Sometimes I just don’t understand my choices.
Let me be honest with you, I feel as though this year God has been giving very clear direction in a lot of ways to my family and to my work with Renovatus. I feel like he’s provided us the opportunity to step out in faith in a few big areas. And I feel good about that. There’s something internally rewarding about confidently choosing to do something out of faith rather than simple logic, impulse, or just personal desire (not that there is anything inherently wrong with those things obviously). But here’s where the foolishness comes into play. Stepping out in faith is one thing. Trusting in God is one thing. But choosing to step out in faith and then attempting to accomplish it on my own is something completely different…foolishness.
I pray. I do. I pray out of routine, I pray out of necessity, I pray out of need, etc. But if I’m going to do things that put my family in potential “danger” (living in the American version of poverty isn’t all that dangerous really…but that’s another blog), if I’m going to expect huge things from my work with Renovatus, if I’m going to dream big dreams about a daughter church plant that I pastor, if I’m going to do anything “risky” in the kingdom I better be humble and centered enough to know that success (the kind of success that I truly want) only comes by God’s hand and not by mine. Psalms 127 talks about how unless the Lord builds the house the laborers labor in vain, I can work my ass off, but if I want success I’ll look to the Lord as the builder. And the great thing is that the Psalm is followed by a promise that if he’s the builder we’ll rest. What a scary thought it is to think of engaging battle with the enemy (think: devil. Not: axis of evil) and then trying to fight on my own. Foolishness!
So what am I saying? I’m pretty much reverting back to the elementary message of…I’ve got to be all about prayer. And I’m not talking necessarily about asking God for success, for healing, for stuff, etc. I’m talking about dedicating myself to conversation with the creator so that out of that relationship he is freed to do his thang in my life.

I don’t know if Paulie and I should be ashamed of this or proud of this. If it helps, there was a miscommunication and we had to create, film, and edit this video in one afternoon. We’re playing one of these each week during our series here at Renovatus. Enjoy.

You’ve got to check this out. It’s pretty new I think, but I’m fairly certain it’s going to change me forever. And it’s not just about D-webb, as of right now there are around 10 artists or so that aren’t too bad. Check em out.

Wow, comments have been few and far between lately. Oh well, I won’t hold it against you my dearest hidden blogmunity.
So let me share with you as much as I can about our PAPAfest experience…

It was an amazing weekend. In every way it was confirming and inspiring. Many people around us questioned our journey there, questioned whether or not we were going to get sucked up into something other than the simple message of Jesus, whether this was some cultic hippie fest similar to Woodstock, and many similar objections.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there were some unhealthy things that happened there, but speaking just from my personal experience (the things I saw, heard, and came in contact with) this weekend was all about gathering a group of people together who desperatlly and passionatly desire to take the words of Jesus seriously. So when he speaks of being a peacemaker, when he talks of taking care of the poor, when he talks of sharing our money, when he talks of dispensing love, when he talks about moral purity, etc., they are choosing to ask the question “what does that look like today?” I can’t go into too much detail about the classes, music, and conversations right now. I’m still holding a lot of it tight to my chest while I process and pray over what next step God is taking us toward. But here are a few of the highlights, once again, bullet point style:

• We attended learning sessions concerning converting your car to run on old restaurant oil, the relational tithe, Jesus for President, communal living, prayer and quiet time with God, bike repair, african drumming (this one was actually for the kids and it was awesome), spiritual leprosy, and a few more.
• Jones picked a fight with Shane Claiborne…kind of…Shane was teaching the kids how to use circus tricks (magic, juggling, etc.) to bring peace and to be joyful and have fun as Jesus intended. And before they started Jones stole one of their juggling pins. Shane approached Jones and asked nicely for it back and Jones responded as two year olds usually do with an emphatic “no!”. Shane tried two more times with no more luck. Finally he tried to just carefully grab it from Jones, which lead to a small squeal and him bolting from the front row to the second row. It was at this point that Shane gave up and I and another juggler intervened and got him to give up the pin. It’s not much of a story really, but I sounds so good to say Jones fought with Shane.
• In between the different music sets they would call different spiritual mentors on a cell phone and have them give an exhortation of sorts as they held the phone up to the microphone. Some of these calls included Tony Campolo, Brian McClaren, and Ched Meyers. These were very challenging an inspirational (for lack of a better term). They challenged us to be people of prayer, of meditation, to be into the Word, and other good things that i’ve got written down in my journal.
• It was hot. It was really hot. And we were all camping in a big empty field…with no shade cover. On the coolest day by far I saw that it was 90 degrees with pretty high humidity.

That’s all I’ll say for now. Overall I felt like God confirmed a lot of things he was already leading us to believe. It was nice to be around people who had similar interests and hopes as us.

I’d just like to leave you with some of the prayers I left PAPA fest with…

• We’re praying for our future church plant in downtown Vancouver. How does God plan on incorporating these ideas of deeper, purposeful, and intimate community into this church.
• We’re praying for more people around us to begin to share some of our same passion for justice, community, and faith sharing. It’s hard not having that “one couple” to bounce things off of or to partner with in this.
• We’re praying about our finances more than ever.
• Peace