Its clean-up time, its clean-up time...

Anyone else remember singing that song at church when you were getting ready to go? Or maybe its just me being crazy again...
Anyway, it is clean up time for us. Robin and I, and to a lesser degree Rufus, are preparing to move into a house. It's not everything we ever wanted in a house, but it meets our major requirements for the immediate future. It is a house. And it has a yard. The rest was negotiable. We are going to be getting a grill pretty soon after moving, and we intend to have you over when you move here.

Tanner and Jessica are gearing up to move, just a little more than 20 days and you guys will be here. Bethany, Grant and Desiree we are not as sure on dates, but we know you guys are gearing up too. If it seems like things are finally getting rolling, good. I can hardly wait to see what happens in our community.

A few thoughts I have been having. Prepare to be stretched. It is going to be difficult at times, we are trying to do what few churches actually do, and that is to be the church first and foremost. That means it will take quite a bit from each of us, but it will only be as much as you can handle. I believe God has called a special group of people to do this together, and I believe he knows what he is doing.

Prepare to work hard. This goes some with the first, but, honestly, I would rather you just wait until Palm Sunday of 2010 to join us if you are not ready to work. That doesn't mean it won't be fun, but it does mean we should expect one another to be committed.

Be prepared to fight for one another and for our church. Sometimes it gets really easy to expect things to be easy. But I have found that in any relationship worth anything, there are times that I have to be persistent, that I have to fight to keep it moving and to keep it going well. It will be no different as we are starting a church.

Prepare to have a great time. Just because it will be hard, just because we may have fights and we may struggle at times does not mean that we also won't have fun. We are made for relationships, with each other and with God, and I believe that when we are working at those, we will feel fulfilled.

I believe in each of you. I know that God has gifted us all uniquely and purposefully. I am incredibly excited to serve with you, and soon.

As you are moving, how can we pray for you? If you have not signed up for a lesson or two from the last post, it's not too late. If you want to wait a little while, that is fine too. The main reason I wanted to get that up here is so people who wanted a lot of time to plan could do so. I mentioned before I am working days again, so that is awesome. I have found that I have a lot of time to connect with the guys in the program now, and that is really fulfilling. Any job leads for anyone?

Home church basics

Ok, so as you all know, I plan on us meeting as a "home church" from September 2009 until Palm Sunday of 2010. Then we will start with our public worship meetings and such. Basically I want us to try not to grow until after this home church phase. I think it will give us a good time to get comfortable with each other and with what we would like to be as a church. All that to say, here is what I envision us doing for those six months or so before we "go public."

Each week I plan on us enjoying a meal together, thus we will rotate where we will meet. Hopefully each home won't have to host more than once a month. I believe that this will do several things for us. Namely, it will build our community. It will also prepare us all to build community in the future. Plus I think it helps us to learn about one another in a fairly informal setting.

Then I plan on us learning and discussing our church together. For the first eight weeks, I would like us to work through three different books. "unChristian" by Kinnaman and Lyons, "The Emotionally Healthy Church" by Scazzero, and "Exclusion and Embrace" by Volf. Now, I am not usually a "work through books in small groups" type of guy, but I think using these three as a foundation for who we are will really help us. The first, "unChristian" basically sets up why it is important to plant a church. It talks about people our age and their response to church in general. "The Emotionally Healthy Church" is the best practical church book I have read. I am usually not a fan of those type of books, but this one is exceptional. I think it will help us to avoid many pitfalls most churches suffer from. The last "Exclusion and Embrace" is mostly about forgiveness, but it is also about living in a world with people very different from you. Obviously I have read all three, but I would prefer not to teach through each. I am working through each and making tentative 8 week plans for each. Now, since we will be talking about each a little bit each week, we will not take a long time with any of them. I think that will help our ADD generation.

After that, I have us going through some of the more difficult things we will deal with as a church. The reason I have us going through those books first is so that, hopefully, we will have some perspective on how to disagree and still belong to the same church.

So, I have these topics divided into certain types of categories. "Discipleship" will hopefully bring us along on our journey in knowing Christ. The topics I have for that are "Bible" for 4 weeks, "Calvinism v Arminianism v Open Theism" for 4 weeks, "Church Polity" for 3 (this will be more of a discussion of how we want to run our church, not riveting, but necessary), "Trinity and Christology" for 2 weeks, and closing with "Eschatoloty" for 3 weeks (study of last things). The parts I want to lead in this section are "church polity" and the last week of "Calvinism v Arminianism v Open Theism" but I would say all the other topics are up for grabs if there is one you would like to teach. In the "Calvinism etc" study I have us spending one week on each belief system and then one week discussing the pros and cons of each.

Then I have a category of "Service" where we will spend three weeks each on various difficult topics on our world today. I see us being able to serve our community by mediating between the Christian church and our secular society. The topics I see us looking at, in this order, are "Consumerism" where we can discuss the idol of stuff, "War/Violence" where we can look at the various opinions about this difficult topic, "Gender Roles" obvious..., "Abortion" obvious again, and "Homosexuality" but we could extend this one to "Sexual Ethics" in general. Let me know. The only one of these that I would like to teach is homosexuality. But if someone is really passionate about that I would be willing to have someone else teach it.

Last, I have us working on "Mission" wherein we will discuss some of the various religions we will encounter. I plan on us spending at most 20 minutes on each of these per week, with two weeks each per religion. I have: Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, New Age, Atheism, Christian Science, Jehovah's Witness and Mormonism. I am comfortable, in fact I would prefer, if I don't teach any of these.

Now, I am open to changing this plan, but I do have reasons for having it the way I have it now. I purposefully loaded some of the more controversial things toward the end. I think that will give us some time to get comfortable with one another and hopefully disagree peacefully on some of the less touchy subjects first. However, that presented a difficult decision, because I didn't want us to have two really controversial topics during the same week. So I purposefully separated "Bible," "Calvinism etc," "Abortion," and "Homosexuality."

There are several reasons that I would like everyone to teach, but since Grant was the only one to respond to that and he responded in the affirmative, I will take the silence as agreement. Grant, feel free to take any of those you would like to teach, but I think you would be good at working through "The Emotionally Healthy Church" because there is some counseling background to it, I think you would do well with any of the discipleship areas, and "War/Violence" but I am fine if you aren't interested in any of those. I would like it if Tanner taught about Islam, but if someone else really wants that one that's fine too. Let me know guys.

I got moved to days, finally. While not a promotion, I am hoping to get a promotion soon. Who knows. We are still looking for a rent house, so pray for us. I'm not really worried, we still have a long time, but it would be nice to get that locked down soon. What about the rest of you? Anything we can pray for you for?

Quest for the Holy

"All of us, if we only knew it, are on a hunt for the holy, for a life that cannot be reduced to the way we look or what we do or what others think of us. We are sometimes reminded of it by the persistent legends of the Quest for the Holy Grail-- the chalice from which, at his last meal with his disciples, Jesus drank with them the wine that became his promise and command, his life in them. It is the holy cup from which we drink the holy life, the life that Jesus set before us when he said, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." Abundantly... There are numerous variations on the hunt for the Holy-- holy grail, holy places, holy men and women, and perhaps most wonderfully, Holy Scripture... the quest for something other than and more than muscle and money keeps reappearing in unlikely guises. We are after something-- more life than we get simply by eating three meals a day, getting a little exercise, and having a decent job. We're after the God-originated and God-shaped life: a holy life." The Jesus Way by Eugene Peterson

I read that and I thought about the journey we are all embarking on together. It has not been easy for Robin and I so far, and I will tell you it probably won't be easy on you when you get here, but this is a quest worth working for. We are not so much trying to revolutionize church, as to truly BE the church. Unfortunately, the church in the United States has focused on so many things; legislation, programs, socializing, converting nonbelievers, that we have forgotten to BE the church. I think some of those things happen naturally as we are truly being who we are called to be, and some of them may never cross our mind.

I do know that I want us to focus on being the type of church that God desired, a holy church; a church that values black, Asian, Hispanic, white and anyone else that may walk in; a church that has both wealthy and not so wealthy (which we all fall into); a church that helps addicts and that allows addicts to help us (believe me, if you spend some time here at the mission you will learn about honesty and transparency, two things sorely missed in most churches); a church that wants to help people regardless of which sin they struggle with. I think we can be that church. We won't be perfect, but I plan on us being honest. And I plan on us seeking holiness.

One thing I am considering is having everyone else teach a part of the home church segment of our meetings. So, for example, one week I have us discussing Consumerism, the nature of the bible, and Islam. I would like it if I could teach the part about the nature of the bible and allow someone else to teach the other two parts. What do you guys think about that? Does anyone check this anymore? I know its hard for me to update because I know you guys will be here soon and we can talk about it, but I also want to have most of the leg work done when you get here so we can hash out details. Let me know. Pray for us, we are looking for a rent house for this crazy dog and I would like to be home at nights, instead of working.