
If you would like to receive the monthly prayer report via e-mail, after you've posted your comment to this blog post then send an e-mail to epicprayerteam@comcast.net and request it.
If you would like to receive the monthly prayer report in printed form, post your comment here, and in your e-mail give me your name and address and we'll add you to the mailing list.

Thanks everyone! I look forward to hearing from many of you who are called to and gifted in intercessory prayer as we all begin writing this Epic together.

technorati tag: Augusta
technorati tag: Prayer
technorati tag: Church Plant

Why "Epic?"

2006-06-19T21:13:00.000-05:00

The sand felt oddly cool as it slipped between his fingers and fell quietly to the ground; the same sand that only hours before quickly seared the bottoms of unprotected feet. The sounds of the other travelers encamped a hundred yards away had fallen still as the night once again wrapped the world in stillness. With the last grains of sands dropping from his hands, the boy turned his gaze upward toward the canopy of a hundred-billion stars stretched above him. His eyes and his mind began to see formations in the stars that reminded him of the stories so often told by his father as the family would gather around the fire - just as they were doing on this night on the backside of the sand dune.

The boy stood, pulled his cloak snugly around his shoulders, and began to make his way back toward the one campfire among many around which he would find his father, mother, brothers and sisters warming themselves before retiring to the tent for another night. Pushing the youngest sibling out of the way, he sat near his father and with his face softly illuminated by the light of the fire and an enthusiasm that betrayed no hint of sleepiness asked, "Papa, would you tell me the story again about the stars and the the sand?"

Though the father had already taken staff in hand and was preparing to lead the family to the tent for the night, he smiled and settled himself back into a comfortable position and after clearing his voice and wrapping his arm around the young boy's shoulders, began with the words, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters..."

As I have thought about the forms and expressions through which I believe God is preparing to use Lynn and me to reach the people of this city with the words and the way of Jesus Christ, the word "Epic" has captured my thoughts. The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives the following definitions for the word "epic:"

1. a long narrative poem in elevated style recounting the deeds of a legendary or historical hero

For the past year or so God has been moving me to see and understand that humanity and all of creation exists within the context of an eternal epic that has been unfolding from the infinite past and will continue to unfold into the infinite future. The epic is a story about one kingdom; the Kingdom of God that was and is and is to come. The epic is a story about one hero; Jesus Christ who personified the way of the Kingdom and sacrificed himself so that all of creation could be one with the Kingdom. And the story is about me, and you, and the other 6.5 billion people alive on this planet today as well as the 15 billion who have already lived and died since the beginning of time until now. It is a story about my children, my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren for as many generations that remain before the last chapter of this age is written.

God has been moving me to see that from the Garden of Eden to today, He is obsessed with inviting all who will hear His voice to look up from the busyness of our own little constricted stories and not only find ourselves within the pages of this greater epic, but to even take pen in hand and begin writing the epic together with the One who is both the Beginning and the End, the Alpha, and the Omega.

God has been moving me to see that the work of evangelism is to awaken the hearts and minds of people to the reality that a greater story is unfolding, and there is a place in that story for them. The work of discipleship is to more intimately acquaint people with the Hero of the story and to explore the dimensions of the role we were created to play. And the work of ministry is to help one another to take the pen, and with hearts and minds that flow in rythmn with the Author who is Himself the Beginning and the End, write the pages of tomorrow.

As we begin the process of creating with God a disciple-making movement here, I don't want to give myself to pioneering another local franchise of the religious system. I don't want to build an organization that will spend it's days and nights wrestling through the drama of budgets and buildings and programs denominational politics and committees and reports. I want to be a voice echoing through this city inviting people to look up from their small stories of great pain and lonliness to find themselves in the pages of this Epic story of love and forgiveness and redemption and wholeness and purpose and abundant life that will never end.

"...and as the aroma of the sacrificed ram rose to heaven, the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time and said, 'This is what the Lord says: Because you have obeyed me and have not witheld even your beloved son, I swear by my own self that I will bless you richly. I will multiply your descendants into countless millions, like the stars of the sky and the sand of the seashore. They will conquer their enemies, and through your descendents all the nations of the earth will be blessed."

"Papa, that's us right? That's you and me, and mother, and all of us right?"

With a smile and silent nod both he and the boy lifted their eyes and looked across the desert in front of them. For as far as they could see, the land was dotted with a galaxy of tens-of-thousands of campfires around which the families of Abraham were gathered, telling the stories of Adam, Seth, Enoch, Lamech, Methuselah, Noah, the Tower of Babel, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and their glorious deliverance from Egypt just weeks ago.

An Unusual Experience

2006-06-14T12:43:00.000-05:00

It´s 1:45 pm in the little Bolivian township of Ixiamas. I´ve just finished another plate of rice and chicken-like substance. I took a few moments to come to the internet cafe and e-mail my wife and in that e-mail I expressed to her that unlike the previous 4 years of coming on this trip, this time my mind is occupied with the things of home - keeping me from really connecting with what´s going on here.

As I think about this, it is a good thing. In previous years this trip was somewhat of an escape for me. A time to draw away from the realities of life and hide out in the jungle for a week with people who don´t expect anything from me, except a smile. Lynn has always been in my thoughts while away, but this year I find myself thinking more about her than ever before; our breakfasts together, our evenings together, etc. I find myself thinking about our neighbors and really wanting to invest more time in getting to know them. I find myself thinking about the ministry opportunities God is opening up for us and the new vision he has given us for the city of Augusta.

For the first time - in 5 trips - my heart is more strongly connected with the things of home than the things of this place. It´s only Wednesday...yet I am ready to be home.

All of this is not to say that God isn´t doing great things here...He is! Awesome things are happening each day. Come on over to Rio de Vida to hear about some of them.

Looking forward to rejoining you, the readers of this blog, in a few days as well.

A Brief Intermission

2006-06-08T07:03:00.000-05:00

Well I was hoping to at least begin my next series of posts breaking down the details of our vision for Epic Church of Augusta, but alas...we must wait.

I will soon be leaving for a short-term mission trip to Bolivia in South America. This is an annual trip for me as each summer I join the mission team from our home church in Columbus, GA to visit the small rainforest township of Ixiamas, Bolivia. For the past six years we have been involved in the building of an internado which is a boarding house for children who live too far into the rainforest to come in to school everyday. The vision for this internado is to provide a safe, Christ-centered home for these children to live Monday - Friday while they go to school.

My first trip was in 2002 and on that trip the building was simply a one-story brick shell with dirt floors. Our main construction project that summer was the laying of cement flooring. This is much more difficult in Ixiamas because you first must assemble a "puzzle" of river rock, then mix the cement by hand with a shovel, and pour it with wheelbarrows. That was some of the hardest work I think I had ever been a part of.

Well, four years later it is a 3-story building with 44 children living there along with a couple of house parents, and a cook. Many of the children have come to know Christ as their savior and many are finding hope and healing after very difficult lives of poverty and (surprisingly prevelant) sexual abuse at home.

We will also be conducting vacation Bible school for the children of the internado, the children of the town, and the children of a distant village that we will be visiting called Tahua. We have an optometrist on our team who is bringing a focumeter (spelling?) and a couple hundred pairs of glasses. Many children will be given the gift of clear vision during this trip.

I've been appointed as the team blogmaster so I have set up a blog called Rio de Vida. This is spanish for River of Life. Surprisingly there is an internet cafe in the town where we will be spending most of our time so I will be making daily posts of our activity. Stop by and see what's happening south of the Equator when you have time.

After arriving home, kissing my wife, petting my dog, sleeping a whole lot, eating fried chicken, and drinking a gallon or so of sweetened iced tea I will resume this blog with the series of posts about Epic Church of Augusta.

Adios mi amigos!

Technical Difficulties

2006-06-06T19:49:00.000-05:00

Well,

For some reason most of my blog was missing for most of the day. Couldn't get much help from blogger tech support. Finally just republished the entire thing this evening and that seems to have fixed it. Sorry about that.

Where From Here?

2006-06-04T19:00:00.000-05:00

"Stand at the crossroads and look...ask where the good way is and walk in it."

I've spent the last several days posting my thoughts here about the things Lynn and I learned about the life of ministry during our time in Illinois. Though there is much more I can share, I feel it's now time to shift my thoughts away from the past and toward the future. Where do we go from here?

There have been questions that we've wrestled with over the last 10 months that needed a degree of resolution before we could give serious thoughts to the next chapter of our life in regards to ministry.

We had to hear from God about the nature of our time in Augusta, GA. Is this time here simply a brief season in which we rest, reflect, and re-orient ourselves before being moved by God to our next assignment? Or is Augusta our next assignment? Though we've received invitations to relocate elsewhere and begin pastoring, God has clearly spoken - particularly in the last month or so - and settled in our hearts that this city is indeed our next assignment.

I also had to hear from God about the nature of future ministry. Has God indeed wired me best to be the starter of new churches? Or should I be seeking pastoral assignment in an established church? Again, God has reaffirmed what I've really known all along, and that is that I could never fit into an existing church structure. I am wired best to see and passionately give myself to things that don't yet exist. Trying to fit myself into an existing church structure would be like...well have you ever seen on the History Channel when they've unearthed a mummy and unwrapped it in the lab? The constriction of the mummification process is about what fitting into an existing church structure as the lead pastor would feel like to me.

"Call to me and I will answer you and show you great and unsearchable things you do not know."

As we've spent the last several weeks settling in our hearts that this place is our next assignment, the next task has been to hear clearly from God what He desires to do through us here. It's pretty easy for me to piece together a vision of my own for ministry. But I desperately want to make sure that whatever we give ourselves to in Augusta is unmistakably God's vision for this city and not my own.

God has been faithful to His invitation. When we set ourselves first to the task of discovering the heartbeat of God for a place or a people, God will then cause our own heart to beat in rythmn with His. Out of that rythmn God is bringing to life in Lynn and me an awesome picture of what He wants to do through us.

Epic Church of Augusta has been born in our hearts and minds and we are beginning to take the first steps in fleshing out this dream for a community of people who are radically passionate about intimacy with God, intimacy with one another, and are deeply committed to faithfully carrying out the commission of Christ to make disciples as we go about our lives.

In what ways will Epic Church of Augusta be an expression of the Kingdom of God and Body of Christ in this city? We envision three facets of this expression.

First, Epic will be a network of missional house churches scattered throughout what is known here as the C.S.R.A. (Central Savannah River Area). This network of house churches will be led by a brotherhood of elders who are deeply committed to a life of sacrificial personal discipleship, deeply committed to one another, and deeply committed to missional unity.

Secondly, Epic will gather together weekly or bi-weekly as a large group with all of the house churches coming together for a worship gathering. It won't be your typical worship "service." It will be a communal worship experience designed to intertwine the sacred with the natural rythmns of life (more on that later).

And finally, we desire to see as part of this movement a 24 hour/7 day worship and intercession

initiative. As I mentioned in "Boot Camp Chronicles; On Substance and Strategy," worship, prayer, and fasting are the lifeblood of ministry. Envision if you can a prayer and worship gathering that never ends with music that never stops and a 24/7 stream of people coming to plead with God on behalf of the city.

On the sidebar of this blog under the heading of "Influences" you see links to three different bodies of believers that are living out the expressions that I've described above. Xenos Christian fellowship is a network of house churches. Solomon's Porch reflects our vision in the way they gather together for worship. And the International House of Prayer began with a group of people gathering to pray in 1999 and it has never stopped.

This is a glimpse. In the days ahead I will start a new series of posts breaking this vision down even further. Here are some upcoming blog-post topics:

1. Why "Epic?"

2. Prayer Team Invitation

3. Why House Church?

4. This Is A Strange Looking Worship Service

5. Prayer Without Ceasing

technorati tag: Augusta, GA

Serenity

2006-06-04T18:33:00.000-05:00

Front-yard view at my parent's farm

How Quickly They Grow Up!

2006-06-04T18:16:00.000-05:00

My nephews; Bradly & Dylan in May, 2006

Neo, at 8 weeks old in late March, 2006

Neo, at about 18 weeks in late May, 2006

And me, with my parents shortly after my 38th birthday

Foresight

2006-06-03T08:53:00.000-05:00

When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, "It's going to rain," and it does. And when the south wind blows you say, "It's going to be hot," and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is that you don't know how to interpret this present time?

~Luke 12:54-56

One of the tasks facing those of us who seek to carry out the mission of Christ in our generation is to discern the "winds" that are shaping our culture and seek to understand the nature of the changes that will be brought about by those winds in the days to come.

Some men and women speak about the social and spiritual landscape of the future and are spiritually gifted by God to do so with remarkable clarity. Some men and women speak about the social and spiritual landscape of the future and are little more than nutjobs who get it wrong every time.

On the sidebar of this blog I've begun a category called "Foresight" under which I'll post links to sites that are devoted to discerning todays winds of change and how they will shape tomorrow. I will try my best to sort out the obvious nutjobs and post only Biblically credible sites. But I want to use this particular post as a disclaimer to say that not all of the material found in those links represent the opinions of this blogger.

"These are the numbers of the men armed for battle who came to David at Hebron to turn Saul's kingdom over to him as the Lord had said...men of Issachar, who understood the times, and knew what Israel should do."

~1 Chronicles 12:23,32

technorati tag: religous trends

Comic Relief

2006-06-02T14:35:00.000-05:00

I thought this was funny, but my mother-in-law didn't laugh. Last weekend she was preparing shortcakes to serve with strawberries and sighed heavily.

I asked what was wrong and she said, "These shortcakes didn't turn out right."

I replied, "Why...did they come out too tall?"

At least I cracked myself up.

By the way, that isn't a picture of me. My teeth aren't yellow.

Boot Camp Chronicles; On Substance and Strategy

2006-06-02T07:08:00.000-05:00

This post is going to be a little dis-jointed because I'm hurrying to crank it out before an appointment. Please bear with me.

I recently read on a message board these words (paraphrased) from a church planter:

"To make a church plant work you have to have state-of-the-art technology, a kickin' band, a massive marketing campaign, and a public launch of over 200 people."

When I made a subsequent post saying something like, "Ummm...AND intense prayer and fasting" I was chastised for my "condescending, holier-than-thou attitude."

If there is one thing that I most clearly learned from our church-planting experience it is this. The emergence of a new church is a supernatural occurence. What we are looking for when we untertake the task of planting a church is for something to happen that cannot be explained by human ingenuity. Almost anyone can gather a crowd and hold their attention with slick marketing, a good band, and flashy technology. Only God can raise up a passionately missional, reproducing ecclesia who are willing to give up their life for his Kingdom.

Do we need strategy? Of course. Any missionary worth his salt knows that to reach a people group they must, through the Spirit's guidance, develop a strategy that will communicate the truth of God in a way that can be heard and embraced. Church planters must understand who God is calling them to reach, exegete that culture, and develop a plan to speak the language of their tongue and their heart.

But there must also be an unexplainable supernatural force at work in our strategy and that supernatural force working on our behalf occurs as God responds to a heart that is devoted first to running passionately after his heart; as a deer pants for streams of water.

I am a strategy guy. Strategic thinking comes easy to me. And I definitely had a strategy for our church plant. Oh, I prayed all the time for God to do something through us that could never be explained by human ability. But honestly, I relied on my strategic thinking far more than I relied on God to do what only He can do.

What is the bottom line of planting a church? Simple. We want people to be drawn to us so that we can share the gospel with them, see them come into relationship with Christ, and disciple them. What is it that will draw them to us? Is it our marketing? Is it our band? Is it our speaking ability? Is it our strategic plan? Is it our building? I would say that some people will be drawn by these things and some good things might happen. But I would also say that a church plant built primarily on these things will be like driving a V-8 Hemi with only 2 cylinders hitting.

One morning during the spring of 2005, as God was in the process of deconstructing me, I was sitting in my office reading the scripture and praying. I don't know how I got to this book, but for some reason I turned to Zechariah and my eyes fell upon this verse that I'd never read before.

This is what the Lord Almighty says: "In those days ten men from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, 'Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.'" ~Zechariah 8:23

Words cannot explain what I felt in the moment that I read this passage. It was almost as if I had just found the hidden key to a treasure chest. After all of the reading of church planting and church growth strategy books I had done the past few years, in that moment God said, "Dude, in this one verse is everything you need."

Yes, I'm pretty sure God actually called me "dude." But He was right! No surprise there. Check this out: In this one passage you see in simplest language both the strategy and the substance for any ministry to accomplish what God desires for it to accomplish. The strategy: You have to be going somewhere meaningful. The substance: God's presence with you is percievable by others. The result: People who are hungry for more than their present earth-bound reaility will come from the woodwork to take hold of you and go with you.

The people of Judah and Israel had been desimated. Israel was utterly destroyed and scattered by the Assyrians. Judah had been crushed and carried away into exile in Babylon. They were a broken, defeated, shamed people who had arrived in that state because they had forsaken the substance of God's presence among them. But God was saying to them that a day would come when they would turn their hearts back to the God of their fathers and in that day something supernatural would happen. Instead of being invaded by people seeking to destroy them, they would be invaded by hungry, hurting people who were desparate for the presence of God in their lives.

This is what church planting is. Every church planter is simply a broken, defeated, shamed person who has found forgiveness, restoration, victory, and glory in Jesus Christ and seeks to draw others into that reality.

Strategy without substance is hollow and devoid of supernatural power. Substance without strategy is unfocused and unfruitful.

As we plant our churches, may we be faithful in understanding the culture around us. But my prayer is that people searching for God will be drawn to me not through my strategy but through the tangible substance of the presence of God surrounding me, my marriage, my home, and my ministry.

"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphant procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing."

~2 Corinthians 2:14-15

technorati tag: church planting

Boot Camp Chronicles; The Matter Of Motive

2006-06-01T07:09:00.000-05:00

Why do men plant churches? No this question is not about to followed by a cleverly divised punchline designed to illicit grins and giggles. It's a serious question that springs from my thoughts at about 5:30 this morning while I was praying. It's a question that fits well with this series of posts as the thoughts with which I'll answer the question are born out of another lesson I learned while planting our church in Illinois.

Yesterday I was reading the blog of another church planter friend of mine from Canton, Georgia in which he laughingly mentioned an observation made by one visitor to their church plant. The visitor made the tongue-in-cheek comment that it looked like a bunch of middle-aged men who couldn't find jobs so they started a church instead. Though that was a light-hearted conversation I think the comment does bring up some serious questions that we must consider. Why do we plant churches?

I believe that some people plant churches more out of personal need than personal fruitfulness.

There are some Christians who are just plain difficult and can't get along with other Christians. They hop around from church to church and then finally after years of ticking people off they just gather together a group of others like themselves and form a "house church" (and I use that term loosely) where they can get together every week and complain about everybody else.

There are some men who pursue church-planting ministry because they need to be significant in the eyes of others. They get a rush from the idea of dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people coming every week just to hear them talk. It fulfills a narcissistic desire to be the center of attention.

There are some men who plant churches out of a messiah complex. They have a need to be needed so they percieve the world around them to be devoid of any spiritual substance and believe that they alone have the vision that will bring revival.

I know of one young man who has no employable skills and openly admits that he has to plant churches because he can't do anything else. In the few years I have known him he has walked away from 3 failed church plants and is now hoping someone will give him money to try a fourth time.

The question of the day is, "Am I planting churches as a means to fulfill my own needs?"

If we will allow the Spirit of God to pull back the curtain and fully expose our hearts we'll see clearly if this is the case. And if we can come to the place of admitting this truth we can then begin to face the reality that any church planting efforts pursued with this motive will be about as easy to pull off as it is to get an apple tree to produce oranges.

We will not be successful in planting churches - or any other ministry for that matter - until we come to the place that every spiritual, mental, relational, and emotional need we have is being fully satisfied through intimacy with Christ. The source for meeting all of our needs is found in a Person, not in an activity. If we attempt to fulfill those needs through minsitry we'll repeatedly find that the ministry never becomes what it could and we remain despairingly empty.

"I am the vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." ~John 15:1-4

There are men who are called to plant churches. We who have that calling understand what I'm saying when I say that it is something we can't resist. We can't stop it. We have to do it. To us it feels like a moral imperative. In our sleeping and our waking we think about it, we dream about it, we talk about it, we write about it, and we often feel like we would rather die and go on to be with Jesus if we can't do this thing. So yes, it is a need. How do I then reconcile these seemingly contradictory thoughts?

If we who are called to church planting are abiding in Christ and finding the complete fulfillment of our needs in him alone, then a church plant will emerge from our lives as naturally as apples emerge from an apple tree. To understand this, go find a healthy apple tree and try to prevent it from producing apples. You can't do it. Apples will emerge and there's nothing you can do to stop it short of poisoning or killing it.

If we are approaching minstry with the attitude that this is the only thing that will satisfy the needs in my life, then a healthy ecclesia will never emerge from you life. Oh, you may gather some people together for a period of time. You may be able to do some things that look like ministry. But seeing a vibrant, healthy, multiplying church emerge is as likely as walking into that apple orchard and seeing oranges hanging from the trees.

I end with the words of David. May this be the singular driving motive in my life.

"One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.

For in the days of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock.

Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me; at his tabernacle will I sacrifice with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the Lord."

~Psalm 27:4-6

technorati tag: church planting

Boot Camp Chronicles; The Paradox Of Vision

2006-05-31T07:10:00.000-05:00

Anyone who has come anywhere in the vicinity of church-planting ministry has heard this word: vision. Church planters are vision driven. We have to be. We are in the business of being used by God to create something that doesn't yet exist. And before it can exist in a way that can be felt, touched, and experienced by others it must first exist within our minds. A church planter experiences the fully mature church in the stillness of his morning thoughts over coffee. Images of the soon-to-be church drift in and out of his awareness during meals with his wife or while driving to the store, or while half-heartedly watching his favorite sitcom. The church planter is utterly alone in an unexplainable emotional connection with a church that may not become reality for months or even years. Vision is the oxygen breathed by church planters. Yet, strangely enough, that oxygen that keeps the heart and mind and soul of a church planter alive can be the very poison that kills the newborn church once it arrives in the flesh.

Before planting our first church in Illinois the vision was fully formed in my heart and mind. I had read all of the great books like Visioneering by Andy Stanley and Turning Vision Into Reality by George Barna...and countless others. I wrote a vision document. I told everyone about the vision. The articulation of my vision opened all of the necessary doors for us to move our church plant out of my mind and into the lives of many other people. I was repeatedly encouraged by church planter colleagues to have the attitude that my vision is the prevailing vision and if anyone comes along who doesn't fully embrace and support it, to run them off. I had the vision thing down, and yet, I totally missed the point.

From day one I cast the vision to everyone who joined us in our ministry. I would say to people something like, "We are planting a church in this city that will serve as a catalyst for other inter-connected church plants. We are going to have a Community Care Center where we'll offer emergency pantries, computer classes, GED classes, etc. And we're going to create Christ-centered cottage industries to help the many unemployed in our city find jobs and learn to be entreprenuers." This vision was very, very real to me and several people gave their toothy nods of approval.

After two-and-a-half years of living, breathing, and casting this vision we were struggling just to grow the initial congregation beyond 60 people. And of those 60 people, nobody really embraced the full-grown vision I was daily proclaiming. I struggled to understand why. And then, during a 3 day prayer retreat in Kansas City, MO in March, 2005 the light went on. I came away from that retreat with this understanding:

It's not all about convincing people to rally around my vision. It's about creating an environment where every individual can catch a glimpse of and passionately pursue God's vision for their own life.

Wow! Here I was trying to give birth to a vision for a large, successful ministry that would touch all of Southern Illinois with the hope of Christ, yet people were walking into our sanctuary every Sunday who had no vision whatsoever for their own lives and "Where there is no vision, the people perish." People were "perishing" right under my nose while my eyes were set 5 years into the future.

The names have been changed to protect the innocent. I wanted people to embrace my vision for a church-planting movement but Lindsey lived day to day wondering if she could ever really overcome her clinical depression and the guilt of her past. I wanted people to help me create a community care center but Robert came in every Sunday wondering if there really was any purpose to his own life. I wanted all of Southern Illinois to know about our ministry for the glory of God, yet Denise wondered if she could make it a week without getting beat up by her dad. And sixty other stories just like this existed all around me while I stared longingly into the horizon.

The paradox of vision is this: God will give us a panoramic view of what he wants to do through us in advancing His Kingdom. It will be far larger than the moment. We will see it fully matured in our hearts and minds. It will energize and drive us. It will keep our hearts alive. Yet the only way we will see it become reality is by setting it aside and giving ourselves fully to the day-by-day work of helping every individual God brings across our path to catch a glimpse of their own personal vision, believe it can become reality, and pursue it with Godly wisdom and strength.

When we as church-planters give ourselves first to the nurturing of vision in the people God entrusts to us, we will then see our own God-ordained vision grow up strong and healthy all around us. Whereas if we keep our hearts and mind focused on the distant horizon while people perish at our feet we will find ourselves walking into that horizon alone.

technorati tag: church planting

Boot Camp Chronicles; Preface

2006-05-25T20:05:00.000-05:00

At approximately 7:00 am on Friday, August 19th, 2005 I kissed Lynn goodbye, got in my truck, and drove 11 hours to Augusta, GA to begin a new life; in which Lynn would join me 60 days later after preparing the house to sell and preparing the children's ministry she was leading for transition. The previous Sunday I preached my final message at the church we planted three years earlier and afterward many of us went to my parents farm where I baptized a husband and wife and we all shared a final picnic together.

As I began down the highway on that Friday morning I was an emtional wreck. I was moving us to Augusta so I could financially support us with a job in a field to which I never thought I would return. I knew in my heart that God had called me to the church planting ministry, but as Illinois disappeared in my rearview mirror I had serious doubts that I would ever again plant another church. I was emotionally and spiritually spent and with every mile-marker I passed I tried to conjur up a vision for another church plant. Six-hundred mile-markers later I had experienced six-hundred failed attempts to reignite that passion, that dream.

The following months took me through an emotional and spiritual battle to understand some of the difficult things we had experienced in our church-planting journey. There was a lot of good that happened. Several people were born into the Kingdom during those years, several new friendships were formed, and several people who were previously doing life alone found a spiritual community. But there was also so much that happened that ripped apart my passion for ministry.

I'll refrain from speaking in detail about those painful moments out of respect for our friends from the church who read this blog. But there were so many "whys" during those years that I've struggled to understand these past months. There were many mistakes I made as a pastor that I had to learn from. There were many people I needed to forgive in order to free myself from the grip of bitterness. I am still struggling to forgive some.

Recently I have once again begun to feel the passion and dream the dreams that I feared were lost forever. Today there is coming alive in me a beautiful picture of what God desires to do through us here in Augusta. A picture of our ministry here is emerging with a clarity that even surpasses the clarity of our dream five years ago. And there is also awakening in me a better understanding of all that we went through in Illinois.

Someone once said that church planters believe that God is going to use us to get the church plant done, when in fact, God uses the church plant to get us done (or something like that). I've come to understand that our 3 years in Illinois was my "Basic Training."

A few minutes before I came up to the reading room to write this I looked up "Basic Training" on Wikipedia. This statement about the purpose of basic training (also called "boot camp") captured me:

Some systems of training seek to totally break down the individual and remold that person to the desired behaviour.

If you've ever been through basic training in the military (which I haven't) you remember how intentional your drill seargent was in creating punishing circumstances for you to endure. Everyone comes into the military with their own opinions, ideas, attitudes and behaviors and the purpose of boot camp is to totally tear that person down and then rebuild them into a person that will function as part of a unit (body) and have far greater potential for victory on the battlefield.

Planting our first church was my boot camp. I shared with a new pastor friend of mine the other day that when I began the first days of our ministry I knew everything there was to know about church planting. I read all the books. I learned all the strategies. I daily talked with a nationwide network of church planters. I had been mentored in a year-long full-time internship. There was nothing more for me to learn. But then 2 1/2 years in I realized, "I don't know the first thing about planting a church!" Oh, like I said earlier, a lot of good happened...but only by the grace of God. I was being torn apart in the process; to the point of a complete emotional collapse in March, 2005. And today, I understand that it was God who was tearing me apart for the purpose of remolding me into a man who in the next chapter of ministry would have far greater potential for victory on the battlefield.

I believe that the clarity with which Lynn and I are seeing the vision for our next church plant is the direct result of God's process of tearing me down and rebuilding me during our years in Illinois. In the coming days I'll continue this series of posts that I'm calling "Boot Camp Chronicles" and therin I will share some of the painful lessons I learned during our 3 year season of basic training.

technorati tag: church planting

Divergent Streams

2006-05-23T20:26:00.000-05:00

Any reader of my blogs is familiar with the spiritual & ecclesiastical reformation that I've been going through for the past year or so. Throughout this reformation I have found myself strongly drawn into the "Emergent Conversation." From some who know me I've received criticism for seemingly moving away from the "absolute truth" of scripture and for becoming more "postmodern" in my thinking. As I've spent time in this "conversation" over the past months I have an understanding of how someone could fear this theological drift. But I also see more clearly how someone can miss some important points of the conversation. To fully understand what's beginning to happen in this new movement of ministry across America you have to pay attention to what I see as two divergent streams: The Emerging Church & The Emergent Conversation. What began as one stream a few years ago has diverged into two separate channels. I see much beauty and potential in one stream. I see some danger in the other. And unless we have a clear understanding of what is happening in both channels we run the risk of missing the good in one stream through our fear of what is found in the other.

The "emerging church" is made of up churches like Mars Hill in Seattle and Vintage Faith Church in California...and countless other church planting movements. These churches place a strong emphasis on intertwining the ancient truths and practices of our faith into a spiritual life that is holisitic and de-compartmentalized. In other words, there is a deep devotion to Biblical truth. There is a deep respect for our rich heritage; seeing our current place and time as but one thread in a vast tapestry that spans two-thousand years of time and culture. And there is a deep commitment to being more holistic in our approach to spirituality; recognizing that a relationship with Christ is an immersion of our whole life into His way in which no part of our existence remains untouched. In this movement we see the emergence of house churches. We also see a renewal of the practice of communal living. In the "emerging church" movement the idea of Sunday-only Christianity is a strange, offensive anomoly.

And then there is the "Emergent Conversation." I'll refrain from mentioning names of people or names of churches here. I will admit that I find much resonance with what is being said in this conversation, particulary in regards to a greater openness toward people of other religions and lifestyles...for the purpose of loving them into the Kingdom. I believe that what I see in the Emergent Conversation is an openness that is quite similar to that which was demonstrated by Jesus; the friend of sinners. For example, I see churches be-friending gays and lesbians and welcoming them into their gatherings where they can experience the life-changing power of Christ. This is in contrast to more fundamental churches like Westboro Baptist Church that marches in front of gay bars and military funerals holding signs that say "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God For Dead Soldiers."

I see a genuine desire in the Emergent Conversation to open the doors of dialogue between us and those of other religions in which we look for grains of truth in their worldview and then use those grains of truth to point them to Christ - much the same way Paul did in Athens.

But in this stream I also see a tendency that could lead to great theological error. There is a strong tendency toward deconstructionism through which everything that we have embraced as orthodox Christian doctrine through the millenia is broken down and questioned. As a by-product of this some in mainstream Christian denominations are beginning to question things like the deity of Jesus, the exclusivity of salvation through Christ alone (maybe there is salvific value found in other belief systems), etc. This to me is un-settling.

I do believe there is value in examining our beliefs. I make it a practice to dialoge with 4 or 5 atheists and agnostics every day for the sake of sharing the gospel, but also for the purpose of forcing myself to examine why I believe what I believe. Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." I believe we could also say, "The unexamined faith is not worth sharing." But as I see some in the Emergent Conversation asking questions but never settling on answers, I become fearful that there is indeed an emerging acceptance of the postmodern denial of absolute truth.

I will continue to watch and listen with interest to the "Emergent Conversation," but I am fully caught up in the stream of emerging churches that I spoke about first. Christianity is growing everywhere in the world, except in America. In America Islam is the fastest growing religion. I believe that this new stream of emerging churches that carries people into more authentic and holistic spiritual devotion is the stream that will bring genuine revival to our soil.

technorati tag: emerging church

And Then You Find One

2006-05-19T12:03:00.000-05:00

Saturday night Lynn and I were trying to figure out where we would go to church. We were pretty much out of ideas. We thought we'd just go back to one of the many that we had previously visited.

Then, right around bedtime I remembered a new church plant I read about online the very weekend that I moved to Augusta back in August. I had just found their new location a couple of days earlier (they had moved since August and I lost track of them). So, we got up, drove across the river, made the customary Sunday morning stop at Starbucks, and made our way to Quest Church.

Now, if you've read any of my blogs over the months you know that I have a tendency to find a lot of things wrong with Western Churchianity. But on Sunday morning Lynn and I found a whole lot of things RIGHT during our visit to Quest. From the moment we walked in we knew that we were among people of authenticity who were truly on a "quest" to know Christ in more intimate ways and to carry Christ out of the building and into the city.

From the moment we arrived to the moment we left we were blessed to find people who were genuinely happy to see us, people who seriously knew how to show hospitality, people who were more interested in experiencing a connection with God than they were with service programming.

The music was great...not happy clappy, not somber & sorrowful, but calm and worshipful. The message was Biblical, the eucharist was celebrated, and the interactive time of people praying for one another was beautiful.

I had lunch with this pastor Wednesday and feel like I've finally found a kindred spirit in this city who more than anything else wants to see lost people find their way to Christ. I'm looking forward to a new friendship with John and the people of Quest.

Movements & Monuments

2006-05-17T08:30:00.000-05:00

It all started for me in the summer of 1997. I was working for a newspaper in downtown Jackson, TN when the prominent downtown church packed up and moved out of the downtown area to relocate outside of the city, far away from people and places that most needed the Kingdom of God living and breathing in their neighborhood. I'll never forget the procession that they had planned for their final day in the old building. After services on that Sunday everyone piled into their cars to form a parade toward their new building. Traffic came to a halt for about 7 miles as a parade of about 1000 Lexus' & BMW's & SUV's made their pilgrimage.

Very soon after this I felt God defining my ministerial calling to that of a church planter who would intentionally bring the Kingdom into the forgotten places and to the hearts and minds of the forgotten people. I remember driving around downtown Jackson looking for empty store fronts that I could rent and open up to the hookers and dealers and gang-bangers and homeless as a place where they could experience the love and restoration that is found in Christ and in community with those who know him.

This began my church-planting ministry which didn’t come to fruition in Jackson, but did very soon after emerge in Columbus, GA and later in Carbondale, IL. As I’ve spent the past 10 months or so in Augusta, GA listening for God’s direction for the next chapter of our ministry, I’ve begun to notice a re-kindling of that frustration I felt in Jackson, TN as I live among a quarter-million or so people. That frustration is once again a shaping force in the church we are about to begin forming here. A church that will be for the unchurched. A church in which the churched see themselves as missionaries to the city rather than privileged card-carrying members of the club.

I just don’t get it sometimes…often times. All around me, almost everywhere I look I see churches filled with Christians who have drawn away from the world around them, tucked themselves away in an insulated, out-of-sight cocoon where they don’t have to actually interact with anyone who is not a Christian, to gorge themselves (they call it “being fed”) on teaching, polish their monuments, perfect their personal preferential styles, and never give a second thought to the hopelessness, fear, death, and destruction that is going on right outside their closed door.

Christ has called us to be the makers of movements, yet we occupy ourselves with the making of monuments. A monument can be a building, a pulpit, an organ, a pew, a musical style, a baptismal font (remind me to tell you my absurd baptismal font story sometime), or a multi-million dollar "prayer tower" like one that currently defiles the skyline in Columbus, GA, or anything else that we erect and revere (all for the Glory of God of course!) I was recently reading through the Book of Discipline for my particular denomination and came across all of the liturgies that are written for the purpose of “dedicating” buildings and instruments and furniture and thought to myself, “How silly.” Of course we need to remember that everything placed in our hands by God is meant to be used for His purposes. But when all of this ceremony is carried out by a church that has isolated itself from the people who need Christ most…the whole thing smells of hypocrisy. It’s like saying to God, “We dedicate all of our furniture and instruments to you…but we have no intention of using them for the purpose that matters most to you; seeking and saving those who are lost.”

I’m reminded of the time Peter, James, & John stood with Jesus on the mountain and experienced with him a visitation of Moses & Elijah and a voice booming from Heaven. Peter’s first thought was, “Lord, we have to build a monument to memorialize this holy moment (my paraphrase)!” Jesus, on the other hand, had other plans…to get off the mountain, get back to the "sinners;" the hookers & thieves, and continue getting the movement underway.

A movement begins small; with one person, then three, then twelve, then one hundred twenty, then a few thousand and it continues “moving,” refusing to turn inward, refusing to be distracted by the building of monuments, until everyone who can be touched by the movement is reached. The church Jesus inaugurated is a movement than began with him and twelve others, swept the world, and continues today. It is a movement intended to put followers of Christ face-to-face with hurting people who are far from God so that we can be agents of reconciliation, love, and restoration from God to those people.

I’m amazed at how many Christians do not have one single friend who is not a Christian. I’m amazed at how many churches go for weeks, months, even years without a single non-Christian present in their gatherings - yet exuberantly celebrate and proclaim success in the mission when a Christian transfers in from another church. I’m amazed at how many churches intentionally design everything they do around their own personal preferences rather than designing everything they do around whatever will be most effective in seeking out non-Christians and creating environments where they can experience the life-changing power of Christ. A guy named Paul once said, “I have become all things to all people so that by any means I may reach some.” He got it! His preferences, his agendas, his comfort were all rubbish if they got in the way of introducing one lost person to Christ.

If we stop coming face-to-face in relationships with people who are far from God, the movement stops. God’s anointing lifts and moves elsewhere because we are no longer engaged in what He is engaged in. Churches shrink and die. And we all sit around wondering what went wrong. Did we need a better band? Did we need small groups perhaps? Was the teaching not good enough? Did we need more money? No, it’s simple. What went wrong is that we left the movement, took the off-ramp, found a quiet shady spot, spread out our blanket where nobody would bother us, and spent our time feeding ourselves.

Eloida

2006-04-26T08:00:00.000-05:00

Last week I received sad, frustrating news.

For the past several years many people, myself included, have been building what's called an internado in the small rainforest town of Ixiamas, Bolivia. It is a boarding house for children who previously lived too far out into the rainforest to attend school. Now, they can live at the internado during the week and receive and education.

Eloida is one of the young girls living at the internado. Several months ago a sandfly landed on her, bit her, and injected her body with the virus that causes leishmaniesis (spelling?). Usually, this can be treated with anti-biotics. But in impoverished countries with poor nutrition this disease can be fatal. The news I received about Eloida is that she is in the final stages and will soon die without treatment.

For those who live there, treatment is too expensive. But in a country where $1.00 will convert into 8 bolivianos, $1.00 goes a long way and we in America can easily afford the treatment she needs to save her life.

I remember the first time I met Eloida. It was the summer of 2003 and she had not yet been able to begin living at the internado. She lived in the small village of Cinco de Junio. We had made a day-trip out to her village to visit and were amazed as these people used almost all they had to give us a welcome feast. Eloida was quite and shy and would meekly look down while smiling at you; happy for your presence but embarrassed by her plight. A precious child.

I'm asking anyone who reads this and is so moved to help raise funds for Eloida. If you can give a dollar...wonderful! If you can give $1000.00...wonderful! There's no reason this young girl should lose her life if we in America can pay for her treatment.

I don't know the exact amount of her treatment yet, but when I find out I'll post an update.

If you want to help, put "Eloida Medical Treatment- Ixiamas" in the memo line of your check and send your contribution to:

Attn: Mission Team
Christ Community Church
1819 Midtown Drive
Columbus, GA 30906

Hesitancy & Commitment

2006-04-26T07:32:00.000-05:00

It's funny what God sometimes uses to speak to us. I spent all day yesterday in a Franklin/Covey management training session. As we worked through the material I came across this quote in my workbook. God spoke very clearly to me through this quote regarding our future here as a church planter. Here's the quote:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy,

the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creativity),

there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which

kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the

moment one definitely commits oneself, then

God moves too...

A whole stream of events issues from the decision,

raising in one's favor all manner of unforseen incidents,

meetings, and material assistance, which no man could

have dreamt would have come his way.

I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

'Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!'"

~ W.H. Murray; Early Himalaya Explorer

I go this weekend to be officially brought into the Georgia/Alabama conference of our our denomination. I have great anticipation of our future here in Augusta.

Emerging Church

2006-04-11T16:01:00.001-05:00

Just what is this thing called "The Emerging Church?"

Hope

2006-04-11T11:10:00.000-05:00

One of my sermons from a previous life:

It’s 10:00 am on Black Friday; that’s the nickname that retailers have given this one day out of the year that is often the make or break day for their annual sales. It’s the day after Thanksgiving and of all the more sane places that I could be right now...I’m sitting at the mall. God told me to come here and watch people while I transfer the Sunday morning message from my mind to paper.

To my left there is an older gentleman with gray hair and a beard, wearing a white sweatshirt, eating a sandwich. He just looked my direction and I wonder if he’s hoping that his wife will quickly find everything she’s looking for and for the first time in his 40 years of black Fridays with her he’ll be able to escape the mall by noon and get back to the quiet of his study where he can sit by the fire, smoke his pipe, and engross himself in his book about sub-Saharan anthropology. He looks like an anthropologist.

A family just walked behind me with a small kid screaming at the top of his lungs. Apparently his hopes of obtaining a cool new toy have been dashed and his parents hopes of a scream-free day have come to a quick, ear-shattering demise. They were walking toward the exit. A scary looking guy just walked in front of me. He had to be 6’5”, looked like Abraham Lincoln only more muscular and not as friendly, and was wearing all black with lot’s of metal stuff hanging off of him. I’m not sure what his hopes are, but I find myself hoping that I don’t have anything he wants.

A young boy is sitting at the table just to my left. We just made eye-contact. I smiled...he didn’t. What are his hopes, his dreams, the longings of his heart today? Oh. An older woman and child just walked up, sat down, and put a piece of pizza in front of him. There’s the smile. He looks satisfied now.

She can’t be more than 16 or 17. She’s sitting directly in front of me with an older woman, maybe her mother. She’s been up walking around and it’s pretty easy to discern her hopes. Her shirt and jeans are tighter than any I think I’ve seen. Her stomach is bare. Her jeans barely come up over her hips. And the way she’s walking leaves no doubt that for reasons buried deep in her heart she is hoping for, craving the attention of men. I wonder what’s been missing in her life?

Two tables over from pizza boy is a very pleasant looking older, gray haired lady. She’s sitting alone, I see money folded up in the hand that is propped against her cheek. She’s smiling and making conversation with a little girl next to her. I think they may be related. I wonder if, behind the smile, grandma is remembering Christmases gone by and hoping that she can make it through another holiday season without her husband.

The food court cleaning lady has walked by me several times. Each time I have made eye contact and smiled, but of all the people around me right now, I don’t see anyone who looks as sad, depressed, and empty as this woman looks. She even looks irritated that I have my laptop plugged into the electric pole next to the trash can. Maybe she hates this job. Maybe she hates having to work at the mall on this day. I certainly would. Or maybe 50 years of shattered hopes and dreams that never come true have brought her to the place that life is no longer an adventure, but is simply a matter of endurance.

Pizza boy just went back to get another slice.

It’s getting closer to noon and the food bar is really starting to fill up. I’m totally surrounded on all sides by all kinds of people who have all sorts of different stories. Some are stories of laughter and happiness shared with a loving family. Some are stories of struggle and conflict. Some are stories of devastating trauma. Some are stories of renewal, the breaking through of the sun after a storm, the beginnings of the restoration of a broken relationship, the early signs of stability after years of poverty. But there is one common theme in all of the stories around me right now. They all involve hope. In some stories, hope is abundant. In some of the stories hope is vanishing quickly. In some, hope was totally snuffed out years ago. And then there are those stories that are experiencing the dawn of hope after a long, dark night of it’s absence. What is hope?

Quite simply, hope is the anticipation of something pleasant. Hopelessness prevails when we no longer have any reason to think that anything pleasant will ever come our way. Someone once said, “It is possible for a person to live up to seventy days without food. It is also possible to exist for nearly ten days without water. And one can live for up to six minutes without air. But there is one thing it is impossible to live without—hope.”

Because of this, it shouldn’t be surprising that God has offered to every person who will draw near to Him through Jesus Christ a 3-point anchor to stabilize their life with one of those three points being “hope.” Paul says to us in 1 Corinthians 13:13 “Now these three things remain: faith, hope and love.” A life of hope—the anticipation of something pleasant—should be the expectation of every person who allows Jesus Christ to become the centerpiece of their life. It is a piece of the picture of the life that God desires for you to experience as His child, his friend.

The first thing that our Father wants us to hope for is The hope of righteousness. There are those who have been stripped of their hope by the guilt of their past. Do you know anyone like this? They have made terrible mistakes with their life. They’ve hurt people. They’ve hurt themselves. Through their actions they’ve brought about consequences that may follow them as long as they live. They’ve ruined their reputation. The things they have done have caused others to lose respect for them, to avoid them, to ostracize them. They have things hidden in their life that the would never want anyone to discover. And they fear the very idea of ever having to stand before God and give account for those things.

Galatians 5:5 says “But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.” There’s a theological word for what he’s talking about here, and that word is justification. Justification is a legal term which simply means that you are innocent even though you did everything you were accused of doing. This passage of scripture is saying to you and me that if we approach God through faith in Jesus Christ who was convicted, sentenced, and executed in our place—then we can fully expect to come into God’s presence, be greeted, embraced, declared innocent, and welcomed into His eternal Kingdom. With the wisdom of Linus, life is more pleasant when we can look forward to the day that the mistakes of our past are eternally forgotten.

Our Father also wants us to know The hope of His calling. Now often, when we hear the word “calling” we think of what we’re supposed to do with our life; the tasks we will accomplish for God. This isn’t what we’re talking about here. To understand, we need to read Ephesians 1:18-21. The word calling can also be interpreted here invitation. What this passage is taking about, the hope that Paul wants to open they eyes of our heart to is this: We have been invited into a family and as part of that family we will share in an inheritance. A multi-billionaire walks into an orphanage, comes to the room of an 8 year old boy who has nothing, and invites him to come home with him and become part of the family. The moment the paperwork is signed and the adoption is legal, the boy who was in one moment a penniless orphan is the next moment part of a family and the heir of billions.

God, who owns everything and loves us more than any human ever could, has invited us into His family. The adoption papers were signed in blood. And now, if we’ll respond to His calling, His invitation, we will instantly in this life and in the life to come have all of the rights and provision that come along with being part of the family. Linus would say, “life is more pleasant when we can look forward to the love, acceptance, and provision there is in being part of a family.”

The hope of salvation is another expectation that God wants those who are His to understand. I have known and do know today Christians who begin every day anticipating defeat. They know that the enemy and the circumstances of life in a messed up world are going to leave them feeling defeated at the end of the day. In the two places where Paul talks about the hope of salvation is talking about assurance of victory.

Let’s look at two passages, beginning with 1 Thessalonians 5:8. “But let us who live in the light keep sober, protected by the armor of faith and love and wearing as our helmet the hope of salvation.” In this passage, Paul is repeating what he said to the Ephesians when he said, “Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God.” When we talk about the hope of salvation, we’re talking about living our life each day with the assurance of victory. Why does Paul use the illustration of a helmet for our hope of salvation? The idea is, that a well-founded hope of salvation will preserve us in the day of spiritual conflict, and will guard us from the blows which an enemy would strike. The helmet defended the head, a vital part; and so the hope of salvation will defend the soul, and keep it from the blows of the enemy.

A soldier would not fight well without a hope of victory. A Christian could not contend with the enemy, without the hope of final salvation. If you engage in life each day anticipating defeat, then that is what you’ll have. If you’ll engage life with the hope of salvation, the enemy of your soul has no power over you. What would Linus say? “Life is more pleasant when we can look forward to victory instead of defeat.”

The hope of glory brings us to another theological term, which is glorification. Paul talked to the Colossians about the mystery of Christ being in us, which is the hope of glory. The mystery that had been revealed to Paul was that Christ died for the whole world, not just the Jews. The result was that by placing our life in Christ, Christ is in us and that is the source of our hope of glorification. In other words, because Christ lives in us, we can hope, expect, anticipate this thing called glorification. So what is it? Paul’s words to the Corinthians hold the answer. 2 Cor 4:16-18 “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Quite simply, as Christians, we can anticipate the day when we will be freed from this earthly body that gets sick, breaks down, and eventually dies. Everything in creation, including our bodies hope for the day of glorification when everything will be made new. Much of the despair and hopelessness that we face comes through bodies that don’t work, through illness, through chronic pain, through terminal disease. As believers, our hope rests in the promise of glorification. Linus would encourage us by saying, “Life is more pleasant when we can look forward to the day when there will be no more suffering or pain.”

Finally, one last reason for hope that I want to share with you, and that is The hope of eternal life. I feel very sorry for the atheist. Since he believes that there is no God and there is nothing after this life, he has no reason to hope. This life is all you get and frankly, this life isn’t all that great much of the time. Paul wrote a letter to Titus, whom he left behind on the island of Crete to oversee the church there. In that letter, Paul made a statement that summarizes everything we’ve said this morning. He said in Titus 3:4-7, “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.”

Everything we’ve said today comes down to this. Jesus Christ came to give us hope eternal life. Life...not just existence—life that is fuller, richer, more meaningful than we can comprehend. Life that will go on for eternity, without end, in the presence of God and in the presence of all the loved ones who have died before us. When we grieve over the death of loved ones, we grieve with hope...the expectancy of being reunited with them in a new life that will never end.

Coffee With An Atheist

2006-04-04T18:50:00.000-05:00

"I would rather have coffee with an atheist than go to church with a pharisee.

In the heart of an atheist remains a void longing to be filled whereas the pharisee has filled the void with himself and calls it 'God.'"

~Me

Perfect Blossoms

2006-04-02T16:51:00.000-05:00

Mystery solved. There are two small trees in our backyard that have remained bare while every other tree is springing to life...until this morning. I've looked at them, wondering what kind they were. This morning I looked out across the backyard and noticed that seemingly overnight white blossoms have awakened. The two small trees are dogwoods. Today they are adding their peaceful white blossoms to our yard of redbuds, pines, and sweet gums.

While looking out the window just now at the blooms on these trees I was reminded of what has become one of my favorite movies: The Last Samurai.

The first time I saw this movie I was stirred and disturbed, moved and saddened all at the same time. The storyline goes something like this:

The movie begins with the main character, Nathan Algren, as a drunk former soldier suffering an emotional collapse after fighting alongside General Custer and witnessing the brutality that was carried out against innocent Native American women and children. He is convinced that the only thing he is good for is killing. That feeling is reinforced when he is recruited by the Japanese government to come and train their soldiers to wipe out the few remaining Samurai. The emperor wants Japan to modernize and become more like the west. The Samurai want to protect the Japanese way of life. Captain Algren's job is to teach the Japanese military how to bring about the demise of the Samurai.

In the first battle, Algren is captured and taken to the Samurai village. The leader wants him kept alive because he wants to have "conversations" with him. Algren spends several months captive, not by the Samurai, but by the winter. The leader assures Algren that when spring breaks, they will return him to the city.

During the next several months of living among these people Algren discovers that they are a people of peace, love, discipline, and honor. While living among them Algren himself begins to experience peace, healing, and love emerging in his own heart. He overcomes his alcoholism. He learns the language. He is captured by the smiles of the children. As he walks among the trees noticing the smiles and laughter of the people all around him, he makes this statement:

"I've never been a church-going man and what I have seen on the field of battle has led me to question God's purpose. But there is indeed something spiritual in this place. And though it may forever be obscure to me, I cannot but be aware of it's power. I do know it is here that I have known my first untroubled sleep in many years."

By the end of the movie Algren has fully embraced the way of the Samurai. He and the leader have become friends. Algren saves the life of the leader during a sneak attack of the enemy and the next morning they stand together under a blossoming tree and the leader says, "A perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one and it would not be a wasted life."

Algren finally takes the field of battle - not against the Samurai - but with them. As he kneels by his dying friend, the last Samurai's final words are, "The blossoms are all perfect!"

This is a movie of rebirth. Algren begins the movie a shell of a man...dead inside. He ends the movie emotionally and spiritually whole - a man of honor and discipline willing to give up his life for the good of others.

The Samurai way of life is built around Buddhism. As I watched this movie I was deeply disturbed by the thought that what I was seeing in this movie - the transformation of a man's heart from death to life - is what is supposed to happen when we accept Christ and begin a new life among a community of Christ's followers. But all too often it doesn't. All too often our church experience is consumed by the most trivial of things.

In this movie (and yes I know it's only a movie) the spirituality of the Samurai transforms them into people with hearts and minds at peace and an unshakable desire to both live and die with honor.

We who know the true Prince of Peace should be experiencing the power of this rebirth more than anyone else, yet we so often settle for shallow religious rituals that leave us sadly unchanged. It's not because of a deficiency in the power of Christ to transform our hearts. I believe the problem rests more with our unwillingness to be transformed. Transformation is costly - but life giving. All too often I fear we are too reluctant to count the cost and therefore miss the "abundant life" that is found when we allow our hearts and minds to be awakened to new life.

Another Voice

2006-03-30T08:49:00.000-05:00

In recent days I've been in commuication with the midwest church multiplication director in the Missionary Church about an exciting church planting initiative in Kansas City & St. Louis Missouri. Their dream is to see 10 churches started in Kansas City and 20 churches started in St. Louis over the next few years.

We've been dialoguing between his sessions at a training conference in South Dakota. While attending that conference he wrote about one the sessions in his blog. As I read his blog entry I thought to myself how refreshing it was to hear another voice articulating what I've been feeling for many months now about how to make disciples and expand the Kingdom in America these days.

Here's the link to his post. I love what is being said here.

What The World Needs

2006-03-23T08:46:00.000-05:00

"Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, because what the world needs most is people who are fully alive."

Updates From Home

2006-03-22T08:50:00.000-05:00

Every day I check the blog from the church we planted in Illinois to hear the stories of how God is continuing the work we began. This morning I logged in to see pictures of the move into their new building. God is faithful! He has provided them with a new facility RENT FREE nearer to the university campus. I can't wait to hear the stories from this new chapter in the life of the church.

It's been wonderful over the months since our departure to see how smoothly the pastoral transition has gone and to see how God is bringing new people into the congregation. One of the most exciting things for me to watch from a distance is how God is moving in the hearts of several youth from a substance abuse recovery group home.

One of the greatest indicators of God's presence in a church plant is the way in which it continues after the founding pastor has moved on. It's a good feeling to see that the church wasn't built on one man, but built on the foundation of the ever-present God.

I love you Prairie folks!! Congratulations on your move.

One Of Those Dreams

2006-03-20T12:08:00.000-05:00

I'm a pretty active dreamer in my sleep. A week or so ago I had one of those dreams from which you awake thinking to yourself, "There's something significant about that dream."

It went something like this:

My wife and I were in some sort of cage, like a shark cage, but we were floating and bobbing on the water in the ocean. A wave picked us up and as we were on the crest of the wave I looked down and saw where the wave was going to drop us. There were about 6 or 7 sharks circling in the spot we were descending towards. Panicked, I looked behind me to see another wave coming, but this one was much larger. At the crest of that wave was a cage just like ours, but inside this one was a group of people I recognized as our close friends. The wave they were riding swept us up and carried us up and over the circling sharks. I looked ahead and though we had passed safely over the sharks we were heading for a cliff face at incredible speed. I began fearing the impact of hiting the cliff face, but just as we came upon it the wave dropped us and we stopped. I woke up as we were bobbing gently in the water.Though the dream is strange, it was one of those times that you wake up with a "knowing" that there was something significant about it.

From A Distant Friend

2006-03-20T08:30:00.000-05:00

I just read this from the blog of a brief and distant friend 10 years in the past. His words resonated with me this morning. I thought I'd share them here.

"I’m thirty-seven-- old enough to be thought of as a grown up. It wasn’t long ago that I made a similar entrance into the world. My brain fused with the waking world and I started walking around, talking about things as if I knew something. None of us knows anything. Our existence is a wonder. Anyone who has gotten used to his own existence is already dead."

~Kirby Atkins; Jackson, TN

The Southern Cross

2006-03-18T11:01:00.000-05:00

Every year I have the privilege of traveling to South America to assist with a construction project in the small rainforest village of Ixiamas, Bolivia. It's getting close...a little over two months away and I find myself thinking more and more about the people there that I've grown to know and love. There's something amazing about rolling into town in the back of a truck after being away for a year and having children run to the road, point, wave, and then call out your name, "Hola Guillermo! Hola Guillermo!"

This year we'll be building the third floor of a boarding house we've been working on for about five years now. On my first trip, it was just a shell of a one-story building. I helped lay the flooring. Now there are over 40 students from distant villages living here and getting an education.

Something about this trip that I will remember as long as I live is the sky at night. What you see of the universe from the darkness of the rainforest is breathtaking; billions and billions of stars that you've never seen before. Being in the southern hemisphere, the sky is totally different from what we're accustomed to seeing here. All new constellations, the most striking of which is the Southern Cross. It's an arrangement of stars that looks like a cross and every night as we walk back from town down to where we sleep, the arrangement of the constellation places the cross right over the boarding house we've been building. Always a poignant moment.

Profiles of Obscurity; The Journey

2006-03-15T05:50:00.000-05:00

"'Come and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.' And his brothers listened to him."

It's about 5:50 am and again I am looking at my reflection in the window, ready for the sun to rise. It's cold this morning. For the last couple of nights we've slept with the air-condition on, but last night it was back in the 30's again. Spring is turning out to be beautiful here though. I love the sights and sounds of the neighborhood as the world around me once again awakens from it's slumber. I've been told that Augusta is known for the azaleas that erupt into bloom all over the city this time of year.

Lynn and I have moved around so much over the years that we've had many opportunities to experience the change of seasons in a new part of the country. So far I'm enjoying the advent of spring as we're on this leg of the journey.

This morning I read about Joseph's journey and a lot of questions came to mind. After his brothers threw him into the pit they had a change of heart through the conscience of Judah. Instead of shedding the blood of a brother the decided to just eliminate the problem of living with a dreamer by sending him away to a foreign land. As a caravan of traders passed through the brothers sold Joseph to be carried into Egypt as a slave, never to be heard from again. And at this point Joseph's story is abruptly interrupted.

Chapter 37 ends with Joseph the boy, now in Egypt, being sold to Potiphar who was Pharaoh's bodyguard. Chapter 38 changes focus all together with a story about one of Joseph's brothers. And then we rejoin Joseph's story in chapter 39 but he has grown into a man as several years have passed. This vividly shows us a season of obscurity for Joseph. The details of the journey to Egypt and the next several years of his life are not even recorded for us.

I am particularly interested in what Joseph experienced emotionally during the journey from Canaan to Egypt. As I think about this I'm reminded of a "vision" of sorts that I had about a year ago. I wrote it in story form and titled it "The Rescue." I wonder if Joseph shared any of the same thoughts of anger, fear, hope, and despair that I expressed in "The Rescue." I'll share it with you here.

THE RESCUE
Have you ever experienced a season in which your heart begins to grow cold and there seems to be an ever-widening distance between you and the Father? Rarely do I ever have what could be considered a "vision" but during my time with God one morning last year, I think I had just that. Let me put it into story form for you.

It was a daring abduction. The enemy, on his horse, had ridden for years to finally arrive at the fortified home of his intended captive, the prince. Gaining access through the fortifications, subduing the prince, and then carrying him away from the castle, across the same distance he had spent years traveling, until finally taking him as a captive into his own dark homeland was the only way the enemy could insure that the prince would be unable to inflict the holy damage that he was capable of inflicting with his Father's forces.

The prince had grown careless; failing to lock the door to his chamber. Taken in his sleep and now shackled as a slave and dragged along the ground behind the enemy's horse - choked and blinded by the dust - he watched the castle grow smaller in the distance as he fought to break free. Finally the castle was gone and the prince, bouncing along the ground, was no closer to being free. The land was desolate; an eternity of barren earth, dangerous rocks, and nothingness seemed to stretch forever into the darkness of all four horizons.

Without end, days turned into weeks which turned into months which turned into years of being dragged behind the enemy's horse, further and further away from the Father's castle - closer and closer to the border of the enemy's territory. The prince remembered life in the castle. The food was rich and plentiful. Music filled the air 24 hours a day and dancers never ceased their dancing. Laughter continually echoed through the atmosphere in which the inhabitants of the castle "breathed" love just as they breathed oxygen.

The prince was overcome by grief as he wondered if he would ever again "breathe" love. Anger was the next emotion as he realized that nobody was coming after him. For what seemed an eternity of being violently dragged toward the abyss, never once did a rescuer ever appear on the horizon. Did the Father miss him? Did the king even realize that an enemy had subtly come and taken hold of his son and dragged him away? With his body tumbling along behind the horse the prince despondently thought to himself, "Maybe I never was the apple of my Father's eye after all."

The border of the dark land was now in sight. It would be only a matter of minutes before this terrible ride would end, the enemy would be home, and the prince would forever be his captive - seemingly out of his Father's reach. All but resigned to this fate and feeling that there was no way his Father could even hear his words, he whispered, "Father...will you come for me?"

The ground began to feel different under his tumbling body. It was as if the earth itself had begun to vibrate, and then shake and tremble under him. The sounds around him were different. Was it thunder? It couldn't be, because it was continuous and growing more intense. And inter-mingled with the sound of thunder was what sounded like the singing of a million voices. His vision blurred by dust, the prince struggled to make out what he was seeing in the distance. In all four directions, it looked as if a flood of...something...was pouring at incredible speed over the hills and across the land in their direction. There was no end to this...mass...as it closed in on them. Finally, the prince began to notice that it wasn't one mass, but it was millions, even billions of individual riders mounted upon strong, perfect horses. Every horse was draped with a sash bearing the coat of arms of the prince's family. It was an army. It was the King's army and it covered the earth as it closed in on them.

For the first time, the enemy's horse stopped, reared up on his hind legs and whinnied in panic as the army closed in. The rider was thrown, and in a few blinding seconds he and his steed were trampled as the land was consumed by this vast army. A hand grasped the prince and lifted him onto the back of one of the billions of war-horses that still stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. This wasn't just one of the war-horses. This was his Father's personal horse. The grip of the hand was familiar too. It was his Father's hand. The king hadn't just sent his army to rescue the prince...he led the charge!

With a shout, the king commanded the entire army to turn and begin the journey back across the land toward home. As they traveled across the land through which the prince had been dragged, he noticed that it was filled with lush grass, wildflowers, streams, butterflies, singing birds. It had become beautiful! Sensing his son's amazement, the father turned and with a wink said, "Don't you remember son? Wherever the river of my presence flows, there is life!"

"Did you begin pursuing me as soon as you realized I was gone," asked the prince?

"No", the King replied. "The army mounted and stood at attention the moment you were gone, but I began the pursuit the moment you asked if I would come for you. I wanted to know that your heart still belonged to me and not your captor. Your journey through the wilderness was required for you to know the depths of the love between us. Though it seemed like the journey was long and the distance between us was great, you were never out of my sight. You were never out of my reach. And I would have never allowed the enemy to accomplish his mission. Welcome home, Son."

In this story, you are the prince (or princess). The enemy desires to lure our hearts away from our Father. When he succeeds, no matter how far he manages to drag us, we are never out of sight or out of reach of our Father and he loves us so much that the angels of Heaven will move on his command to rescue us...if we'll just call upon Him.

How Great!

2006-03-12T18:11:00.000-05:00

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation,
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
Then I shall bow, in humble adoration,And then proclaim:
"My God, how great Thou art!"

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

An Interesting Few Days

2006-03-12T17:41:00.000-05:00

I've been away from the blog for a few days as Lynn and I were out of town Wednesday through Friday at a Free Methodist leadership conference in Atlanta. In many ways it was a wonderful time of being together with about 20 close friends from our home church in Columbus and old acquaintances from other places that I met during my ordination process several years ago.

The "interesting" part of the past few days began last Tuesday. I had just begun this blog a few days earlier as a way to process this time of "intentional obscurity" that I'm in. The pastor of a church we've "visited" several times requested to have lunch with Lynn and me last Tuesday. As we ate together and got to know each other a bit he enthusiastically welcomed us to connect with the church and encouraged me that there could very well be a place of ministry for us there. That portion of our conversation was totally unexpected.

Wednesday we left for the conference and over the course of the next couple of days were asked by different people to consider the following possibilities:

Relocate to Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina to lead a group of people who are searching for a church planter to help them plant a church.
Relocate to Kentucky to assume the pastorate at one of several that are coming available.
Visit Tampa, FL to consider planting or pastoring in Florida.
Return to our home church in Columbus, GA to prepare for who knows what.
To stay in touch with the superintendent of a particular conference regarding planting and/or pastoring opportunities in his region.

So...here I am, totally committed to remaining in this place of intentional obscurity for as long as God wants me to, yet hearing all of these voices of invitation. All I know to do at this point is to continue resting, praying, fasting, and trusting God to make His invitation to the next chapter of our life unmistakably clear.

More on the life of Joseph coming Tuesday.

2006-03-10T20:44:00.000-05:00

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love;

Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, opening to the sun above.

Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away;

Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day!

All Thy works with joy surround Thee, earth and heaven reflect Thy rays,

Stars and angels sing around Thee, center of unbroken praise.

Field and forest, vale and mountain, flowery meadow, flashing sea,

Singing bird and flowing fountain call us to rejoice in Thee.

Thou art giving and forgiving, ever blessing, ever blessed,

Wellspring of the joy of living, ocean depth of happy rest!

Thou our Father, Christ our Brother, all who live in love are Thine;

Teach us how to love each other, lift us to the joy divine.

Mortals, join the happy chorus, which the morning stars began;

Father love is reigning o’er us, brother love binds man to man.

Ever singing, march we onward, victors in the midst of strife,

Joyful music leads us Sunward in the triumph song of life.

Joseph; Profiles of Obscurity

2006-03-07T05:52:00.000-05:00

"When they saw him from a distance and before he came close to them, they plotted against him to put him to death. And they said to one another, 'Here comes this dreamer! Now then, come and let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; and we will say, 'A wild beast devoured him.' Then let us see what will become of his dreams!'"

It's 5:52 Tuesday morning. Yesterday was an exceptionally difficult day at work. Simply put, my department has been asked to achieve impossible goals yet we are not provided the resources needed to make those goals. Out of mental exhaustion I slept away the evening and really had no interest in getting out of the bed this morning to face another day. I'm also feeling the effects of emotional exhaustion as I've been thinking a lot lately about being so far removed from everyone I love and care about. I'm 4 hours away from our church home and dear friends in Columbus. And I'm 10 hours away from our families and our good friends from the church we planted. Most days I feel very much alone and find myself dealing with the reality over and over again that leaving Illinois was a mistake.

I wonder if what I'm feeling is anywhere near what Joseph felt after being violently torn away from familiar sights and sounds, voices and touch of his home and family and sent to a far-away land in captivity to foreigners who cared no more for him than you would care for a work-animal or a piece of machinery.

Joseph was a man of dreams. As a young boy he was given dreams by God and those dreams gave him a sense of purpose and destiny. I don't think Joseph is unusual in this sense. I believe that any of us - if we will listen closely enough - will hear God whisper dreams into our hearts for He knows the plans He has for us and if we will seek him with all of our hearts he will show us those plans. But, there are a lot of people, circumstances, and events in life that seek to kill our dreams. The first people who attempted to kill Joseph's dreams were his own family. I think this is common as well.

The people we are closest to are typically the first ones to hear our dreams. And though it isn't usually out of malicious intent, they are typically the first ones to strike a blow against those dreams. Because they love us and want what THEY think is best for us, they are usually the first ones to try to convince us that our dreams are the wrong dreams, or even that our dreams are just plain silly. I have found that the most discouraging words spoken against the pursuit of our dreams are often spoken by our own flesh and blood. Sometimes the attack on our dreams doesn't even involve words. The silence can inflict as much damage as the spoken word.

Joseph was forced into obscurity from his family as a result of his dreams; thrown into a pit, and then sold to a caravan of slave-traders to be taken to Egypt to live out the rest of his life. Our dreams today will often separate us from our families in the same way. Why is this obscurity a necessary part of the story? I belive that if the dreams are truly whispered to us by God and He is the one inviting us into those dreams, intentional obscurity will serve the very important purpose of allowing us to be alone with those dreams, away from the voices, the challenges, the oppostion, the ridicule so that we can test the dreams and discover with certainty that they are indeed God's dreams for our lives.

Profiles of Obscurity

2006-03-06T05:49:00.000-05:00

It's 5:50 am. I've been up for about 20 minutes and most of that time has been spent rubbing my eyes, trying to wake up. This is a routine I've tried to maintain for several months now; rising at 5:30, fixing my coffee, and spending the next hour in the reading room praying and reading. Some days I'm successful in this discipline, some days I can't lift myself from the bed.

I'm changing my routine a bit. Whereas before I would sit in the recliner covered with an afghan reading, now I will spend this time at the desk writing as I read.

The sun is just beginning to peek over the horizon and the features of the backyard are barely visible through the window. Mainly I see darkness and my reflection staring back at me in the glass. My hair is a mess and there are circles under my eyes. It rained last night; just a little. It's too dark to see the wetness outside, but I remember waking up a few hours ago hearing the drops of rain hitting the skylight.

I've been kind of jumping around in the Bible during my reading time. I read the Gospel of Matthew, then began Mark but a few chapters in decided to jump back to 1st Samuel. I've decided however on a new subject of study and that is the lives of those men and women in the Bible who found themselves in seasons of intentional obscurity. I'm comforted to note that most of the heroes of the scripture went through this very thing at some point after they had heard God's call on their lives. Men like Joseph, Moses, Elijah, David, Jesus, and Paul all experienced a time of intentional obscurity. This comforts me because it indicates that this season is often a necessary element in the growth of a person into the man or woman God designed and called them to be.

Today I'm beginning with Joseph of the Old Testament. His story begins in Genesis 37 and in this first chapter I see these dynamics at work in Joseph's life: He is born into a wealthy polygamist's family alongside sons of his father's other two wives. He was the favorite son of the father which made him most despised by his brothers. And then came the dreams. As a young boy Joseph had dreams of greatness; dreams given to him by God. He dreamed on two separate occassions that one day his entire family would bow down before him.

I imagine that in his youth these dreams gave him great satisfaction that one day the brothers who hated him would bow before his greatness, his authority. This reminds me of daydreams I myself have had throughout the years. I remember a time when I worked for a very difficult company to work for and desperately hated my job. You know what I would daydream about? Buying the company and then ruling over everyone who was making my life difficult. I've also had these daydreams about individuals who were causing me grief in my life. I would daydream about somehow being elevated to a position of authority over them that would allow me to passive-aggressively exact my revenge...all in Christian love of course. I believe Joseph, in his youth may have derived some of the same satisfaction from his dreams.

But Joseph's dreams were from God. In his youth he boasts to his brothers and parents about one day being in a position of power over them. But as a grown man you see the fulfillment of those dreams, but instead Joseph's elevation to power was not for him to exact revenge or vindication for how he was treated as a boy. His elevation to power was so that he could serve, provide for, minister to, and rescue his family from famine.

Position, power, and authority given by God is never given so that we may rule over someone else. It is always given so that we will have the means to take off our shirt and give it to the man who has none. If we are ever given an abundance of bread, it is not so we can grow fat but it is always given so that we will walk into the streets and give it to the hungry. If a kings scepter is ever placed in our hands it is not so we can recline on our throne and be served by the peasantry, it is so we can have the authority to spread love, kindness, justice and provision throughout the land.

How did Joseph get from the place of pridefully boasting about his dreams to the place of living them out as they were meant by God to be lived out in service to his family? Intentional obscurity was the chisel that shaped him into a man who could not only dream the dreams of God, but live them out with the love, righteousness, and integrity of the God who gave them.

The Changing Of Seasons

2006-03-05T14:32:00.000-05:00

The changing of seasons has brought a whole new world of sights and sounds to life around me. As I sit at my desk in front of the window I hear dozens of different types of birds singing in the back yard. The bird feeder hanging on the pine tree in front of me requires a weekly refilling as it has become a gathering place for a communal meal and conversations in song. I hear children playing in the backyard next door and am reminded that once upon a time I too knew how to laugh and play without being bothered by thoughts of the weightier things in life.

To the right, as I look through the reading room window I see a tree that has just recently exploded with brilliant white flowers. To my left a tree shadowing the corner of the porch which I've yet to identify is unergoing a slow-motion eruption of deep burgundy blooms. Patches of green are beginning to appear scattered throughout the yard. And almost every day a squirrel skitters about on the back porch and as he looks at me through the screen door I can almost imagine that he's come once again to ask if I can come out and play.

The change of seasons on the other side of the window coincides with a change of seasons underway in my soul. It's a strange change of seasons, one that I've never before experienced. Unlike the perfectly-timed, predictable, unending rotation that occurs outside the window every twelve months, this one has come upon me like a stranger in the night and I find myself both intrigued that perhaps my life is about to explode in color and beauty, yet fearful that instead I may be entering a long, dark, cold winter.

If springtime is indeed about to burst forth in my soul, I see it being heralded by new appreciations and desires growing within me. I find myself wanting to be surrounded by life. One bird feeder in my yard isn't enough. If it wasn't for the expense, I would place one on every tree in the yard to seduce hundreds, even thousands of birds into taking up residence on my little piece of earth just so I could enjoy watching them and listening to their songs. Though I've yet to begin the project, I have the seeds and the intent to construct a butterfly garden near the porch. I've been obsessed lately with the desire to adopt a dog. And as strange as it may seem, I find myself more interested in handling, observing, and enjoying insects that choose to wander upon my person than killing them out of annoyance (with the exception of the large fly that stubbornly insisted on buzzing my head as I tried to fall asleep the other night. He met with a sudden demise after landing upon the wall within reach of my hand.)

I find myself longing for simplicity. I shared with Lynn over breakfast one morning recently that I am weary of investing myself into maintaining a lifestyle while the things that really make my heart come alive remain just outside of my reach. A life of simpliciy and enjoyment of the more important things in life - faith, hope, and love - is becoming more and more important to me, even if poverty is the pricetag on such a life.

Such are the things in my soul that cause me to wonder if a beautiful new season of life is about to begin.

But then there is the fear that I am instead heading into a long, cold winter. To some degree I have always been more at home in the inner world of my mind than in the crowd of humanity. I've always been more adept at reflection and writing than conversation and relationships. But these days I find myself becoming even more and more silent, unable to speak with my voice, unable to converse and enjoy the company of most people. I don't believe that I dislike people more. Instead, I find myself simply having nothing to say that I believe would be of benefit to another person. Many times I allow the voicemail message on my phone to do the talking for me, even when I know that the person calling is someone I love and care for.

I'm also becoming more and more convinced of my uselessness in regards to the most important things in life. My greatest desire and my greatest fear have always revolved around the same event; my death. At the hour of my death my greatest desire has always been that I would be able to look around and see a world that has benefitted from my existence. And at the same time my greatest fear has always been that in that hour I would face the reality that my life has meant nothing to anyone. I recently attended the funeral of a 50-something year old man who died in his sleep one Sunday afternoon following church. The funeral home was filled beyond capacity with people having to be turned away from the chapel to watch the service on television in a spare room. I left that day wondering how quiet and empty the funeral home will be when my hour arrives. I find myself more convinced of my ability to make wrong decisions instead of right ones. Likewise I find myself more convinced of my ability to say the wrong things at the wrong times than speaking anything of edifying benefit to anyone. I am more keenly aware than ever of the self-centeredness that rules my mind and the abscence of the Christ-like self-sacrifice that I long for in my character.

Within the last week God has spoken a phrase into my heart and mind. "Intentional Obscurity" He has said to me that He has intentionally placed me in a season of obscurity and in response I am to intentionally embrace that obscurity, rest in it, and make no attempt to leave it until I am unmistakenly called out of it by Him. I believe that perhaps the season that comes next will depend on my response to this season of obscurity. Either the life and beauty of spring or the cold darkness of winter await me. Resting in the embrace of God-ordained obscurity will lead me into a springtime teeming with life, while struggling to attain prominence and usefulness through my own efforts will bring a lonely chill to the air.

I've chosen to create a new blog to chronicle this season for a couple reasons. First, I have to write. It is the only effective way for me to process what is happening in me. Secondly, I am doing it publicly because I continue to hold out hope that there is someone in the world who may in some way benefit from seeing how God is dealing with a guy in South Carolina who is desperately reaching for the God who made everything on the other side of the window.