HELPING OTHER PEOPLE OPEN THE BOXES THEY PUT GOD IN

Below is what I presented to our gathering in worship yesterday. I hope it will be a help for you to engage new people in order to hear their story, tell yours and perhaps open them to Jesus in the process.

It followed a talk Jim LaMontagne gave on John 9. 

HELPING OTHER PEOPLE OPEN THE BOXES THEY PUT GOD IN

Not only are we in the process of discovering this God who is far more than we can imagine, but our Kingdom mission is to help others do the same.

So, how can we do that?

1. Pray each day God would lead you to someone. Ask God to help you not miss the opportunity(ies) he will bring. Ask that he show you favor and establish his redemptive mission in your life. Ask him to help you take a risk. tell him without his help you will likely hesitate and miss who he has waiting for you.

2. Remember everyone shares your humanity and bears the image of God no matter how muted or distorted. Treat them with dignity and humility. Everyone has longings and desires like you. Everyone wants to matter to somebody as do you.  Everybody has been hurt (sometimes crushed), by their own actions, or by those of others. While some are deeply hardened by what they have lived through, many are not.

Letting this really sink deeply into your heart helps you open to people who are offensive or have radically different life experiences, are just plain scary, or hard to connect with. It also helps you connect with friends, colleagues, and family members who don't follow Jesus or are antagonistic to Christians.

3. Everyone has a story worth listening to. Find out what it is. See if you can connect some of it with your story - very important. Listen for the pain or disillusionment. Look for life-questions they might be asking without being aware of it. Don't pounce when you hear one; just pray and remember what they revealed to you so you can connect.

4. If you can, tell your story, do so in a way that connects you to theirs and shows how you previously put God in a box. Tell how he changed your view. Always point them to Jesus: what he said about himself, and your life-changing experience of him.

5. The purpose is not to debate, but to listen and connect. Your goal is to have a chance to tell the reason for the hope within you. Be able to tell them what convinced you Jesus is the God of all creation.

6. You will encounter skeptics, cynics and people satisfied with their lives. If they want to argue just to argue, don't. If they want to really address hard questions, ask God for wisdom and simply reveal what you believe and why. Ask questions of them to further clarify their position, but let God do the convicting.

May Jesus teach us how to listen and respond with intelligence, grace, compassion and humility.

From the Fog to the Focus.

We had a friend stay with us last week. She is a gifted professional coach and consultant. We have known her for a number of years. She was not with us to consult, per se, but in the course of many conversations over the week, she was able to offer keen insight into imagine/Northampton and what we need to change for the better. She cares for us and the mission we have been summoned to.

She also affirmed what I sensed, but could not articulate well.

Most helpful was her questioning where our strategic focus was these days. She could not draw a bead on it. I know why: it had become refracted and diffuse over the last few months. We have been scattered in our direction. The experience has, at times,  felt to me a bit like chasing after the wind or grasping at straws. I really couldn't articulate the strategic focus to her. When I would try, she would get a very puzzled look on her face. And I was getting lost as the words stumbled from my mouth. It was awkward, but revealing.

As we dealt with the confusion she reminded me of the critical need to focus on our main thing. What is the strategic focus we need to pour our resources toward to best accomplish why we are here in the first place? As I said, this wasn't new to me, but I saw afresh the imperative of doing so.

We had been trying what seemed to make sense such as having public worship once a month. We were also beginning to brainstorm forums and events we could do to establish a presence and meet a need in Northampton. And we were thinking again about our initial idea of having a place on Main Street where we could serve the city. Lately, we decided to pull back from public offerings and re-group to deepen our community as a house church.

So we were trying, but trying does not equate to having a real strategic focus.

From her questioning and our discussion I was ushered back to the imagine/Northampton mission statement:

To creatively help people discover the God who is far more than they can imagine.

The question became: "so how best can we do that?" As I reflected, it made sense we needed to do so internally and externally. In other words, we need to help the people God has already gathered around the imagine mission, i.e., the Launch and Leadership Teams, the imagine/Band, and the people coming regularly to worship with us. How do we help them discover God where they still don't know him? How do we help them deepen their understanding, surrender more of their hearts, and follow him more closely as their primary way of life? Deepening our community gathered around Jesus who has called us together to know and serve him makes sense. If they are not spiritually formed and convinced of his love and the call to serve him, how will they be able to "incarnate" his love in Northampton?  (Mission focus 1a)

Next, I thought about the fact we also need to help people discover him who are not yet called by his name. The reason we are here is just that. It is our "prime directive." My next blog will articulate a way of beginning. (Mission focus 1b)

The last question concerns by what means will we accomplish 1a or 1b? Will it be imagine on Main necessitating a major fundraising campaign? Will it be centered on developing our house church and organically growing a "viral" community of Jesus followers who fan out into the city and build relationships with people one at a time? Could the public forums and events be the best way of connecting?

The Leadership and Launch Teams will have to decide with the help of the Holy Spirit in the days ahead. We shouldn't tarry in ascertaining God's strategic focus a day more than is necessary for discerning God's will.

Finally, in another discussion with our friend, it became clearer to me we don't really operate as a team. We really operate more as a small group of like-mind Jesus-followers who care for one another, love Jesus, support the mission, and want to see it realized. Six of us did move up here and a few others have joined our merry band. People are learning to be missional individually, and most help out with events, etc. But I think all would agree ours is not yet a coordinated effort where we all have distinct responsibilities on the team, and are accountable to one another to fulfill them. We are not adverse to such a team dynamic; we're just not there yet. We need to get there.

So I feel like my fog has lifted a bit.  You might remember, I have ADD so the fog dogs me. I just had to write that!

I know a key part of my leadership role in the days ahead will be to keep this need in front of everybody all the time. I must be like a broken record for a while. Vision leaks and strategic focus dims if someone isn't keeping them in view constantly.

If we fail to focus we will languish in confusion and maybe even chase our tails. The Gospel and the Kingdom are too precious a treasure to squander in vacillating ineptitude.

Pray for imagine/Northampton and the missionaries gathered to launch it. Here is the team:

Kit & Tricia McDermott
Jim & Karin LaMontagne
Matt & Karen Bayne
Nate Oldham
Ashley Capozzoli (soon to be Nate's bride)
Michael Dubuque
Maureen Frates

Geezers and the Wings of Eagles.

Been thinking much about resilience (the ability to rebound, spring back, recover) these days.

Remember, I am an old man planting a church (imagine/Northampton). As some of you know, I have taken fondly to referring to myself as a geezer, a slang term for someone who is not only ambling toward decrepitude, but also is a bit of an odd character. I have noticed some oddness (although not full-bore eccentricity just yet), and I like it, actually. Also, I think the term is used most aptly of men. I think 60 is the threshold to the Land the Geezerdom. I know I passed through the gates a few miles back.

Anyway . . .

I find my "geezerliness," especially in the light of the 60 (almost 61 in April), years I have accumulated, plays a frequent role in launching imagine. As I face the relentless and sometimes bewildering challenges of  developing this mission in Northampton, I experience the troubling presence of weakness, and inability:

1. I am physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually tired more quickly; they lingers longer than when I was a young, even middle-aged man. Recovering takes more time (and humbling patience, grrrr).

2. My ADD seems more prevalent in that it is both harder to not wander in distraction and stay focused on stuff needing disciplined effort. A baffling fog can settle in from encountering too many options and choices. Rebounding firmly into order is less easy to do.

3. Because there are so many details to put in place and stay on top of most of the time, I struggle more with keeping them organized from day to day. Springing back from chaos becomes just harder to do.

4. As I have rewritten previously, the spiritual warfare here is unrelenting. Coming in forms of resistance, obstruction (like swimming in peanut butter), and the constant invitation to discouragement, it can grind down a geezer. Rebounding from persisting adversity is not always simple at any age, much less at 60.

5. Just coming to terms with the reality and vicissitudes of aging itself, never mind launching a church in the process, can be daunting because mortality has a greater presence.

In the face of all this,however, I realize resilience is both an act of the will, and a gift of grace, igniting and sustaining resilience. I have to choose the way of resilience every day, but choosing only becomes efficacious as God grants the ability as well. Grace makes a way and points to the means.

Still, I will have to be resilient in the face of my diminishment speeding up inexorably over the days. I run smack dab into the human condition and must work within its bounds. No getting around it. Truth be told, God makes me able beyond my ability to do this . . . if I surrender and pay attention to the whisperings of his help. I live every day in the reality that I am an old man planting a church, but in this last 220 my life's journey. God has summoned me to do this now in my sixth decade.

So I am a geezer learning a different quality of resilience. I need more of God's help in it, because I am diminishing more noticeably than in my young years. Bouncing back has become more of a spiritual enterprise. Sure, I need physical rest for mind and body, Sabbath, and oases of quiet to take my hands off the work. But what I need more are spiritual oases of unhurried prayer, silent reflection, deep thinking and sitting in the Scripture. It is in those places that I am bouyed on wings of eagles.

I want to make that flight more often.

Grace: The Summa of Our Ennobling

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works." (Titus 2:11-4)

Such an amazing picture of grace, its efficacy and fruitfulness! Grace gets it done. Grace brings salvation; it frees us from judgment and condemnation for eternity. Grace trains us to shun ungodliness, anything which offends God and transgresses his way of life for us. Grace trains us to gradually renounce worldly passions full of deceiving sensuality and selfish pleasures or pursuits. It reveals that what sparkles and entices ends up stinging like an adder, numbing the heart to true joy.

Grace leading to true life trains us to hearty self-controlled lives, being able to walk uprightly before God, and actually becoming godly people - having hearts after his heart so we pursue the purposes of God and follow in his ways.

Grace enables us to wait longingly and patiently for what we hope is the good end of all things: the triumphal appearing of the astounding glory of Jesus the Messiah, who is our God above all other gods; who saved us with his own life, substituting his righteousness for our sin, atoning for us. In our waiting, we are expectant and open to the possibilities for creating change. He has fully redeemed us from rebellious lawlessness...all of it. He sacrificed himself that we might the people of his possession, dedicated to living all of our lives doing the good work which frees, heals and reconciles them to God.

Grace will teach the way to work for the good as our fullest joy and greatest longing. It will release us from the fear of not going for the many "brass rings" in life. We may even start to view such pursuits as "chasing after the wind." Grace will lead us to our place in settling the Kingdom of life and freedom on the earth.Our zeal will be for the good which blesses.

Grace gradually ennobles us without our notice. Our purifying on this earth makes us fit to carry the weight of glory, the summa of our ennobling.

Amazing grace is the "catalytic agent" by which salvation and redemption are possible at all. Without it there is only law and works as the means of redemption. We know where that ends. Grace opens the way and makes us sufficiently able to walk in it as we are trained over a lifetime to want God's heart above all else. It is a treasure of infinite magnitude and inestimable value, making all who live by grace full of riches no matter their life experience.

In the end, grace will heal and restore Creation to unstoppable life. Life so radiant and full it hamstrings death, dragging it to the place of utter nothingness. Grace will empty sin of its sting. Grace will harness evil and shut its voice.

Grace will bring the color to the fade, the music to the noise, the dance to the death march.

Grace will then bow to its Lord and with a tearful smile say: "It is finished once and for all my Beautiful King."

A Manifesto of True Freedom

 "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." (John 8:36)

 Recently, I handed out the following manifesto to folks on a Listening in Christ retreat I was leading. It was the culmination of what we had been working on during our time together.

FYI: A manifesto is a kind of declaration which expresses core values or deep convictions. It can be for something or against something.

I instructed the retreatants not to merely read and sign it. I told them to take time reading the Scriptures attached to each one and ponder what it was actually declaring. I did not want them to take it lightly. I told them not to sign it at all if they had not pondered in their hearts carefully what they were actually declaring. I would rather they did not sign it at all if they were not really going to work at living it.

If they did sign it, I told them to refer to it regularly to see how they are doing with each statement. I also said they should tell someone of the manifesto so they could be held accountable. My conception of the document is that it should be used as an instrument of deepening into following Jesus.

So I invite you to explore it and decide to let it guide you if it seems right to you and the Holy Spirit.

Notice that I left the last 2 blank for you to write your own declarations.

A MANIFESTO OF TRUE FREEDOM

1. By the grace of God, and of my own accord, I declare that it is for freedom I have been set free, and I will spend my life learning to live in that freedom. (Gal. 5:1,13)

2. By the grace of God, and of my own accord, I choose to stay yoked to Christ as my primary identity. (Mt. 11:28-9)

3. By the grace of God, and of my own accord, I choose to surrender more of my heart and seek to become a Jesus-follower. (Mt. 16:24-6; Jn.12:25-6)

4. By the grace of God, and of my own accord, I choose to learn to live a life of service no matter my circumstance. (Ro. 12:11)

5. By the grace of God, and of my own accord, I declare that the redemptive Kingdom of God will be a primary longing of my heart. (Mt. 6:33)

6. By the grace of God, and of my own accord, I seek to fight the good fight of faith and bring pleasure to my Father in heaven, the one in whom I live and move and have my being. (1Tim. 6:12; He.11:6)

7. By the grace of God, and of my own accord, I will seek to run my race in order to get the crown, not merely finish. (Phil.3:12-4)

8. By the grace of God, and of my own accord, I

9. By the grace of God, and of my own accord, I

Soli Deo Gloria

A Vast Storehouse of Tears in Heaven

On January 28th, I wrote a blogpost entitled:"no tear dries alone . . . unnoticed." Today as I was in the Scriptures preparing for the WNEC Christian Fellowship's Listening in Christ Retreat, I stumbled on this:

"You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?" (Psalm 56:8)

What a ravishing picture of the God who knows intimately our tears. None escape his notice. None will be forgotten. None are triivial or insignificant to him. He keeps and records them all, sharing in our sufferings. Maybe he mixes them with his.There must be a vast storehouse of human tears in heaven, a book of countless pages.

I bet someday when Jesus makes everything right in all Creation, they will be emptied and wiped away leaving no stain of remembering. Our eyes will never cry again . . . or better yet, only when we are also leaping for joy.

From My Listening in the Quiet This Morning: Thursday, February 18, 2010.

The following is part of what I heard Jesus say to me this morning during my sitting with him:

Be steadfast in the trials you endure.

Stay fastened to hope.

Cherish the truth.

Locate where love is needed and offer it.

Put on gentleness as armor.

Make no room for selfishness.

Give what you have and you will gain what is set aside for you.

Prior, he opened Isaiah 58:6-14 to me. From it, I realized that a central expression of loving God is to take action on behalf of the "least of these" his brethren, my brethren.Other sincere acts of devotion have their place, but the meat of righteousness Paul refers to substantially involves sacrificial service to everyone, but especially to the unloved and unlovely, the lost and broken, the sick, forgotten feeble and the defiantly stiff-necked.

It is through these acts of common life with God that we lift up and carry our crosses and live a full life dying to self. so we can be poured out for his glory.

So . . .

May he help us learn to feast on the meat of righteousness by shouldering our crosses and serving others without hesitating.

My he give you and me the grace to follow and serve him as our deepest daily sustenance.

May he silence our well-groomed selfishness.

May he wither our protective cowardice.

May he deflate our pride.

May he disturb our complacency.

May he harness our cherished distractions.

May he release our hearts into flat-out following.