Category Archives: church

Update

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Last night I skipped out of Renovatus’ worship gathering in order to spend some time in Salem with the Soma community. It was wonderful. What a neat community with lots of younger people who are eager to follow Jesus in radical ways. Jess and I were blessed to be able to share with them some of what God has been doing in us and some of what our church planting plans are.

I could probably write more but I don’t want to. I’m going to enjoy today with my family. Tonight my sons school (2-5 year olds!) are puting on a Spring program. It is 100% created by the children. Each of them creates their own character and then together they write a story. Jones’ character is a red blood cell rock star. Needless to say it’s going to be a great night.

Undercover Jesus and Willamette Week

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First off let me apologize for the disjointed nature of this post. The reality is that I keep getting distracted and have much more important things to do than to post a blog. But I was so moved by what I’m sharing that I had to post it. Enjoy.

Who would have thought that Billy Graham wannabe (I say that in the most positive and joking way!) Luis Palau and his son would be on the cover of Portlands urban magazine/newspaper Willamette Week in a positive light! You can read the story here and it’s a very good one.

Kudos must be given (credit, not the granola bar) to WW for being “edgy” enough to write this story and for highlighting something that has its roots in the gospel of Jesus. But even more credit must go to the Palau Association for giving WW something to write about. For too long churches and Christians have made headlines for all the wrong reasons, for too long we’ve called the world around us to come to our events, and it is exciting and refreshing to see the Palau Association going to the community and showing through their actions what a Jesus movement looks like. What Palau has done is transitioned from revival type events and instead focused on sending Christians and churches to the community in service. For more info about their work you can read here. It’s about time that we stopped defining sharing our faith as something that happens only verbally, may we all follow the Palau Association and start sharing our faith with our actions, our money, and our presence.

My only regret is that I missed the downtown Vancouver Season of Service. I’ll end with this quote from Portlands Commissioner Nick Fish concerning Palau’s partnership with the city in bringing renewal:

“If we’re succesful, perhaps someday we’ll be known as Jesus’ favorite city.”

I love you

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Things were chaotic at times between us tonight. Dinner was a disaster, the kids were crazy, and you didn’t get any homework done because of it all. We tried to talk tonight, we tried to talk about things that are important, about marriage, about love, and divorce but the kids kept interrupting, people got distracted, and the conversation at times simply fizzled out.

But let me tell you that I love you terribly. One  year ago when we wrote down on paper where we wanted to go, what we wanted to accomplish, who we wanted to become it all felt so far fetched. It seemed like too much. We didn’t know each other enough and the awkwardness was thick enough to cut with a knife. And yet here we stand today together. In many ways closer together than we’ve ever been. We stand together with more honesty, more authenticity than ever before. And those long ago written aspirations are feeling like more of a reality than I ever thought. When something happens you’re the one I call. When I need help you’re the one I’ll go to. I have fun with you, I enjoy laughing with you. We’re both comfortable being incredibly odd together, and I love that! What a wonderful mess we are together! Let’s have kids.

This note is for all of you in my home community. Especially you who have truly committed to doing life together: Aaron, Bekah, Brittany, Aaron, Chris, Christie, Jess, Derek, Jen, Brandon, and Sarah.We’re not where we want to be, we’re not everything we need to be, but we sure are making a wonderful mess getting there.

Hell of a Week

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On Sunday at our worship gathering we we talked about how when the Spirit of God lives in you, you become aware of “the coming judgment” and therefore live your life with a sense of urgency. Before you get all worked up, however, I’d like to contextualize “judgment” for you. We defined hell as the absence of God’s presence. If God is good, if God is love, if the results of following God are qualities such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control then hell would be a place that is void of those qualities. So the worst judgment, then, that could befall us would be God allowing us to choose not him, letting us choose our own way away from him.* And if hell is the absence of God then heaven would be the continual presence of him. Heaven would be a place that is characterized by the qualities and nature of God: love, joy, peace…So as followers of Christ, aspeople filled with the Spirit of God we are walking around in constant communion with God, we are living in a piece of heaven now! That also means that some people are experiencing a piece of hell now too! I could tell you story after story of hell on earth, where people are living and experiencing things that are contrary and opposed to the love filled, good, and holy nature of God.

Those who were there on Sunday were commissioned to go out and allow the Spirit of God to bring you a greater awareness of the presence of hell in this world, the reality of judgment, of pain, suffering, fear, loneliness, greed, abuse, etc. Those who were there on Sunday were commissioned to go out and love people, bring people a slice of heaven that we carry around with us daily. Those who were there were commissioned to stop hanging out with Christians, stop ‘going to church’, stop praying, and start spending time loving people who need hope, heaven, love…Jesus. Jesus promised that the gates of hell won’t be able to stop us. The gates of hell may not stop us, but you know what will? Church activities! We can’t storm the gates of hell if we’re too busy talking about Jesus in our holy huddles.

So if you’re reading this, I challenge you to live differently. If you see your neighbor outside, go get your mail and talk to them! If you notice that your neighbors lawn isn’t mowed, then mow it! If you see someone who needs a meal, feed them! If you’ve got a coworker who is experiencing tragedy, buy them flowers! Stop telling people things and start asking lots of questions! If you don’t know about hell int eh world around you then you need to ask more questions! Let’s start caring, lets start listening, and lets start urgently loving hell right out the door.

* This must be balanced with the mystery that Jesus has been to hell and back, that Jesus dwells with those who experience and choose hell. While we may choose the absence of God, Jesus has chosen to find us there and wait for us to begin to choose better things. What a great God we serve!

Christian and Torture

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If you’re a Christ follower then you’ve got to be seriously worried about the valid statement made by CNN in a recent report:

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Something has gone wrong. We’ve somehow missed something crucial to the gospel message. Brian McClaren sites these statisitics:

Consider this question: Is it ever justifiable to intentionally target innocent civilians in order to achieve other political or military ends? 86, 81, and 80% of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Iranian citizens say never. But only 46% of Americans say never! In contrast to the 6% of Americans who say civilian attacks are completely justified, only 2% of Iranians or Lebanese would agree, and only 4% of Saudis.

I sure am glad we’re a Christian nation! I feel like we should write one of those coffee table books that says “you know you’re not a Christian nation if…” and we could have the first page say “…54% of your citizens want to kill innocent people to acheive their ends.” The second page could say: “…a majority of the Christians in your Christian nation are cool with torture.”

This grieves me terribly. May Gods mercy lead us to repentance, renewal, and an uprising to practice the pressence of God in our world.