Catching up on the classics

Since I have copious amounts of pseudo-free time at work these days or nights I should say, I have been reading some classics that I never read when most people read those sorts of books. I read "Tale of Two Cities" first and then read "Crime and Punishment."

There are two main characters in "Crime and Punishment" a woman named Sofia and a man named Raskilnikov. Raskilnikov was a murderer. He killed an old pawn broker and her sister in order to get their money. A large part of the novel is the study of his psychological state in the aftermath of his crime. The only person he confides in is a woman named Sofia.

Sofia became a prostitute in order to help feed her younger step siblings, stepmother and father. Sofia commits her crime out of selflessness, Raskilnikov out of pure selfishness. Somehow they find each other in the midst of all the craziness and Sofia falls in love with him, for some reason. He has told her and her alone of his awful crime, and she loves him anyway. He is rude, irritable and hard for her to love, but she continues nonetheless.

The end of the novel finds Sofia following Raskilnikov to prison in Siberia. She has loved him and followed him for more than a year, when he finally breaks down and allows grace to transform his heart. He loves her and the find a way in a world that doesn't quite love murderers and prostitutes.

As I think about what our church ought to be, I think our church ought to be a place for the Sofias and Raskilnikovs of the world to find peace. We must all face up to the dark deeds of our past, and of our hearts. That is the only way we can truly accept one another and ourselves. Those people should not find solace only in one another, but in the church of Jesus Christ. This is, I believe what can set us apart from "normal" churches. We must work with one another to set aside pretense and own up to the ugliness that is inside.

Is there anything going on with anyone? Do you need us to pray for you? Have any thoughts on our small group training stuff? I am thinking that maybe after the first few weeks we can have other people lead parts. This will break it up and help everyone to have some ownership. Hope you are excited to be moving to sunny (at the moment) Denver. Oh and we are going to see Death Cab for Cutie on July 14 at the Red Rocks. You are invited. 40 bucks per ticket.

Core training

Here are the basics of what I am thinking right now:
We will meet together for roughly 6-7 months as a "closed group" which means we won't invite outsiders to join us or anything like that, and then on Palm Sunday of 2010 we will hold our first "public worship service." So the common question would be what will we do for those first six months. Basically I would like us to focus on five primary roles of the church; Mission (which in most ways encompasses all the rest), Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship and Service (couldn't fit a "-ship" in there). In some ways we will focus on each of those things every week of our core group.

Here is how I see each meeting going:
1. We share a meal together and just relax some (Fellowship)
2. We pray for our church and our hearts together (Worship)
3. We discuss some basic theology together (Discipleship)
4. We discuss current world events and how we can respond (Service)
5. We discuss other world religions and how we can relate to their followers (Mission)

As I'm sure you noticed, these things all overlap to a certain degree. That is good. Now before you get worried, I don't see us spending more than 2 or 3 hours a week on this meeting, which is probably less than you would spend serving at church or going to church. I would like us to visit 4 or 5 churches in the area during this time and discuss what we thought about each, strengths, weaknesses, what can we try that they do, etc.

I am working on a month by month breakdown, but I can give you the basic thoughts so far: Each month we will rotate topics, so for instance, in September I have us discussing Mormonism, Environmentalism and diversity of thought within the congregation (may not sound theological but I think it is). So then in October, we may switch to something like Islam, War and the nature of the Bible.

I don't think we will be able to cover everything, but hopefully this small group setting will prepare us all for the many questions and issues we will face as a body. I think this will give us time to get comfortable with each other and to know where we stand on some very important issues. The reason I am blogging about this 5 months out is so you can give me some thoughts and I can change things around. Also, please share any prayer requests you might have. I am working nights right now, so you can pray that that is a short lived shift. As always, I am so excited to see all your shining faces move up here.