The Simple Gift of Saying "Good Morning."

On our early morning prayerwalks, it's become our custom to offer folks we pass by or who pass by us, a gentle, friendly "Good Morning." We're careful not to push our way into someone's sleepy plodding toward the gym or practice; or interrupt those ear-plugged and wanting no interaction by their fixed gaze forward. Boundaries are boundaries.

But I've always felt a warm "Good Morning" is a simple gesture of wishing blessing on people, including strangers. Most of us get plenty of non-blessing from people around us during the week. So to offer God's unmerited favor, kindness and goodness toward people is an act of love, however simply expressed. It's a small gift worthy of saying because of it's deeper meaning.

I did a little digging into the origin and meaning of the good morning phrase: The following is from folks who contributed to a variety of wiki's and forums on the etymology of words.

Good morning:

"... started as 'morn', meaning the time just before sunrise, in Old English. By the 13 century, it had become 'morning'. 'Good' started as Old English. 'god' (with a long "o") "having the right or desirable quality"

'Good Morning' as we use it started as a greeting, 'have a good morning' The use of the shortened version 'Good morning ' dates from around 1400, as 'gode morwene'.

There is agreement among etymologists that Goodbye, Good morning, Good afternoon, etc.  all derive from the word 'God'; (Goodbye specifically from 'God be with you'.) and times of the day inserted accordingly;
All these greeting and parting expressions are found in earliest literature; recorded as early as 1200 in Layamon's 'Chronicle of Britain)

Through similar routes The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that "Good morning" and "Good night" derive from "[May] God give you [a] good night." and "[May] God give you [a] good day."

I love the notion of "Good Morning" as as "May God give you a good day." I imagine all of us, whether we believe in God or not, wouldn't refuse having a good day in favor of having a bad or awful day. We bless people with a gift of grace and goodness when we say "Good Morning."

Something I've noticed more than once over the last few months when I or Tricia wish a person we don't know such a blessing, is they look at us as if surprised, smile and offer "Good Morning" back. For most, they didn't expect it which suggests they don't get many, and I bet most of us don't say it very much to strangers. I know sharing this greeting means looking at someone, being a bit vulnerable, and offering the gift with no expectation of return. Not easy at first. We're all fairly well indoctrinated in not getting into "someone's space."

And occasionally we do misread someone, make the offer, and they resolutely refuse to look at us as they pass by. I don't know why -- they just ignore it. In one of my very early blogposts 3 or 4 years ago, I wrote of saying, "Good Morning" to a woman sitting on a porch and she immediately shot back in anger: "YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SAY THAT TO ME!!!" You can bet I was very gun-shy of offering the greeting to people I didn't know for a long time. She's the exception; most give the gift back with eye contact and a quick smile.

But, I see it as another way of offering God's love and grace to people. We are here to connect folks with his heart through Jesus, and his Kingdom ways. The simple gift of saying, "Good Morning" is a small step in the right Kingdom direction as the day begins, but a really benevolent one.

So here's a challenge: if you're not in the habit of doing so, try it for a month with people you walk by in the morning while out walking the dog, going for a run, biking, or just stopping for coffee. See if what I 've experienced will be true for you too. It feels good ,and many folks receive it as it was intended.

Let me know how it turns out.

Talking On Our Corner To A Young Man With a Cause.

If you come into Northampton fairly regularly, you've noticed various folks handing out flyers for all sorts of causes and events, or with clipboards in hand asking if they can have a "minute of your time." For the last number of months, Planned Parenthood volunteers have been doing that very thing.

They're usually young, friendly, trained in how to have such a conversation, and supportive of the cause they're representing. I've never heard one get into an argument with anyone while engaging the person. Their purpose is not to debate; it's to get support for the cause.

On Sunday after church, I ventured out to help Tricia carry her bags to the car so she could spend an overnight in Farmington caring for her mother. As I walked out our front door a young man in front of the light post on the corner asked if he could talk to me about something? I said, in passing him, I wasn't interested and went to the car. I did make brief eye contact though.

When I returned shortly after, we looked at each other, and he asked in a pleasant way how I was doing? I said I was well and returned the question. He was well also. Then, he asked if he could talk with me. I walked toward him and he asked if I knew of Planned Parenthood. I asked for his name and he told me. I told him mine and shook his hand.

Almost immediately, I said I don't support the work of Planned Parenthood, especially when it involves abortion. I explained I'd never supported it even in the 60's when I first became aware of it. He quickly responded something like, with all the unwanted pregnancies of young girls, couldn't I see that it helped them before they were ready to be a mother. I said with no rancor, I'm a follower of Jesus and because I am, I see every person as having a soul loved by God, including the unborn child. God loves them. They, and then I looked him in the eye, and you, have more value to him than any of us can imagine. So, I could never support the aborting of these children.

I added, I know you believe in what you're representing, but I just as much believe what I hold to be true. With that we looked at other. He smiled and nodded. We shook hands and I went back into the building.
By the way, no voices were raised.

I write about this because, it has been many, many years since I would say something like that publicly. I'm an introvert tending to listen to others in public and only ask simple questions, if I know them. But on my early morning prayerwalks I've been asking God to speak healing into those parts of me which irrationally hold back my voice, especially in public situations as I encountered. And he's gradually doing it! It's amazing to me.

Along with slowly healing my voice, I want, and are praying for a gracious, gentle fierceness to open the Gospel to people who don't "see" Jesus. That's what I came for, but its been a struggle which seems to be loosening its hold on me because of God's grace and healing. I want to engage more questions of faith and life with strangers and friends who don't profess Christ. Such conversations are life and truth.

I recently read of someone who was not a Christian complain about Christians that if they really believed what Jesus said, who he was, and what he did, they would courageously and sacrificially live their lives publicly as if it was true and not be silent about it with anyone. The opposite,"covert" Christianity which I practiced by default is pleasant and respectable to insiders, irrelevant to outsiders, but sheer impotence for Kingdom mission. It's spiritual lunacy if Jesus is really Jesus and wasn't kidding when he said he is "the way the truth and the life" so his followers are to: "go and make disciples, teaching them to obey what I commanded you." He said he'd be with us as we go.

I'm grateful for the gradual freeing "vocal" training I'm getting. I hope it doesn't stop. Just this morning, I told Tricia I want to see the Kingdom manifest with the same salvific power as it did in the New Testament era, and it does now more often in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America. I know such Kingdom life can be costly if actually embraced, but authenticity comes with sacrifice in the Way of Christ. Kingdom authenticity is worth it if we get to see how the Kingdom actually works in freeing the captives, giving sight to the blind, and proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor.

By the way, when I was speaking to the young man in Sunday it felt spiritually as if the Holy Spirit was aiming right at his heart, almost as a plea or invitation, but with authority.

I wonder if the "brew" requires a "container" that looks, and works nothing like a container?

As I explore the shape of my spiritual unsettling I'm brought back to the understanding that the locus of our life is we're all "in Christ." If we know him as  Reality there is a fathomless union of great mystery we share with one another even if we don't apprehend it from one day to the next. Our union is spiritual and organic; eternal and now; seen and unseen. Christ has knitted us together as brethren, including those who came before and will come after until the new heaven and the new earth are joined in eternal liberation.

This "mystical" but real-time union has the power to make porous the "containers" we're so used to, and open us to our common filial heritage and identity, I think. Our discreet spiritual communities are part of a relational tapestry which reaches into eternity, but ties us here to brethren all over the earth, one Body in many countries, intertwined  and "led by (his) cords of kindness and bands of love." (Hos. 11:4)

I bet for most of us if we really thought about it, the notion we're tied in union with Christ, and in family together has more the character of a spiritual platitude than a lived out reality. Our divisions are legion - everything from theology to spiritual practice to politics. Such differences have served for centuries to "contain" our individual spiritual and church identities, for all intents and purposes working to sequester us behind walls of our own crafting. Sometimes in the history of the Body of Christ we've even killed over spiritual and theological convictions of purity and practice. Our containers fostered hatred with heads held high.

I realize there've been substantial issues to clarify and resolve in the history of the Church, but in those resolutions we suffered collateral damage in the sundering of the Body into Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Copts, Methodists, Episcopalians and Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Pentecostals, Charismatics, Church of Christ, Church of God, non-denominationals, Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Scientists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Quakers,  Calvary Chapellians, the House Church movement, missional Jesus-followers, and on and on. Even with some denominations there is further splintering over sectarian jots and tittles, all held with great fervor and a keen sense of righteousness. Notice I included "churches" many would consider cultish, and perhaps they are. But all of them see they are living the proper and true Christian life. Many might even extend the same distinction to most of the others on the list, but how much reaching across the table goes on, I don't know. I know some does.

The point I want to make clear in this post is life in union with the Holy Spirit is the "brew" I keep referring to. The Holy Spirit needs no "container." Jesus has made us justified to God through our faith and we have peace with him. (Ro. 5:1) Through grace and by faith, we are at peace with God, and he sees us as dearly loved children called to live a life of love. (Eph. 5:1) Such a life of love not only must extend into our communities with folks who do not follow him, but we must begin to love our brethren who attend the church up the street, down the road, or across town. I know there are differences  we have to recognize and more than likely will still disagree over (Oh, that church [smirk]), but if we shelter in our own faith community, we miss the opportunity to create common ground, and learn how to have differences, even substantial ones, while rallying around what we all hold dear or feel convicted about. It's not been tried much as far as I've experienced in my 40 years.

I'm also talking about more than being ecumenical. I'm talking about being brethren, unified passionately in a suffering world where we need to take the astounding resources God has given the Church on earth, pool them as the Spirit summons and directs (which he will more than we realize if we let go a little) and get on with feeding plus equipping the poor, drying the tears of the rejected, rescuing and enfranchising the oppressed, protecting the tyrannized while proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor to all who will listen. I don't believe God created the church to divide and stay in our containers until Kingdom come. They can't sufficiently contain the "brew" (no more than a 8 oz. glass can hold a 16oz. bottle of stout in one pour) of a Holy Spirit who will fulfill the redemptive Kingdom mission through the Church everywhere, including some churches you and I might be betting against that such a thing would ever happen.

Here's my question: what if we decided to ask God to forgive us for all the ways we've been willing to settle for the acceptable containers of our own churches. What if we repented and came out from behind the walls to reach across the table and forgive one another for choosing separation because of "irreconcilable differences." What if we dedicated ourselves to pooling resources: people, money, creativity, ideas, spiritual and natural gifts, time, buildings, etc. What if mature, courageous gracious, and irenic leaders from every flavor church in the neighborhood got together to humbly listen to God for a period, and then reach across the table to pursue what God has summoned them to. What if we learned to hear why our brother or sister took a position which seemed so irrefutably wrong? What if we listened for the heart animating the choice and chose to build a Kingdom relationship anyway?  What if we let God sort it out and got on with fiercely reflecting Jesus to the world on our watch?

I know it's hard to "fellowship" with folks we feel are so egregiously in error, but is anyone defined solely by one set of ideas if you scratch below the surface? I know we can be wildly stubborn even contentious when we're right (on both sides of the ecclesial table, by the way), but there are epochs in the history of Man (yeah, I know I used the masculine pronoun for both male and female, so sue me) when a deeper, maturer and more grace-soaked wisdom and love is required. I believe we are in or heading into such times. Even with theological and social and political differences we can serve Christ as he pursues the least of his brethren and the most stubborn of his errant people. Sometimes miracles occur when we just say the meagerist of yes's to him; "I'll go if you'll make me able."

We know full well what it's like to walk apart. We've had centuries of that. What if we found out what it was like to walk together with those on the other side of the table who are willing to walk with us?

We're going to need to do that, mark my words...best start now.

If you didn't notice by now, the "container" I'm referring to is not frangible, but fluid and unseen. The Holy Spirit is like the wind, it: "blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going." He can't be pinned to the mat, kept in a box in the drawer, or contained in any one church or denomination. He blows through walls we erect. He goes where we'd rather look away. He's a friend of sinners, including those who offend or trouble our delicate spiritual sensibilities, including other Christians.

When we unite to be guided by the Spirit our "containers" become porous and permeable. We begin to look human and inviting. The broken and bent over aren't afraid of us or ashamed because of their failures and faults. They can glimpse Christ, many for the first time because our containers don't keep them out, and our containers don't block our view of others engaged in following the same Spirit, but not exactly as us, the true believers. I suspect the Spirit is calling us all to follow him together rather than maintain our own spiritual territories, pedigrees and positions on the issues of the day. We might even trust each other a tad. Can you imagine? I'm just beginning to.

I Wonder If There's a Way to Be Diffuse, But Deeply Together and Unified When Not Together.

Given we Christians are supremely acclimated to being centralized in our local churches; much of what we do together, we do at or in church. It's our spiritual base, so to speak. Psychologically, it settles us in a shared locational identity as I mentioned in my previous blog: http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2013/05/breaking-free-from-unexamined-tendency.html.We do understand the church is the people, not the place, but we can blend them emotionally without too much effort.

Lately as part of my "container not fitting the brew" metaphor for the church and the Kingdom mission of incarnating the gospel to the community under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I've been thinking of what it would look like for the church to be diffuse, but unified. Here's what I mean: what if folks who gathered together in a particular church learned how to be on the same mission in unity even when they were apart: in their homes, with their families, at their jobs, in their neighborhoods, in their schools, or going about their errands and other commitments in life such as school sports?

You see, as Americans we're well-trained in being discreet individuals free to pursue our own dreams, carry our own responsibilities, follow our passions and spend time doing whatever captures our interest or fulfills our sensibilities, including spiritual. We're invited to be all we can on our own, or with whomever we choose. You have to take responsibility for your own life and make of it everything you can. That's the American Dream so aim high and have it all!

So we're out there scrappin'. Problem is, we have little or no sense of communitas, http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2012/04/being-we-even-when-were-apart-part-1.html or a profoundly shared mission. We're not self-aware that we are a missional team even though each of us is engaged in different daily pursuits. You have your life; I have mine - we just happen to be "members" of the same church on the corner. We intersect in various ways, but not because we apprehend we've been called to the same mission, and are expected by God help each other fulfill it together and apart. Who does that?

If we were aware that we're a missional team, we'd be gathering to talk about what God is doing in and through each one of us. For instance, we'd all be praying for one of the guy's at Joe's work who's showing an opening to the Gospel, and checking into see how it's going. Or Penny is experiencing a substantial uptick in spiritual warfare because she's prayerwalking in her neighborhood. I don't know about you, but folks don't routinely talk about that or "own" their shared mission because we think individualistically. If we are self-aware that we're a missional team, we'd also be routinely praying together for the Holy Spirit's strategic direction in our town through each and everyone of us. We'd be listening for instruction and focus together. We'd practice the challenging work of group discernment, and learn how to listen to one another talk about what each senses God says is where we're to head out. Our hearts and minds would be knitted together, not just gathered under one roof. The purpose would be to take action individually and corporately, but unified in one heart under the leadership of the Spirit.

Then, Sunday morning worship (the centerpiece of most churches) would become a festive gathering of fully enfranchised and focused followers of Jesus Christ who come to celebrate, testify, encourage, be taught, and worship the goodness of God because he is making a difference in and through us all. We could become acclimated to the reality he still is bringing and creating the Kingdom. In such a free and joyous atmosphere people would find it strange to be a disconnected spectator or passive religious consumer. It wouldn't fit the setting even for introverts.

The reality is we need a sea-change from the church of individuals (no matter they be Baptists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, independents, etc.) to a communitas of disciples graciously, but deliberately helping one another (no one left behind) be the Kingdom in their communities that others may open to Christ, (their true Liberator), know his Gospel (their true liberation), and become one of his own in this world (their true humanity). Our individuality then turns to a common end, each of us engaged and bringing gifts which fit the task we've all embraced in our neighborhood, town, city or regions. Such a community elevates what it means to be a person to the most noble of tasks: sowing, and nurturing the seeds of healing redemption in another person.

This sea-change starts with leaders persistently casting (initiating and living themselves) an inspiring vision of communitas in their local churches so they might live the life of an empowered follower outside the church's walls. The picture must be painted lavishly of a people summoned by Christ to follow him into the neighborhood, a people with gifts too important to leave in the sanctuary. Soon after, leaders will start to sit with each person in the church, and hear their stories of life with Christ, or their stories of woundedness, failure, disappointment and fear - what they actually experience of him. For some, they will need to offer healing and forgiveness, but also the possibility of a purpose-ignited life with everyone else. At some point in the journey to communitas, leaders must make powerful calls to abiding prayer, and the patient creating of a spiritual atmosphere where people can seek the Holy Spirit (not as mere individuals) to summon them  in the missional adventure the Father has set for them. People will also need to be trained how to discern where God is already working in the community around them, and then how to engage so they can listen to a person's heart in their story. In turn, they'll need to learn how to listen to the Spirit as they engage people. Discernment is key here too. This overall refocusing will require courage, a sense of humor, and a clear-eyed longing to see the church redemptively fecund in the community around it. The leaders have to have the same attitude of Martin Luther when he stood before the Pope and averred: "Here I stand; I can do no other."

This sea-change will also necessitate looking closely at the culture of the church to see where it's set up to promote maintaining the status quo where church-life is mostly life at church, a spiritual feeding-trough, hospital, and way station with teaching. Remember, I 'm suggesting we create church communities where our following Christ is individually spread out through the community, it's diffuse, but unified, single-hearted and single-minded. We are deeply together, linked even when apart because our idea of church is a focused spiritual organism with an eternal purpose and we want to be a part of it. Each of us carries in unity with our brethren the church under the leading of the Spirit; one body, but all of us pursuing our commonly-held mission with Christ our inspiration and fructifying Leader. And we'll be aware of what others are doing as each works with God in their "mission-field,"; one for all and all for one. What my brother or sister is up to with Christ is what I'm doing too.We still meet together, for sure, but not because of habit, rather because we bring stories of the transforming power of God to change lives through ordinary people like us. They become our stories. We've sought and we've seen him be God on our watch and it's wonderful, maybe even more than we ever imagined.

Do you believe it's possible?

I do.

In fact, I think it's supposed to be the normal Christian way of life, the biblical way of life. But as I just wrote about my blog just before this one, Christians and churches have this unexamined tendency to coalesce spiritually, ecclesially, and missionally. They get stiff like an old man. Pretty soon we're all walking in place spiritually and it doesn't seem so bad. We don't even know what spiritual fluidity is like or why it's crucial so we settle and congeal.

Again, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'm just finding my way in this, so I need all the help I can get!

Breaking Free From the Unexamined Tendency to Coagulate Spiritually, Ecclesially, and Missionally.

I'm just beginning to formulate what is percolating in my head and heart these days as I respond to the unsettling I feel. If it's like similar unsettlings over the years, it's feels initiated by the Holy Spirit. He wants me to begin something, change something, or re-look at what I'm doing. However, I always must be careful because of my motivational design to make an impact by exploring and going beyond. When it's just me, I head down rabbit trails or wander around as if I lost my best quarter.

Nothing results.

Time is wasted.

The wind gets chased.

My title for this blog is from the first question I posed from my last blog: When the Container Isn't Fitting For The Brew. Questions About Church: http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2013/05/when-container-isnt-fitting-for-brew.html.The question really addresses how churches can lull easily into an unexamined holy huddle, a community unto itself where most of it's energy and resources are directed inward.  The church - "the called out and gathered ones" - is gathered in one place: a church building where much of its communal life (worship, fellowship, programs and ministries) is lived out. Unless people go regularly to the location they eventually lose touch with that community because it's where we connect with each other most frequently, the exceptions being missionaries sent out, college students, or the elderly and infirm who can't make it to the church building. The central location shapes a common identity and culture, but it also narrows our focus on one another in a way not meant by God, I think. In a funny way, we are the church who go to church.

Now it's true that when not "at church", Christians are supposed to practice certain spiritual disciplines, namely prayer, contemplation, study of the Scriptures, "fellowship" in a small group, having the brethren over to the house for dinner, or lending a hand when other people in the church need help, etc. We do practice such disciplines in varying degrees of frequency depending on spiritual maturity or a natural proclivity for such things, like study , for instance. They are vital practices for spiritual growth, but spiritual growth for what purpose? Internal cultural expectation also determines how much we pursue such disciplines

By the way, lest you jump the gun by assuming I'm in some fashion advocating not meeting together at all, I'm not. I agree with the writer of Hebrews who warns we should not neglect meeting together, rather we should use such times to encourage one another, and stir up one another to love and good works. Notice in this one text there is both and inward and outward focus implied. We meet to be the church in relationship to our God, one another, and the world (read community) around us. We are Christ-followers sojourners, citizens of another transcending, eternal Kingdom, who for a time are gathered together to help each other surrender our hearts fully to God Jesus and mature toward picking up our crosses and giving ourselves away in love and service. As we grow, we're also summoned to join him in the redemptive mission he has called each and every one of us to undertake through our deepening knowledge of TRUE REALITY, using the gifts we've been entrusted with for his glory. Ours is a cause to die for.

The question I'm asking with this post concerns what I view as an unexamined tendency of churches over time to coagulate spiritually, ecclesially, and missionally. The word coagulate is often used biologically as having to do with the clotting mechanism of fluid, especially blood. To coagulate is to cause to change or be changed from a liquid to become viscous or thickened into a coherent mass. Another word which expresses my idea is congeal: to make or become fixed, as ideas, sentiments, or principles. In other words, that which is liquid solidifies into a fixed, cohering form; the liquidity congeals rather than "exhibits a characteristic readiness to flow." Applied to church life these words capture how gradually our church cultures become embedded, even calcified in patterns, routines and assumptions which become in and of themselves. They can avoid scrutiny because it's just the way we do church together. And we're pretty sure its fine if we do so, in fact it's probably the the right way to do church.

When coagulation and cohering occurs, we congeal communally. Our fixed points of reference create a sense of order and normalcy; it's church, our church. We know what to expect and can even run somewhat on autopilot because we know the script so well; it's been the same for years. Few surprises. Why change what works, right? Nobody seems to notice or asks: "Well, how come we always do it this way and not that?" Or, "I know we've been doing this thing for years; it's our tradition, but why does it have to be exactly the same, done at the same time, in the exact same way?" I know it's because we're comfortable with what works for us. Comfortable looks good in a world increasingly uncomfortable for many these days. We like the Christmas Eve Service done the same way our predecessors celebrated it. Prayer should be on Wednesday night. Everybody will be lost without a bulletin. Etc. Etc. Etc.

*****

Some definitions in terms:

I. Spiritual Coagulation is essentially congealing the spiritual life into fixed practices and disciplines which fit us. For instance, having a quiet time, or reading the Scriptures, or listening to Christian music. Each practice  settles to rote if we're not careful or resourceful - and sometimes even if we are. We're edified by these practices, for sure, but I also know I and others go through "dry" seasons when nothing seems to pop in our spiritual lives. Some of that is normal and needs persevering until the spiritual "Spring rains come." Such persevering through the arid places is essential to maturing. 

In community, we practice certain spiritual disciplines together and they become are featured in our shared spirituality. They're routines we support, and connect us to God (they certainly can and do), so we assume their merit. But, they can become "going through the motions" fairly quickly unless we often check our hearts to see what level of intimacy we have with God. Doing the stuff is not necessarily an ever-deepening desire to know and love God. Passion cools and habit supplants it gradually. The problem is we lose hold of  a genuine relationship. He desires us to get to know him for a lifetime, not know about him as a silent partner in our spirituality. Christian spiritual practice must flow from loving God and his ways in my opinion. Men and women differ in how they express this love (affective and intellectual), but spiritual intimacy is characterized by it. Spiritual coagulation can seriously deaden the capacity for wonder regarding God. For instance, I see this in many people who can't remember if or when God showed affection toward them. Even the idea he'd do so is foreign. Wonder is quieted by dutiful habit.

Breaking free from spiritual coagulation is spiritual fluidity. Fluidity is the physical property of a substance that enables it to flow. Flow can be defined as: "the action or fact of moving along in a steady, continuous stream." It implies movement, momentum, direction and continuity.  Spiritual fluidity can be defined as a property of the believer to move toward God, move with God (being enabled to follow; keeping in step with the Spirit), move out from God, i.e., to have a relationship with "the Transcendant Other" after he graciously revives our hearts and opens our eyes.  

Spiritual fluidity is the dynamic of learning to discern the Presence and quiet voice of the Spirit in real time. It's gradually, but earnestly coming to discern the movement and directing of God in circumstances, then recognizing his leading. The disciplines and practices we use are only intruments to tune the heart and mind. They have little efficacy beyond their potential for opening discernment and connecting with the living God. Both obedience and freedom flow from opening to God. Fluidity moves and searches and explores and experiments. It even leaps into the unknown as God beckons from a whisper, or a grasping of Truth. Faith fortifies spiritual fluidity, not mere routine or comfortable rituals. Breaking free to be spiritually fluid means extending our reach, and grasping for more of God, always at the ready to see wonder break in, or love to show up to still our fears, ravish our hearts or fortify our faithfulness. Spiritual fluidity breaks us free from tepid hearts, but regular attendance on Sunday.

II. Ecclesial Coagulation is the unexamined tendency of churches to gradually codify and cement their spiritual experience and cultures into structural, operational, experiential, and theological formalism. Ecclesial formalism can be defined as an unexamined or "excessive adherence to outward form at the expense of inner reality or content." In other words, unexamined, embedded rituals, ecclesial presuppositions, and traditions stultifying a careful, but creative, responsive freedom to explore fresh ways of worshiping God, or expressing church culture, or doing ministry (inward and outward focused), or being followers of Jesus in a world awash with spiritualities.We turn experience of God and thinking about God into procedures and methodologies, which eventually tamp down the impulse to come empty-handed to God for reviving and inspiring. And I do mean empty-handed with no agenda but to worship and hear from God as to his desired, but fluid shape of things.

I am not anti-theological discourse, anti-scholarship, or anti-liturgy. I've just seen how we can set in stone what was meant to be expressions of a particular people at a particular time as they wrestled with what it means to know and follow the God who revealed himself and called them to relationship. So I've never seen it fitting to identify myself through a particular denominational affiliation (I was baptized a Catholic, spent 2 years at a Methodist church, 20 years at a Presbyterian Church, 7 years in a non-denominational house church, and currently 5 years at imagine/Northampton, a missional church plant), or theological position ( I affirm parts of reformed theology, Orthodox theology, and free grace theology), or spirituality (I'm charismatic, missional and contemplative). I've been most comfortable over all these years referring to myself simply as a Christian, or of late, a follower of Jesus.

Breaking free from Ecclesial Coagulation is Ecclesial Fluidity expresses our on-going, fluid discernment of the indwelling and vivifying Presence of God through the work of the Holy Spirit who also summons each church to join him as he already works in the neighborhoods, communities and outward relationships in which we're placed. We follow him in prayer; we follow him worship; we follow him in ministry because we know him, and we've come to recognize his voice and his ways. He's alive in our individual and corporate midst. Reality says if our God is utterly free, and utterly committed to his redemptive purpose in all creation, he is already on the move and at work, so we must walk past our boundaries to keep in step with him, including our ecclesial containers and routines for life together in His Presence. There should be a freshness in our seeking and finding him, an expectation in our gatherings, a newness which can include ancient or traditional forms and responses to God, but not as if we're a franchise serving the same "happy meals" week in and week out because "it's what we like and do at" First Baptist,Wesleyan Methodist, Holy Trinity, St. Cyril, Holiness Tabernacle, Christ Presbyterian, Crestwood Community, or The Cool Missional Church With The Cool Missional Name.

Ecclesial Fluidity also means thinking of church as a regional body rather than each individual church as the primary focus of our attendance and attention. What if we went deep into to bringing down our barriers and combining resources (spiritual and natural) for Kingdom work in the region. What degree of Kingdom difference could we make if we combined strengths? Could it be at all possible to work through or set aside our theological differences, acknowledging we see things differently theologically, socially or politically, but are allied around helping the poor, healing the sick, freeing the oppressed, binding up the broken-hearted, and breaking down walls of fear-soaked hatred with love pointing clearly to Christ and His magnificent Kingdom? Why shouldn't we join together to listen and pray, to brainstorm and share resources, to combine our best thinking and our greatest strengths in helping each other be the the Church in our community. What if we built on what we hold in common, no matter how meager? It'd be a good start. If people saw what binds us, they could overlook what separates us; perhaps we could too.

I realize this reaching across the table would take some very determined work toward building trust. Mistrust, outright fear or anger toward others fuel our separation repeatedly. I acknowledge there may very well be irreconcilable differences in some areas of long-time dispute, but not in all. We need courageous and wise peacemakers who know the barriers well, but fueled by the Holy Spirit, labor tirelessly to open fresh ways of engagement so the Church can make the Kingdom real to an increasingly agonized and fracturing world. We will be known by how we love one another...or not. So could we learn to say, "I'm convinced you're wrong about that, but I love you anyway. Let's get to work." We could learn to challenge each other to think differently, but with unflinching grace and humility, even a sense of humor with an eye toward shared mission. Sometimes we all just get our divides ridiculous, wouldn't you agree?

Perhaps, if we did our work, someday we'd see our gifted communicators teaching and preaching in all our regional churches as needed. People would be free to participate in the body life of more than one church not because it's better at ABC Church, but because they're building relationships and offering their gifts to other believers. We'd not be so stuck on membership, rather we'd talk about communitas. Churches would share ministries and ministry leaders to build up the entire Body of Christ. Sometimes, depending on what might be needed, people could spend longer periods to help solve ministry problems or train others in certain needed skills. We could share resources such as our best creative ideas, problem-solving, money, buildings, equipment, ministry teams or program materials. We'd unleash the creatives, dreamers  innovators and strategic thinkers to imagine a better community. Maybe we'd have town-wide celebrations, regional service initiatives, or joint worship gatherings as a matter of unity the town could witness. The sky's the limit.

No longer would we maintain individual "territories" or "limit" God by trying to own what we've been given to give away.

III. Missional Coagulation is the unexamined tendency to codify the missional mandate at the heart of what it means to be the church in particular communities. Already, there are a pile of books and conferences outlining what it means to be missional: everyone is a missionary, disciple-making is the engine which drives the ethos of the movement, small organic communities are the best "container" for the "brew" of the Gospel mission; replication of decentralized missional communities is an ecclesial preference; ecclesial structure and life together are incarnational (not attractional), and informal; leadership is shared; scripted worship is not the centerpiece activity of the community; the Holy Spirit instructs the group toward the mission it's given, etc. Already the rules of being and engagement are articulated and formalized. Being missional is becoming a method. Strategy becomes ontology.

Breaking free from Missional Coagulation is Missional Fluidity. Here too, the Holy Spirit is key to achieving such fluidity.

Roger Helland in his blog The Holy Spirit and Missional Church (http://missionalspirituality.com/2013/04/1312/ ) explains it this way: Paul encouraged that “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25).” The Revised English Bible translates it this way, “If the Spirit is the source of our life, let the Spirit also direct its course.” We cannot keep in step if we don’t live by the Spirit. “Living by the Spirit is the root; walking by the Spirit is the fruit.”

To live by the Spirit is unnerving yet exciting, full of tension yet peace, with strange yet wonderful outcomes. We are open with unbridled expectation for Him to move, urge and guide, by obedient and risky faith fastened to the Father’s agenda. Clark Pinnock draws the example from Jesus, “The world did not set the agenda for Jesus. People could not predict what he would do next, because he had no plan but sought what the Father wanted. He did not operate from a program. Need alone did not constitute the divine call. He waited for God’s urging and the Spirit’s guiding.” With all the discussion about “being missional” (which I agree with), we must spend as much time discussing “being spiritual” where being missional and spirituality are vitally connected, where the presence and power of the of the Spirit ignites, spreads, and feeds the fire of mission. I call this a “missional spirituality.” Don’t you long for a practical theology for an empowered missional church? Perhaps we need to recover that missional-spiritual stream of vigorous Pietism that called for “pious desires” and “the deeper life” in union with Christ by the Spirit.

I agree. Missional Fluidity is all about following the Spirit who is creating opportunity in people around us and inviting us to join him. That joining starts with praying and asking for the ability, again, to discern what he is doing in folks around us. We can certainly explore missional models in the world, and read all the seminal thinkers writing about the missional church. But in the end, we must stay in close relationship with the Spirit, knowing his ways from what the Scripture says about him, listening to his voice in prayer, and having eyes to see his effects on the people he has summoned us to love in the Kingdom. Such fluidity is spiritual and alive in real-time. In my life with God I've seen many people quit this intimate relating to the Spirit because of fleshly abuses and the fact that we don't always hear and discern him clearly. Mistakes are made, or we just fall into confusion, feel stymied , then quit. I think we make a big mistake by not persevering in humility and earnest desire to know him, so we can keep in step with him. I know there'll be many twists and turns along the way, but missionally congealing into models, methods and fixed strategies is too high a price to pay.

I'd love to her what you think about this. I'm learning and being drawn toward change. In my next blogpost I'll address my wondering if there's a way to be diffuse, but deeply together, and unified when not together.
Stay tuned.

When the Container Isn't Fitting For the Brew. Questions About Church.

Over the past number of months, I've been feeling a blanketing flatness.

I know it's not depression because I suffered that in the distant past. I'm not dead inside, just not intrigued by most of what I spend my time on. As soon as my rhythm of life is dominated by the managing of the routine, and predictable I fade to flat.

The worst part of it is I'm seriously not motivated by nature to administer an operation. I can do it, but not with much spark or acuity. I make sloppy mistakes, feel overwhelmed more often than is comfortable, and sometimes just flat bored.

As I've said before in my blogs, I'm most alive in the starting from scratch, what-if-ing, exploring, creating, conceptualizing, laying-the-foundations, and launching phases of an enterprise. Helping things come into view and take shape has always been invigorating, sometimes even mesmerizing. As soon as the effort solidifies into a life unto itself needing persistent managing, I wilt or begin to look out the window to wonder "what else?" Horizons always entice me.

Don't get me wrong: imagine/Northampton mostly keeps its head just above water. It's not as if it's self-sustaining or running on all cylinders. God is faithful and people care. There is life within our community, but nowhere near communitas, in my view. And there is much still to do to inculcate a true missional life in each one of us. Some are more missional than others; no one is opposed to it in our group.No one is an exemplar, including me.

But I wonder if the "container" we've unwttingly let evolve over time actually fits the missional "brew" we've said we want to make since we're nearly 5 years years into our Northampton sojourn. One of my abiding fears has been that Christian community can very easily take on a life of and for its own. We naturally develop, or by previous-codified design, implement a culture which defines how we do just about everything together, and it begins to look like church even if you have a funny name, and use marbles in your Sunday worship. By the way, I use the word church in the sense of a group dynamic which solidifies into predictable practices and norms with a life of their own.

What happens is that even if you're a small church, activities together need to be managed. Sunday worship takes center stage; projects need coordinating; people need to resources for spiritual growth. There has to be ministry and ministry leaders. Somebody's got to take care of all the background details and logistics (and they can be like swarms of gnats), or stuff falls through the cracks and the established routine is jeopardized. Everything becomes about maintaining the expected and the status quo. It just does. The structural expected and corporate status quo slowly can train most folks into sleepwalking missionally. That's not good.

So I wonder.

I wonder if there's a way to break free from the unexamined tendency to coagulate spiritually, ecclesiastically, and missionally?

I wonder if there's a way to be diffuse, but deeply together, and unified when not together.

I wonder if the "brew" requires a "container" that looks, and works as nothing at all like a container?

I wonder if there's a way to be a movement without an address?

I think my blanketing flatness is because I know intuitively the container does not fit the brew. And I think I have a notion of what might. I'm going to work on it.

A Single Day's Divine "Coincidences" Might Sometimes Point the Way.

Over the years Tricia and I have prayerwalked in Northampton as I've written about. It gives us the feel of grabbing hold of and connecting God's Kingdom values with the spiritual landscape of this unique, small city. I experience his Presence when I pray this way.

 Yesterday, I ran across a video of Tempe church planter Jay Moore. It's entitled Prayer Walking for Ordinary Christians Living Missional Lives: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MissionalMeditations/~3/9bdJm2Hid_I/prayer-walking-for-ordinary-christians.html. Naturally, I was interested in what he had to say. In it he addressed the key reality of spiritual warfare especially in the context of entering into enemy territory and asking him to reveal demonic presences and tear down strongholds which hold people captive.

Smack dab in the middle of watching the video I heard someone coming up the stairs. I put it on pause, got up and greeted Hilary (not her real name). She was very forthright and shook my hand with a grip stronger than many mens' I've shaken. Hillary is an artist. She's also had a tough life. She does pencil sketches, and wanted to invite me to a show she was a part of in Northampton next week in the hopes she could have one at our gallery. She admitted she was really excited by the drawings she'd done, especially those of the Hindu gods (when she said it my mind actually flashed to the imagine Art Gallery filled with portraits of Hindu deities...what?). Then she exclaimed, "They really saved my life!!!" Her voice was filled with passion and sincerity. She seemed nervous; our interaction lasted on a few minutes.

I told her I would go see her work and I will. But after, I wondered what was the chance that when I was looking at a video on prayerwalking and spiritual warfare that a woman would come into our gallery and praise the Hindu gods in her life? A divine "coincidence?" God pointing and saying: "See where I'm taking you?" I had one of those God moment feelings we all get from time to time. Something's up.

Then, it happened again last night.

I was at my Friday night post hosting the gallery when four folks came in, parents in their 60's with their daughter-in-law and son. The parents were visiting from Cleveland. They began to tour the gallery when mom knocked on my office door. She praised the gallery, mentioned it had this amazingly peaceful vibe (it does and I know why) and told me she was a therapist. She mentioned she was Jewish when I told her of the TWiNE exhibit we'll host in May. Some the weavers are Jewish, and one in particular, has a tapestry memorializing the Holocaust. Then, she asked me if I knew where there was a store where she could purchase statues of gods for a friend - there is. I asked if she meant "like Hindu gods," and she said "yes!" She also was aware we are a church with a gallery. I'd mentioned it to her when she asked why we were here. She thought it was cool. Her spirituality was characterized as a belief in the universe, God or "whatever" as she put it. We fit there somewhere.

For the second time in the day I was talking someone relating closely to other gods. They came to me because of the gallery. Again, I wondered what was the chance I'd have a conversation about other gods on the same day? Both women talked as though they had tapped into divine reality. It made them happy. I thought of deceit and strongholds destroying lives. You might think that a bit strong. I don't and I have no malice toward the people; I don't have hatred for the false gods, however. I see their handiwork.

Twenty minutes later, I was in the office when two women came into the gallery. I did not hear them actually walk through. They were very quiet. The music may have covered their presence. They knocked on my open office door to inquire about the gallery. They loved the space. I mentioned it was an expression of imagine/Northampton, a church. She responded, "I know, but what kind?" I told her we were Christians, followers of Christ, but not affiliated with any denomination. The imagine Art Gallery was our effort to connect with the arts community in Northampton. They thanked me again and left. Not sure what they were thinking.

While the third conversation didn't lead to a discussion of other gods, it was clear the Holy Spirit was inviting me to pray in a very specific way. Northampton has a plethora of spiritualities all welcome, while Christianity is tolerated best if it behaves. While they might seem benign on the surface they are demonic strongholds all dressed up, likely guided by deceiving angels of light. Some might think my view judgmental, but the Scriptures don't. The Kingdom of God in the Old and New Testaments presents YHWH and His Son, Jesus Christ, as warriors overcoming the demonic forces of great darkness and death by proclaiming the truth, setting the captives free, giving sight to the blind, battling injustice and oppression, healing the sick, and giving dignity to the wretched and despised of the earth; the voiceless, unwanted, marginalized and weak.

My day began with a video about how to pray for others that the Kingdom might come in a particular place, and ended with folks who do not know Christ, crossing our threshold and revealing opportunity.  

Therefore, my conclusion from yesterday is fourfold:

1. I need to pray with a more laser-beam sagacity about what God is revealing and confronting in this place with his tearing down and healing love. Divine love sears evil and consumes idols as if they're kindling. Discernment is paramount; without it we're nice, well-meaning people chasing our tails.

2. I mustn't fall into a sleepwalk with the imagine/Northampton routine I live. Church culture can easily become an end in and of itself, including our missional church culture. Efforts such the gallery, and the Open Table, the imagine Community Garden are in the right direction. There is more though...much more.

3. The spiritual people we meet here - there are many - are leery of us when they suspect we'll promote Christianity as the way, the truth, and the life if they get near us. And we must, but through the door of unbinding grace and love, the kind that demolishes fear because we live the courage of our liberty to love beyond first perceptions.

4. God must grant me the grace to struggle for a true manifestation of the Kingdom of the Almighty that will  break though illusion, evil and pretense in this historic place of awakening and quickening of the Spirit. Without it, I'll remain merely a clattering cymbal. Not good.

Equilibrium Irritants and Finding the Jesus Adventure.

Always around this time of year, I think about how we're doing with our stated mission to help people discover and follow the God who is far more than they imagine. We're four an a half years into this deal. So where should we be by now, compared to where we are? What are we getting right or doing pretty well in line with this mission? What are we more talking about doing than actually doing? Where are we building a head of steam, and where are we wandering in circles or just sitting self-absorbed? All good questions deserving some thought, I think.

At the end of last year, I began wondering about what I've noticed is a tendency for churches to gradually, after they've established their identity and culture as a community, to settle into a kind of equilibrium of "what we believe and how we do things around here." Whether their ecclesiology is "pre-packaged" as a particular flavor of Baptist, Episcopal or Presbyterian, etc., or a cobbled-together amalgam of the best of all current Christian missional paradigms, they operate from a particular theological, spiritual, and cultural vantage point which embody core values and practices from the most formal to the most relaxed, and everything in between.

It's how all organizations work for that matter unless there are forces which."irritate" the status quo.

More about that later. I need to first define equilibrium:  

"A body in equilibrium experiences no acceleration, and unless disturbed by an outside force, will remain in equilibrium indefinitely; any unchanging condition or state of a body, system, etc.; [it will] remain in stable equilibrium - small disturbances to the system [will] cause only a temporary change before it returns to its original state."

In other words, unless there is some type of regularly occurring, and systemic irritant, the group, team or organization gradually stabilizes into an ordered sleepwalk of benign spiritual inertia. In churches, "the way we've always done it," gradually calcifies into "the way we'll always do it." The only people who seem to mind are the pioneers, visionaries and creatives, (and we all know they're just crazy).

In turn, the church's spiritual life centers on Sunday morning worship, Sunday School, weekly Bible studies, ministry meetings, fellowship groups, and church programs, with an occasional missions trip rounding out the year. It all takes on a life of its on and will on into perpetuity.

Unless...the church embraces the unhinged idea that we're not here for ourselves, but mostly for them out there beyond our walls. You can call them unbelievers, "secular" people, the unregenerate, unsaved or that wonderfully warm term of endearment: pagans. No matter the term. If a church decides it needs to serve the surrounding community first and foremost, spiritual equilibrium is in serious jeopardy.

Here's why: if those folks "out there beyond our walls" show up and stick around, they create dis-equilibrium and sometimes "you think you're gonna go crazy" chaos. They are the "irritant" I'm referring to.They don't know our rules. They don't cherish our traditions. They haven't the correct language. They smoke to much, drink too much, and sometimes even smell. They challenge stuff in the Bible, and ask tough questions many believers have few answers for. They might be addicts, have a different take on sexual morals than we, use words we don't in front of each other, or they just aren't enamored with our particular brand of spiritual equilibrium. They can introduce a level of messy that scares or offends us, exposing our pride and intolerance just below the Sunday surface.

Reality is, we need their "messy" to actually be the church in the community (not the church in the church); the Kingdom in the world; the light in the darkness, and the hope in the blinded despair. We have to work hard at getting to know them, and love them more than our well-managed equilibrium. The Jesus adventure is most in their world, not in our sanctuaries.

Therefore, the church which resolutely turns in their direction, and heads courageously into their world more than it stays in its own, begins to overcome the spiritual numbing of equilibrium. The "irritant" ends up to be a gift freeing us from illusion and well-trod complacency. It stretches us because we can't rely on the comfortable familiar, the normal and the predictable. Broken people don't often "fix" that easily, and they need someone to patiently persevere genuinely. It's in the persevering with the broken the church comes to living/ALIVE. The "irritant" creates new spiritual maturing, grace abounds, love for strangers becomes less uncomfortable, and the way of Jesus comes to the fore as the way the church lives as the Church in the community.

Wouldn't that be something.

All blessing to the courageous champions and apostles of the missional, Kingdom way today!

8 Essential Questions For The Church; What If?

For the last two weeks, I've been riveted to the Republican and Democrat Conventions. Even though I grew up in a very politically vigorous family of staunch Irish Democrats (my grandmother even played a role on the national level in the 40's), I'm not a political animal per se. I'll never tell you who I support or which way I'll vote in an election.

But I have to say I was struck to the degree I've never been with the depth of faith and hope people are resting on the shoulders of the Presidential candidates, especially the Democrats' adoration of Barack Obama. It feels almost akin to worship. I know similar adoration has been given other candidates in other elections over the last 200 years. People place all sorts of hope and trust in charismatic leaders who represent to them a better life, or an inspiring message of freedom or prosperity. The longing of the human heart for a happy and liberated life gets ignited by gifted communicators who know the heart's language and how to move it. When that occurs people feel lifted and loyal. Tears flow, smiles abound, cheers ring forth and happy days look likely to be here again because so and so is going to bring them. It's a potent alchemy.

So I have to say, I felt saddened by how much faith, hope, and even love is being lavished on mere mortals. I've never felt that before. It was palpable. There was a kind of "No!" echoing in my head because I'm convinced, such devotion rightly belongs to Christ alone.Only he is the light of the world, the Way, the Truth and the Life, the only Name under heaven by which men can be saved. Neither Romney nor Obama can fulfill the deepest or most abiding needs of the human heart. Don't get me wrong, the "American Experiment" is a unique light in the world. I've spent the last number of years examining the founding, and the key players involved. Miracles were involved. And through the decades, God has blessed the United States repeatedly, and given it prominent influence around the world. Great leaders in government have done remarkable things benefiting generations. At the same time there have been horrors, atrocities and betrayals.

Jesus, the LORD of Lords is the One Americans should ultimately owe their greatest fealty.

If they only knew.

If they could but peer into the unseen REAL.

But don't really know and they don't see.

*****

Do you know who represents His salvific interests in America and in the world? You and I do. We're called the Church. We, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, bring the Kingdom of God with us whatever we happen to be doing, even if we're unawares. It's our singular mission, not government or business, or unions, or PACs, Social Service organizations, NGO's, the 4th Estate, lobbies, or sports and entertainment figures, political pundits, or Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC, the military or the schools, colleges and universities. The Kingdom mission is the singular dominion and calling of the Church, i.e., anyone who calls on the Name of the LORD, and sees being a Jesus follower as his or her primary identity and calling in their every sphere of influence.

This morning on the porch in Ventnor, I was reading a book by Joel C. Rosenberg called Implosion: Can America Recover From Its Economic and Spiritual Challenges In Time?  I don't know about you, but the "last days" are more and more on my mind and have been for two or three years. I've tended to stay away from reading or speculating about such things, but I'm noticing in a way I've never before. Something's up and Rosenberg, a Jewish Christian, keeps his feet on the ground.

Anyway, I titled my post this way because I want to call your attention to what the author poses to the Church (ppg. 291-2), noting such questions are: "what we should expect and pray for in the American church,". (p.292)

He begins the list with the following passage:

"There are an estimated 340,000 church congregations in the United States. That's an average of 6,800 per state. That's about one congregation for every 900 people. Imagine how rapidly America would change if all of these 340,000 congregations were healthy, strong, brightly shining lighthouses, as God intended.

1.What if they were all faithfully teaching the Word of God book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse so the people of God would know the whole counsel of God?

2. What if they were truly helping people repent of their sins, purify their hearts, and heal from their emotional and spiritual wounds?

3.What if they were all actively assisting those recovering people to be able to turn around and care for others who are needy and suffering?

4.What if they were all training their people to share the gospel with their friends and neighbors?

5.What if every pastor was modeling the kind of personal one-on-one and small-group discipleship that Jesus and Paul modeled?

6.What if they were equipping and training young people in the Word of God and their spiritual gifts and helping them plant new congregations in the U.S. and around the world?

7.What if they were truly caring for the poor and the needy in their communities and in countries around the globe, not in lieu of sharing the gospel but as part of fulfilling the great commission?

8. What if they were teaching their congregations to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus and to show unconditional love and unwavering support to both the Jewish and Palestinian people?

I recommend you reflect carefully on each question for yourself and for the church where you serve. What is God asking of you? Where do you need to repent? Where are you sleepwalking and need to wake up? How is you church addressing these concerns? Should you raise the issues? 

A Prayer For Us All:

Father of all power, liberty, and truth,
Wake us from where we are slumbering or sleepwalking,
Warm our hearts where we've grown cold and indifferent.
Encourage us where we are anxious and timid.
Dislodge us from where we are stuck.
Summon us from where we are distracted by trifles or overwhelming troubles.
Give us voices to speak the truth with words that enliven and heal;
   that teach and motivate.
Make us people of the Way such that all can yield and want to find it.
Help us follow Jesus in what He is doing all around no matter the cost,
no matter the odds against us, no matter the mockery of the blind and wandering.
Give us tears which liberate and a stubborn resolve that on our watch, you will be seen  and heard in and through us all, your Church.

By Christ, for Christ, in and through Christ.
Amen

Simple Missional Questions to Ask Ourselves All the Time.

1. How in your life do you see folks around you encountering Jesus through you?

2. How do you incarnate his love so that people in your sphere of influence want to know him?

3. Would anyone be inspired to follow him by the way you live?

4. Besides indirect evidence of your religious or spiritual practices (going to church, praying, reading the Scriptures, etc.) does anyone not a Christian know why you follow him?

Take frequent time to reflect on these questions and listen for his "still, small voice." Thank him for evidence of him working through you if he has, but also ask him to "make you able" if you've little evidence of his working through you missionally of late or perhaps ever.

The hour is late.

My Sense of Urgency for the Mission I Embrace.

I am 63.

Five years ago when I began to detect a faint but persistent enticing to head in another ministry direction, there was no urgency. It was began as a intriguing feeling of "what if?" and interesting possibility - a window cracked open, and while I saw dimly, I also saw glimmers of a new leg of the journey for Tricia and me. An unfamiliar potential came knocking. God sent an invitation.

5 years later, a palpable sense of urgency abides, taking permanent residence in me. I will finish my race running as hard as my 63 year old legs will allow because God has graciously granted this task to me (and others at imagine). I know without a doubt the missional Kingdom way is my spiritual, ecclesiological imperative; the clock is ticking, and I still have far to go before I can set down my bag and rest.

Some of this urgency has to do with being 63. I am not old in heart, but I am aging; old is a learned attitude; aging is an inevitable reality for all living beings. I know I am young in spirit, heart, attitude, and will. It's a different variety of young than for a 33 year-old, for instance. It's largely attitudinal: possibility, potential, opportunity, hope, creativity and exploration still captivate my heart. Urgency keeps it all simmering.

Nevertheless, 63 has conditions through which my sense of urgency compels me: 

• I have urgency because I tire sooner and it lasts longer if I don't take time to rest well.
• I have urgency because I am more aware the clock is ticking than when I was a younger man.
• I have urgency because there is a real sense of the physical/mental diminishing that inexorably overtakes everyone through the aging process, even if I take good care of myself.
• I have urgency because I want to keep in step with the Spirit on my watch and miss nothing he has for me before my last breath - time's a-wastin'.
• I have urgency because people desperately need the freeing truth, hope, and love in this world awash in such creeping darkness and inhumanity.
• I have urgency because I am in the early evening of my life, but the sun will set sooner than I realize perhaps.
• I have urgency because I want to hear my LORD greet me upon seeing him with, "Well done, good and faithful servant." 

Therefore:

Urgency is good; complacency sucks and is cowardice married to sloth.

Urgency with wisdom, grace, and love creates the possibility of true life in others.
 
Urgency fuels resolve and determination.

Urgency makes imperative the everyone's need for salvation, healing and true liberty.

Urgency blends a holy discontent with a need to "do something about this mess."

Urgency lends the perspective that we all only have so much timer to bring the Kingdom on our watch.

Urgency makes 63 seem not a day too soon to make a difference.

URGENCY IS A GIFT!

Engendering a Culture of Spiritually Fecund Leaders and Jesus-Followers, Part 2.

Continuing with Part 2 of our response to the question put: how can we engender that sort of leadership, that conviction that it is the "normal christian life" I'll begin by averring that a spiritually fecund culture I began describing in Part 1 will gradually be characterized by individual and corporate devotion to Christ, the One who is ever alive and present in our midst, coupled with a consequent lived-out devotion to what matters most to him. Character development, then I think, becomes centered in spiritual formation lived out by sacrificial love and service as the way of life.

In my mind, that means at least three things - under the guidance and with the help of the Holy Spirit of course: 1.) followers of Jesus taking responsibility for their emotional and relational health/maturing; 2.) followers of Jesus taking responsibility for their on-going spiritual growth; 3.) followers of Jesus taking responsibility for embracing God's mission, culminating in embodying the Gospel of Christ in a person's world.


Let me set the stage of bit. Beginning at age 35, the Holy Spirit began to pull me into the world of inner healing, first my own healing, then Tricia's. It took a couple of years. But the end of my soul work, a leash to self-hatred and fear had been cut. I was freed. I knew what it felt like and looked like. I knew how God did it.

Very soon after, God brought someone to us and our 26 years of inner healing and counseling began. Over the course of those years, I started to notice an unmistakable pattern emerge. I saw that men and women who decided to "own" their responsibility for pursuing healing got better. Those who didn't, for the most part stayed bound to their pain and/or darkness. They dwelt in immaturity unawares. It soon was plain to me that an engaged will cooperating with the freeing work of the Holy Spirit increased a likelihood for emotional, psychological and relational maturing. Conversely, when people came to my office looking mostly to blame others, find an easy, painless fix, or were not really serious about heading into distress, fear, and sin, it never went well and they remained spiritually infantile or adolescent . . . again unawares.

To the point of this blog, engendering a spiritually fecund culture of leaders and Jesus-followers requires leaders model and facilitate, i.e., foster the setting where wills are motivated to engage such spiritual maturing because spiritual maturing is communicated as the desired Christian life, and opportunities for such growth are many. In such a cultural atmosphere, people become well aware that emotional and relational maturing is not solely the job of the pastors, elders, Sunday School teachers, small group leaders or "spiritual parents." People are poked graciously, creatively and often to "do what it takes" to mature, as well as, heal rifts between one another. Help is generously offered, but people must step up and engage. Then again, time, emotional and relational growth is not seen as an end in itself. Rather, it is viewed as a gradual spiritual tempering and tuning, deepening character and making one fit for the Kingdom work to which he or she has been summoned.


Therefore, in my eyes, emotional and relational maturing is foundational to engendering a culture of spiritually fecund leaders and Jesus followers. Graciously expecting everyone is summoned to do such internal work themselves as the Spirit prompts is a Kingdom enterprise of leaders no matter how programmatic their church milieu. If it's not done, a church can wind up with perpetual "feed me" spectators, and burning out leaders scrambling to pour milk into all the open mouths gaping from one week to the next. 

In my work helping people free and grow up, I also realized those who pursued (as the normal Christian life) knowing Jesus intimately became spiritual leaders from their heart-driven following of him. Merely going to services on Sunday to sing, hear a good, uplifting sermon, and be prayed for after church was not enough for them. They took and held responsibility for finding and using the richness of what God made available to the Church for learning and followed hard from a surrendered heart and an informed mind. I liken it to becoming deeply knowledgeable or skilled with the essentials of one's work. There is investment and motivation and individual effort. Such people don't have to be enticed, or prodded. They embrace Jesus, His Gospel and Kingdom mission as their primary identity out of which all life flows - their normal Christian life.


Therefore, engendering a spiritually fecund culture of leaders and Jesus-followers in this regard means being less: "well, how about if we do this or offer that? Maybe this will be an exciting sermon series, or let's bring in that big gun, or have you heard about what's going on with revival over there; how about we get in on that? I'm not saying  new ideas or nascent moves of the Spirit are to be ignored outright, but the discipling bar has to be held high, and kept there, not as some legalistic super-spiritual club for elites, but as an inestimable treasure, well-worth everyone giving their all for, even if a person's life is a mess and it's going need some fixing. Spiritually fecund leadership and followership must reflect a passionate longing and resiling dedication for the glory of God manifested, so the bent-over are given generous dollops of the Good News. It's a matter of the heart in leaders and followers; what it truly desires . Hungering for spiritual growth and maturing is like glimpsing the beauty of heaven's standing invitation because one is family member, and spending life pursuing it, and then out of a joyous overflow, reflecting the family values to family members who've never dreamed they're invited. 

I'll close my post with the idea that engendering a spiritually fecund culture of leaders and Jesus-followers will be a training environment, particularly as it pertains to fostering a growing embrace of God's Mission culminating in embodying the Gospel of Christ in a person's world. Everyone in church communities should be gradually trained to recognize they are a Kingdom missionary selected by God, sent into the world under the guidance of the Holy Spirit "to proclaim the excellencies of him who called [them] out of darkness into his marvelous light," (1Peter 2:9), and to enflesh his love through sacrificial service and manifesting the good. The Gospel mission of God is entrusted to the people of God, each and every one. It is their calling and their completing.


Therefore the normal Christian life is life on mission. Church leaders are tethered to the task of proclaiming, modeling, counseling, exhorting, encouraging, and inspiring people to follow Christ into their neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, towns and cities - ready to live the Gospel in a way others can make it out, and be intrigued (even if,at first, they're antagonistic, by the way). Leaders do well to communicate the reality of the call in a way that people can see it's really possible for "ordinary ol'" them to take up the mission. It will require patience and time to help people unlock or open to the possibility God uses folks, and the story they have to tell of how Jesus moved into their lives, changing the whole deal.


Leaders also need to train people how to overcome the relentless intimidation (at least, at first) of their adversary who assaults them with fear, lulls them into spiritual sleepwalking, or obstructs with life's exasperating entanglements and roadblocks. They must be given spiritual eyes to see (read discern) the tricks and subterfuges of the one who seeks to grind them down, turn them aside, or trap them in labyrinths of sin. He's part of the missional landscape, but we've the Cross, the Resurrection, the Scriptures and Spirit.
Leaders give them spiritual tools for the fight and fight along side them. Spiritual fecundity grows strong in the fight when people press on because Christ in them has overcome the world, the flesh and the devil.


By the way, lest I sound insensitive to the reality of crippling human pain, sorrow and suffering, I'm not. I know what it looks like from the work I've done, and what my family has endured. I've been asked to help in almost every variation of evil possible within the human condition, at least in my various necks of the woods. I agree leaders must create healing communities as well where the wounded and breaking can come to rest and refresh. Sometimes that takes a while . . . a long while. Occasionally, there are tragic casualties. The world we find ourselves in gives place to the church as a sanctuary and spiritual hospital. Our leaders are to help care for the sick, wounded and deeply tired or severely broken in our midst as they are also training up people to: mature emotionally and relationally, take responsibility for their spiritual growth, and enter the mission of the Kingdom in their sphere's of influence.


I know there's much more to be said about this spiritual fecundity business, but I'll let you chew on what I've offered for awhile. 

I'd love to hear your questions and concerns.