Pikes Peak Soul Rush

Embrace

2009-10-19T18:55:00.000-07:00

I am sure a lot of you are glad we will no longer be focusing on that word, but I have enjoyed it. We have one more week to examine our three books, "unChristian, The Emotionally Healthy Church, and Exclusion and Embrace." It has been a good journey, and I think it has started the conversation in the right way. Hopefully we have learned a little bit about disagreeing, learning, and growing together. We are going to be moving on to some (very) controversial topics, and it will be really good if we are able to disagree in peace.

Some things that we are looking forward to this week:
1. We have a bank account! So we can start tithing to our new church. Make checks payable to Refuge Community Church, and just try to give them to Chad in a discreet manner. This will enable us to do things we would like and use church money instead of always having some individual pick up the tab. We may also have some operating costs eventually, and it will be good to have it for that.
2. We need to get a website up and running soon. Once we have check cards and stuff, I will get with Chad to start the process of setting up a website.
3. I would like us to continue searching for a place to meet. The Ethiopian church Don was thinking of is in Aurora. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is not ideal. So since we have some time, we may look into some other venues.
4. We talked about the grieving process in the Emotionally Healthy Church this week. Then I found out today that a friend who recently left the mission was found dead in a hotel room. Talk about difficult. I am trying to think through it today, but it is kind of strange. I've never had a friend die before.
5. We finished "embrace" in Volf. Let me encourage you again, if you haven't begun reading this, do it. It is a difficult read, but it is 100% worth it. I love talking theology of any shape or form, but to me, this is the most practical theology imaginable.
6. This Wed we are having a Jeopardy night at the Arnold's house this week. 7 pm. be there. I will spill the beans on one category "Harry Potter."
7. We are looking for some type of service we can do as a community this month. I believe we will help one of our neighbors. Desiree has made a connection with her and she could use some strong backs.

Is there anything I've missed? As we continue this journey together, let us continue to pray for one another, spend time with one another, and just generally have a good time.
Chris

Ethiopians

2009-10-05T18:42:00.000-07:00

That's right. Ethiopians. Hopefully we have found a temporary facility. My thought is that we can beg and borrow a place to meet for about a year, and then hopefully sometime in 2011 we will be moving into our own place. There are a couple I would like to see us investigate, so we will see.

There are a few other things we talked about the other night. One thing is doing some roundtable meetings in the community. I really think that this can be a good way to get some interest in who we are and what we are doing. Tanner brought up the idea to do some things at local coffee shops, I think that is a great idea. I think it would also be a good idea to do something at Denver Seminary and maybe Colorado Christian before we start, and then regularly at local universities after we start. I really need some people to help initiate some of that though, I feel like if we set the pattern of me doing most of this stuff, then that may be a pattern that we keep for the long haul. Not upset at all or saying anyone has dropped the ball, but I do want everyone to understand my reasoning for not planning all of this myself.

Some other things we talked about:
1. Chad shared that our early tithes will amount to about 750 a month. Hopefully that will be plenty to do the basic stuff we want to do.
2. Chad will be checking into some pros and cons of various banks for us to go with.
3. We talked about how the common perception of Christians is that they are anti-homosexual, from the book "unChristian"
4. We discussed having an upcoming game night. We need to figure out what games we want to play and where at. It will be Wed, Oct 21st.
5. I would like to monthly have some sort of game/fellowship night, and some sort of service project that the whole church participates in. This can really help our church body in more ways than we might think. We do not want to overprogram, but I do think we can make these things good servants.
6. We talked about how weakness and vulnerability can help us in our ministries, from the Emotionally Healthy Church.
7. WE talked about Exclusion and what it means. Let me encourage you to continue to evaluate ways in which you exclude others in your life. The main part of it was Cain and Abel. In addition, there is an important difference between judging and exclusion. It is acceptable to judge a specific action as evil, and not exclude the person who commits it. That is something I think postmoderns really struggle with.

If I forgot anything let me know. We are hoping to have a website up and running before too long. Love you guys and am excited about the change that God is bringing among us and among Denver!

Quickly...

2009-09-25T19:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the late update everyone. Here are the things to prepare for Sunday:

1. Please bring a firm number of how much you think you will tithe. This is so we can accurately make a budget.
2. Please bring some ideas about how we can begin our facility search.
3. Think about how we can do some "round table" type of discussions in areas where you may be. These can help us get the word out about Refuge and can also help us get some ideas of what our community needs/wants.
4. We are voting on how the leadership team is selected. Think and pray about how you feel about that.
5. Think about things we might want on a website and how we can get that made. I think webhosting is pretty cheap, like ten bucks a month, so we can definitely afford that. A good website will help us in a lot of ways.

I am excited for what God is doing among us and what he will continue to do in our world.

Tacos and Squirt

2009-09-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

That's right. We had tacos and squirt last meeting. I think we accomplished some good things, here is a brief recap:
1. We decided that we will have members, though we may end up calling them something else. We will allow anyone to join our church, they just have to go through our new members class. However, if someone is doing something that we believe contrary to God's will or that may hurt us as a church, we will encourage them to find ways to grow and to change their behavior.
2. In addition, we will have a leadership team to help make decisions. Initially, that will consist of staff (who must first be on the leadership team) and the rest of the founding core. Their job will be to make most minor decisions, and also to help facilitate the making of major decisions (such as buying a building, calling staff, budget approval). The leadership team will have town hall meetings leading up to the major decision, then they will present to the church an issue to vote 'yes' or 'no' on. Thus, the members of the church will have ratifying power, but we will not give multiple choice.
3. The distinction between staff and leadership team will be that staff will be selected to do a specific job within our church. They will also have the potential to be paid. I would like to license and ordain those people on the staff that we call 'pastor' (such as 'small group pastor').
4. We voted that Chad will be our treasurer.
5. We eliminated deacons from our church.
6. I will email a revised bylaws/constitution to everyone ASAP.
7. We discussed the need for a different kind of church in the United States.
8. We discussed how we can be an emotionally healthy church (Peter Scazzero, by the way, was speaking in the Denver Seminary chapel today).
9. I briefly gave a synopsis of 'Simple Church.'
10. Currently our staff roster is Jessica (church clerk), Chad (church treasurer) and me (pastor). We will add a small group pastor and hopefully a music pastor before long.

I think that is most of what we discussed. Please leave comments if you have thought of anything. And please leave prayer requests or praises if you think of any.

Next week we are going to cut down 'unChristian' to 5-10 minutes. I think we can do the book justice and save time for more difficult topics. Please remember, we need everyone to contribute to discussion. I am excited for what God is doing with us, and if you think there are things I can do to improve what we are doing or anything like that, let me know.
Chris

Refuge!

2009-09-07T17:15:00.000-07:00

Ok team. We had our first ever meeting last night. We discussed various and sundry things, made some decisions and overall it was a pretty fruitful meeting. Here are some things we talked about and worked on:
1. We voted on a name. "Refuge Community Church" slightly defeated "Levi's Table" in the closest ever vote in our history. I think it would behoove us to use the name "Levi's Table" on some ministry or something because I think it does convey quite a bit of who we are/want to be.
2. Jessica Cogsdil will be our church clerk. This will be a perfect fit for her as she is very detail oriented and does a good job of taking notes.
3. We are voting on a church treasurer next week. Chad and Mary Arnold were both nominated, so they will decide who we will vote to confirm or deny. Either would do a fantastic job taking care of our money.
4. Next week we will discuss a little who will be our pastor/minister in charge of small groups. I have suggested either Grant or Tanner take on that role, and I think either would do a very good job. I think it may be something we might take a little time to think on, because we won't start small groups until June of next year. That gives us some luxury in taking our time to decide who will head that particular ministry.
5. We talked for awhile about how we will determine membership of our church or if we will. I think generally the majority favored a membership of some kind, though it was certainly not unanimous. This is something we will probably want to revisit at some point down the road. This is a large decision in the life of our church and will have a large impact down the road.
6. We are planning on voting on church bylaws/constitution next week. Please, PLEASE read them before then and take some notes. It will be much more fruitful if we are all prepared for that.
7. We talked about trying to find someone to lead our music. Let's keep that in our prayers.
8. We talked about everyone coming up with a number of what they can tithe every month and bringing it in next week. This will help us to make a budget and decide what kinds of things we can afford to do as a church.
9. We talked about facility search. This is something that I think we need to touch on again periodically. If we don't have specific tasks then nothing will get done.
10. We discussed briefly the procedure for establishing ourselves as a non-profit company. This is something we really need to do sooner rather than later.
11. I mentioned that I would like us to be a staff led church. I think many times that has been a bad proposition, but I think for who we want to be it would be a good thing. It would simplify our structure and make our church policy much better, in my opinion. We did not nail that down, it will be part of our ongoing bylaws discussion.
12. We discussed some fund-raising. I think most of us are against fund-raising in general, but if you happen to know people who would like to tithe to us for awhile, that would be awesome.

I think that is most of it, though certainly not all. Please post some thoughts, and remember, the best way for us to find what is right is sometimes to argue. It is good to disagree, as long as we can do it peacefully and lovingly. I am excited to be on this journey with all of you... looking forward to what God does in us, through us and with us!

Interest meeting(s)

2009-08-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,
We are having an interest meeting tonight at our casa, and then one again in about two or three weeks. We are hoping to kind of let people meet one another and develop a certain level of comfort before we actually start meeting, plus it can help people that might be on the fence make their minds up. I'm excited for the meeting, I think it will help some of us see some progress on this journey we are on.

We will need to be prayerful during this time. There are several things that we ask God to help us on. I am waiting to hear about a promotion at work, I am fairly pessimistic, but it would be fantastic if I got it. It would open up an entry level job that hopefully Tanner could get, which would help with two areas at once. Tanner did get a job, but he would like something more permanent. Jessica got on the sub teaching ticket, but we can continue to pray that something more permanent comes open for her. We are incredibly grateful to have them both here and ready to go. The Kinsers move in a couple weeks. We need to remember their needs, housing, jobs and the hassle of moving all you own. They'll stay with us until they find a place, so pray for our puppy... na we are looking forward to it. Pray for our friends Don and Mike. They are New Life Program guys here at Denver Rescue Mission that are very comfortable in their call to help us with this crazy church. Pray for their sobriety and strength as the program can be difficult at times. But I am incredibly grateful for the things that I believe they will add to our community. Pray for those on the fence that they would join us.

As the home church phase cranks up, I will post weekly about the upcoming meeting and the previous meeting. This will give everyone a reference point and help keep the meetings cohesive. We can also post random tasks we will need to perform through the weeks to help keep us moving towards the goals.

Please post prayer needs and if you want me to email you a copy of the handouts for tonight, let me know.

JULY?!

2009-07-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

GUYS! It's almost time to crank this thing up and get started. I am pretty excited.

Robin and I were very excited to welcome Jessica and Tanner to Denver almost two weeks ago. Hopefully you guys are getting settled in and find jobs quickly. That is one thing on top of my prayer list at the moment. In just a few weeks we will be moving in Grant and Desiree. Bethany is going to delay awhile, but she is still looking to come. Then we have some people that are already here that are thinking about joining us. Overall, I think we will have a really good group for our fall home-church and then we will be in a good place to transition next spring.

The more I talk with people around our age and a little older, the more I get the impression that what we are doing, what we are going to be about, is exactly what they are looking for. The difficulty with our generation is that oftentimes we/they want to be involved with something great, but are not as willing to work hard to make it happen. So part of our challenge is to get people and let them know that serving needs to be a high priority.

All that to say, we need to be sure that teaching during our home church phase is a high priority to us. Those of you who have volunteered for certain topics, continue to think about those topics. I challenge you to think about ways that are less conventional to teach that. Video clips, quizzes, music, whatever you think will help to teach your particular subject better. We are part of an ADD generation, so keeping our interest is very important. If I can help in anyway, I would be happy. I may write up some thoughts I have had on your particular subjects and shoot an email with them, not that you have to use them or anything, but just to help get started. I have had a lot more time to think and stew on these things. Is there anything we can be praying for? Tanner and Jessica would probably like to find jobs. Grant and Desiree might like a place to live. Anything else? Looking forward to it!

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

2009-05-28T14:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-11T21:54:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-07T23:22:00.000-07:00

"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.

Catching up on the classics

2009-04-22T15:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-08T15:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Two months?!

2009-03-23T14:15:00.001-07:00

Ouch. Sorry team. Really should have been updating more. I'll just give everyone the quick run down on what has been going on up here in the mile high city, then tell you what I've been contemplating, and then end with a promise to blog more frequently.

As you all know, we got a dog about a month and a half ago. It was not very well-advised, but he is so darn cute. Robin was sold, and I had to take advantage while I could. So a lot of our time has been consumed with crazy old Rufus. He is getting huge, and will only get huger. He is pretty fun though, and we meet a lot of people because of him. Hopefully dog parks will be like Refuge #2. I recently got a pseudo promotion at the mission, instead of driving trucks around all day, I will be watching facilities at night. I am not excited about the hours, but I am excited about the raise (even if it is slight) and the fact that they made it seem temporary until they can find me a position like a chaplain or something. So all that to say, tomorrow night I start working nights. I am bummed, but I know it is temporary so hopefully it will only be a few months.

I also know a guy that will be graduating from the program who really wants to be part of our church. He is a great guy and really getting his life back together. I think he will be a great addition. Further, there are several guys who have offered their expertise if we need to refurbish a building or whatever. I know an electrician, a welder and a carpenter. Plus a stone-worker. I also know of a building that could be a good fit, unless it is condemned. I am going to start asking questions, but rest assured no decisions will be made until we are all together.

I have been working in my head on our "core training" or whatever we are going to call it, and I can't wait for fall to get here. Some things I plan on us walking through include: finding ways to disagree peacefully, other religions, political hot topics (abortion, death penalty, Iraq war, gay marriage, etc), sharing our faith, controversial theological issues (Calvinism v Arminianism v Open Theism, the nature of scripture, prophecy, etc) and I was thinking we could visit other churches together to discuss what we thought. We will have around 6 months of working together before we "go public" as it were, so I think these will really be good things to work on. If you have stuff you want to discuss let me know.

I will blog more frequently. What can we pray for you for? We are excited to have you guys here soon. Pray for us, we are hoping to find a way to move into a rent house of some kind this summer. We would have to find a way out of our lease or whatever, but we want to have a yard for Rufus and more room to have people like you over.

Vision

2009-01-25T16:34:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, I have a guy that I work with who sounded really interested in thinking about being part of our church. I thought it would be a good idea to develop a one-sheet synopsis of who we are and what we want to be about to give to people that are thinking about joining us. I am going to copy and paste it here. I wanted to get some of your feedback before I gave it to him, or to anyone else for that matter, because this is something that you have as much ownership as I do. So, let me know what you think, and if you have any thoughts on the covenant. I can email it to you if you would like also. If I haven't heard from you guys in a couple days, I will go ahead and give him what I have.

**Refuge Community Church** will be a church plant in the Denver metro area. We plan to start as a small home group in the beginning consisting of a committed group of 10 to 20 people who will make up the original “core” of the church. We will begin meeting as a “core” group in the Fall of 2009 and plan on our first “public” service being around Palm Sunday of 2010. This will hopefully allow for our basic group to share a vision and dream for the future of **Refuge Community Church** and to allow us to move forward in a unified way when our public services begin.

Why another church? We feel that the current churches are not doing an adequate job of reaching twenty-somethings or the large population of homeless and addicts in our world. We believe that these are groups that are often underrepresented because they do not necessarily tithe very well. However, we also desire to take Jesus seriously when he calls us to care for “the least of these.” We know that God has the strength and resources to take care of us financially. We will certainly not turn away people who are not in those particular groups, but we want to be a church that really seeks to help and reach out to those particular groups.

In addition, we feel that sometimes the best way to get away from problems of previous churches is to start fresh. We want to foster a certain amount of teamwork with other churches in the area, while also helping established ministries. We believe that we are all working to the same goal of sharing the love of Jesus Christ with the world.

We believe that the purpose of a church is to be a community of Christians who make up the “body of Christ” in a very real way. We want to do the work of God in our world. We want to be like family to one another and want to seek in a very natural way to incorporate more people into our group and hopefully expand our influence throughout the city, state, country and world. We believe it is our job to carry out the mission of God in the world. God wants all men and women to know that he loves them and that salvation is available to all.

What denomination will **Refuge** be? We have decided that due to a certain amount of baggage that goes with different denominations that we will be “non-denominational.” We do not want a name to get in the way of a person seeking the salvation of Jesus Christ.

How will **Refuge** be run? At the beginning the church will consist of a very small group of 10 to 20. During that time we will make all decisions based on discussion and vote. However, eventually we will adopt either an elder system or a staff led church. This will be decided during the Fall meetings of 2009.

Why all the crazy *** around **Refuge**? Because this is not our official name yet. We have adopted Refuge as our working name, and if it is ratified by vote early in our meetings, it will be our official name.

So there we go. Let me know if we can pray for you guys, I know it can be stressful thinking about the big move. We are excited to have you guys join us soon.

Random thoughts for today

2009-01-13T17:08:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't blogged much lately. I really look forward to the day when you are all here and I can just post some stuff to think about leading up to our bible studies or whatever.

Anyway, I have been thinking about a lot of things lately, so I am going to throw in most of them out there and just see what you guys think.

First, I am working on drawing up some sort of covenant we can all agree on. Obviously I will send it to you all and you can look it over before, but I think it could be a good way to kind of agree on certain things as a team and a church. Some things I am thinking about including; something about helping the church financially when able, helping physically when able, attending, moderation in things like drinking and smoking cigars or pipes, the refusal to complain and gossip, agree to go to the other person in the church if there is a problem. What do you guys think about those things? The last thing I want is some list of legalistic things for us to stick to, but I also don't want us to pretend like freedom in Christ means we have no responsibility to each other.

Second, there are a lot of guys at the Rescue Mission who I think will really want to help us. Most of them have skills in manual labor, like drywall and painting and stuff like that. This is assuming we have a place to work on, but I know at some point we will hopefully have a building of some sort. I know these guys love to get out of the mission every now and then. They will be happy to help us and we can just give them a little lunch. For those of you who helped at Nexus, I know you will be excited and relieved by this. Some of those guys even have electrical and plumbing skills. There are also guys who are musicians there. One of them is staff, so he might be willing to help with music for awhile.

Third, it may seem like a long ways away, but you will be here before you know it. And we will be meeting as a small group before you know it. And we will have our first service before you know it. Don't put off getting ready to be here. Plan as best you can now, look for jobs online, it might not even hurt to apply for some. And most importantly, be praying that God will provide for us.

Fourth, it is amazing to me how many people Robin and I have met in our jobs that are excited about Refuge. I could guess 20-30 that might come and visit or check out our small groups if they were already started. That number will grow dramatically when you are all here and working. There is a huge group of people that want a church like the one we are preparing for. It will be some work, but I think it will be nothing but rewarding for each of you.

We are excited and anticipate all the great things you will all do when you get here. You are all awesome and I couldn't ask for a better group to do this with. Let me know what we can do to help you guys with the move, and post any prayer requests as usual.

God is with us

2008-12-21T12:32:00.000-08:00

Christmas time used to be my favorite season when I was a kid. I mean, not a lot of kids have to wait 362 days between opening presents. But when it finally hit, I had my birthday, then three days later Christmas. It was one of my favorite weeks as a kid. But then getting presents wasn't as big of a deal to me. So for a long time, I didn't really like the holiday season. I had to deal with family for extended periods, some of whom I didn't care much for, and I had to miss out on time with my friends. So for a good amount of time I didn't love the holidays.

But for the past few years I have started to really think about what Christmas means. I've started to appreciate all the cliches about the "reason for the season," and all that. Just the other day on my way home from work I was listening to the song "O Come O Come Emmanuel" and thinking about what it really means that God came and made his dwelling with us. Eugene Peterson translates part of John 1 as "the word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood."

So back to the cliche. For the longest time people lived in our world with little or no hope. If there was a God, he wasn't much involved in their lives, or so they thought. For the Israelites, they had lived in disobedience for so long, God had good reason to abandon them. Then in a tiny town in a corner of a Roman province, God was born in the flesh. For me, I believe that this event signaled an actual change in the nature of God. God became something he wasn't before. God was so heartbroken over the condition of humanity that he was willing to become flesh, to learn to talk and walk, to love and to be hurt, to live among the people he so cared for. God knew the only way to reach his prodigal sons and daughters was to journey far from home and live among them. This is the reason for the season.

I was thinking about all of this the other day at work. I work with former drug addicts, alcoholics and homeless men. Sometimes they are a hard group to love. But not so hard when I think about the life of our savior. When I take the time to think about the fact that these are Jesus' precious children and they are the ones he is so passionate about saving.

One of the passages I have been trying to keep in mind as we moved is that short phrase about the word moving into the neighborhood. In the same way that God moved in with us, he is calling us to move in with those in Denver that are hurting. The incarnation is the chief model for ministry and I encourage each of you to ponder that as you begin making plans to move. I believe very strongly that we can make a difference here. I think we can make a difference at Denver Rescue Mission, and in whatever places you all end up working. I am excited to see what happens, and I want to encourage you that God will reward your faithfulness. Its normal and ok to be worried, to be scared and to think it won't be easy. It won't. It hasn't been for us. But, as Dumbledore tells Harry on many occasions "there is a difference between what is easy and what is right."

We are praying that the Kinsers will have enough money while Desiree is finishing her masters. We are praying that God would help provide for Bethany so she can save some for a little pad when she gets here, what else do you guys need? Pray for us, we are hoping Robin can get back into hospice sometime soon. Pray for me, I am thinking I will be a chaplain for the Air National Guard, its a good deal, part time and good ministry opportunities, but I will need to lose 10 to 15 pounds and hope my physical goes well. Pray that God will provide us with a place. I loved what we were able to do with our place at Nexus, and hope we can do something like that here in Denver. Pray that God would provide a musician. Anything else?

The weather outside is frightful

2008-12-14T09:43:00.000-08:00

It is currently 4 degrees here in Denver. So, for those of you moving before long, buy coats and scarves and sweaters. I'm sure you can get some great deals early summer right before moving. I love the cold, so I enjoy it, but Robin, not so much. For those of you who don't keep up with college football, Boomer Sooner, my Sooners are going to the National Championship game and the QB just won the Heisman.

Anyway, I just finished my first few days of work, and I really hated it the first two days, but I really like it Friday. I basically drive a truck around town for Denver Rescue Mission. The best thing about it is one of the guys who is in recovery goes with me. We had a great time talking and getting to know one another. I think the best thing for all this is that hopefully some of these guys from the Rescue Mission will come to our church. I would really love us to be in close contact with this group. The guys are of course pretty rough, but I would bet Peter was too.

The other great thing is Robin is meeting a ton of people that could be part of our church. There are a lot of people here that are hungry for a different kind of church. They want a place where they can be themselves and not feel like they are judged. So, I can only imagine how many people we will touch when you all get here and we are all working at different places.

Thanks for sharing those prayer requests, we will keep you guys in our prayers. For us this week, pray that I will learn my route quickly, that I will get in shape quickly (I have to make weight for the Air Guard gig), that I will get all my stuff in soon and that Robin will find a job that she likes better. I am praying that you guys will all get here soon, I can't wait to get started! I am looking around everywhere for ideas about where we can meet, so pray for that too.

Also, I was thinking about doing up a little covenant for the core of our church. Just something we can all agree that we will do certain things and support one another in certain ways. What do you guys think about that? What would you put in it if you could?

Thanksgiving

2008-12-05T20:28:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the long delay in posts, the truth is I have been a bit beat down by not having a job. I just didn't want to constantly blog about being beat down. So all that to say, I finally got a job! I will be working for Denver Rescue Mission. It is anything but glamorous, but I will be helping people and working full time. We will have enough to pay our bills and to live well, and that is all I can really ask for. In addition, I think I will try to serve as chaplain for the local Air National Guard. This would be part time, and I can do it in conjunction to the church. It will be a great place to meet and minister and I'm pretty excited about it. So, really, thank you for your prayers, it was a tough couple months, but no one said it would be easy.

Also, we had our first Thanksgiving here. Our friends Chad and Mary came, and some family and friends of theirs, and Robin's sister. It was laid back and we had a really great time. We are so excited about celebrating with all of you next year. We want to also start a tradition of helping at a local shelter or something like that for lunch or breakfast and then getting together to eat dinner together. You are all invited. I don't have much more to say, but one of the things I was really grateful for (and still am) is all of you. Its a big deal to say that you are going to spend your life doing things of eternal significance instead of things that will make your rich or comfortable.

So, please just pray that the Air Guard thing will work out, pray that there will be no scheduling conflicts and that all the little things with it work out well. What can we pray for you for?

Peacefully Disagree...

2008-11-17T18:19:00.000-08:00

One of the things I think is incredibly important to any community, is the ability to peacefully disagree. I don't know how many of you check up on my blog, you're not missing much if you don't, but I have just been blogging lately about the controversial topics of politics. Now, I have some opinions that I don't expect you all to share. In fact, I am pretty confident that outside of Robin and Grant, most of you are going to disagree with me on quite a few political issues. Does this mean that we are unfit to start a church together? I sure hope not. But one thing it does is force us to focus on people more than ideas.

We need to be committed to each other more than we are to certain ideas. Some ideas are worth dividing over, but not too many. Here is an unacceptable way to disagree about a certain idea.

Person A: I think such and such is a good thing.
Person B: You obviously do not believe in the bible or the God who wrote it. Repent or you will be judged.
Person A: You obviously hate everything and will go to hell.

Now, that is clearly an oversimplification, but hopefully you can see the basic premise. If someone disagrees with us, that does not automatically mean that they are pagan heathens that hate God and the bible. In fact, they could love God just a much as we do. They just happen to disagree with us. So how do we disagree in a good way?

Person A: I think such and such is a good thing.
Person B: While I know that you area person trying to follow God, I would disagree with your assessment of such and such for this reason.
Person A: That is understandable, let's talk more about this in a nonthreatening, uplifting way.

I realize that is an ideal, and it is rare. But hopefully if we are all building toward that type of idea, we can work together to focus more on our commitment to one another than our politics or whatnot.

Lastly, I know some of you are saying "blah blah blah, Chris you have said this before." Yes I have. And I plan on saying it again and again. I think one of the worst things we can do is think that because we disagree that we are unfit to do this thing together. We all agree that God wants to use us in Denver, and we all agree that working together to start a new kind of church is the way. We will disagree on some specifics, but we have to make sure that we always agree on our commitment to one another. Thoughts?

I am starting my teller job on Wed. I'm not excited, but there are two jobs that I have applied for that I would love, so if you could just pray that I am the only applicant I would love that.

The Cost of Discipleship

2008-11-10T10:47:00.000-08:00

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes this in his book "...But now he has come, and his call goes forth. Faith can no longer mean sitting still and waiting- they must rise and follow him. The call frees them from all earthly ties, and binds them to Jesus Christ alone. They must burn their boats and plunge into absolute insecurity in order to learn the demands and gift of Christ. Had Levi stayed at his post, Jesus might have been his present help in trouble, but not the Lord of his whole life... before he can believe, the utterly impossible and ethically irresponsible situation on the waves of the sea must be displayed. The road to faith passes through obedience to the call of Jesus. Unless a definite step is demanded, the call vanishes into thin air, and if men imagine that they can follow Jesus without taking this step, they are deluding themselves..."

I was just sitting here at home being bummed. I was finally offered a job, part time teller at Wells Fargo. But it is a job. I will take it and look for something full time. But I was just sitting here being bummed out, feeling dejected. So I decided to read, something I haven't done since getting a new video game (which is awesome by the way). So I picked up "The Cost of Discipleship" by Bonhoeffer. And it really hit the spot. I was bummed, but now I feel affirmed. Robin and I burned our boats. We plunged into the insecurity of the sea. We haven't washed up to shore yet, but I feel more hopeful. God has given us enough for now, and I believe he will continue.

You may be pretty apprehensive. Its normal. It will be hard sometimes. But I promise you, it will help you to learn what it means to be a disciple. Not everyone who is a disciple is called to come to Denver, but if you are called, God will take care of you. I am hopeful. God has shown a pattern of using those who throw caution to the wind and follow his leading. I see a lot of you that are doing that already. You are moving to a state where you only know Robin and I. You are coming to a church that does not exist yet. You are staking part of your life on the dream that we can make a church that is not perfect, but one that tries to be perfectible. I am so grateful to have people like you coming to join us soon. I am excited for the kind of church we can make together. I believe it will be hard, but a long time from now, we will all look back with a certain pride and know that God used us because we burned our boats, and cast ourselves into the sea, and into the hands of God.

What can I pray for you for this week? I applied for a job at Denver Rescue Mission. It is full time, and it will probably not pay well. But I would love it.

Enough

2008-10-26T14:01:00.000-07:00

Robin and I have started going to Einstein Brothers every Sunday morning for a breakfast of bagels. We really love our new little tradition. As we were there today, Robin was telling me about a book she is reading. The short of it is, its about a guy that is working really hard to provide for people who are very poor in the world. Sometimes he will do a presentation and only three people will come, but one will provide enough money to continue his work.

As she was telling me about this, I had to think about our current situation. Robin and I are unemployed, and looking hard for jobs. We have enough money to live on for awhile, but we are still a little worried at times. But I just couldn't help but think about how God provides for the birds and the rest of his creation. He doesn't give them enough to live on for weeks or months or years, he gives them enough for today. God doesn't promise we won't ever worry or think we might not make it, he promises that we will have enough for today. And he has more than provided for us today. I hope we both get jobs this week, but if we don't we have to continue to believe that God knows what he is doing.

I want to write this now, so that when you guys move here you will know I felt the same. I want to give you a little preview of some of the thoughts I think most of us will probably have when we move. You will feel a little isolated. You will realize that your friends and family are a now a long way away. You will think about all the connections you have in Texas that could have gotten you a job in a week or two. You will be sad to leave home. You will be excited to start something new. I have gone back and forth between knowing God would provide soon, to being angry with him for not providing yet. I ask if God brought us here just to drop us sometimes.

Here is the thing about most of those emotions, I think they are pretty normal. I also think that most things worth doing are not easy. I look back to college and remember how hard it was to go to a school 300 miles from home when I knew no one. But after it was over, I met my wife, met some great friends, and met most of you. Without that difficulty, I would be very comfortable living in OKC and living as the same person I was all through highschool. I think seminary was similar. Neither was enjoyable right away, but in the end I was so much better because of it. I think it will be the same here in Denver.

I think there are several reasons God puts us through this. He wants us to grow and to change, and if we stay comfortable that will not happen. God wants us to trust him, and that is hard to do when our wallets and bellys are overflowing. God wants us to sacrifice for him, and that is hard to do when we keep everything for ourselves. I hope this post does a couple things, I hope it gets you to think through what ways God needs to challenge you, what ways you may need to change as you prepare for this journey. I hope it can also encourage you that we feel the same emotions you all probably are.

I really think there were some great comments on the last post. Let me add a little bit about what I think. I think it should be something that is part of everything we do. It can't be programs, but I think it can be disciplines. The first time you invite a stranger from church to eat lunch or dinner with you afterword, it can be scary. The twentieth time in a row, it is habit. I think including new people can be a habit for us, and I hope it is. I think the fact that we will all be kind of strangers in Denver for awhile will reinforce to us the need to help strangers be made at home. Grant, I agree about Rochelle, remind me of that when we start doing core training stuff, because I think we really need to focus on that. Pray for us guys, we need some jobs. I found one that I think I would love, though the pay is not great. I will tell you more about it next week. Please share your thoughts on all this, the comments remind me that you guys are here.

Delicious Egg Sandwiches...

2008-10-19T18:34:00.001-07:00

Here is a quick recipe for some delicious egg sandwiches. (Note, these are very bad for you, so you may want to do this after running a marathon or before a week of strenuous exercise)
Ingredients
1 egg
2 strips of bacon
2 pieces of bread
1 slice of cheese
butter
cream cheese
Toast the bread. Put butter on one slice, and cream cheese on the other. Cook the bacon. Place it on the cream cheese side of bread. Fry one egg. After flipping the egg, place the cheese on the egg to melt the cheese. After the yolk is cooked to your preference, remove the egg and place it on top of the bacon. Build your sandwich and enjoy. (If you need more, just make two like me)

Now, I know most of you didn't come here for an egg sandwich recipe, but I just had two and Robin had one and I had to share the joy.

A couple things I have been thinking about this week (and I have a lot of time with no job or activities other than football). Robin and I visited a local church here on Tuesday night. Great time for church. There were definitely some things we liked about the church, and a few we didn't like. I think they probably have an excellent church, but here is my critique. We wouldn't know that just by going to their worship service.

Now, I am like most of you and think that church is a lot more than worship services. I think small groups will be central to us being the church God wants us to be. But, the fact remains that there are people who will just walk in off the street. Robin and I walked in off the street, and we had no idea if this was a friendly church, a rude church or an indifferent church. We didn't know if anyone cared if we were there or not.

I understand we want people to connect at small groups or whatever we call them. But, I want people that come to our worship services to leave our service knowing what we are all about. I want people to come in and feel like we want them to come back. How do we do this? I have some ideas, but I want to hear from you all first. So my question, how do we convey to people that just come to worship services what we are all about? If we are a tight community, how do we show people that they can be important too? Which people have to take part in this? How do we help people that may just come off the street be comfortable? How do we make sure we don't miss people?

Its ok if you can't or don't have the time to answer all of those, but I would like some feedback on what we as the core of Refuge can do initially to help be that kind of church. Please keep us in your prayers, Robin has an interview this week, and sometimes I feel like no one will ever want to interview me. God has helped us thus far, and I don't see him letting us drop, but I'm praying that he might help us sooner rather than later. We are so excited to see you all, come visit if you want, and I am excited with what God will do through us in this city!

Checkin in.

2008-10-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hey people. Its Sunday, and we are enjoying that we can sleep in on Sundays again. We look forward to you all being able to do the same. It is 41 degrees here in Denver, which is great, especially since we got our heater working. It was freaking cold last night though... If you are worried about me since my beloved Sooners lost yesterday, I appreciate the prayers, but I'm doing ok. At least we didn't lose to some crap team this time.

Anyway, we are adjusting to life here. We love lots of things about the city, and don't love a few things. We don't love that we don't have jobs yet, but we both have a couple solid leads. We are hoping to get something this coming week. So if you could pray for that, we would really appreciate it. I have a couple applications at CCU, and Robin has a couple at nursing homes. God has really taken care of us thus far, and so we don't have any good reason to doubt him now, but it does get worrying sometimes. We have met some really great people, and have noticed that there are a lot of places where people just go to hang out, and are open to talking to strangers. I hope that we can start doing some sort of home group or something soon, and maybe that will eventually lead to a core group for when the rest of you get here. We miss some things about Texas, namely the close friends, I don't miss lots of Texas fans giving me crap...

Anyway, let us know when you want to come visit us, let us know. We have a nice little upstairs for visitors to stay in. So say a prayer for us, and we will say one for you. Let me know if there is anything I can do for those of you moving before long. It will sneak up on you and you will be here before you know it.

Here I am.

2008-10-01T07:14:00.000-07:00

I got to Denver on Mon night, it was a beating of a drive. I woke up at 5 and drove straight through, because of construction and some stupid traffic, I got here at 7 Denver time. That is 15 hours of fun. I listened to a book on CD most of the way, but that didn't make it a good drive, merely tolerable.

Our apartment is great, I love the town so far. The drivers are crazy, but I feel like they make up for it by have a sweet town. I have spent a lot of time with my friends Chad and Mary. They moved up last spring completely independent of us. They are great people and I am glad not to be completely alone here. Hopefully we can make some connections and begin to find a core group of people.

Other than that, our furniture got delivered fine, the power is on, but the AC doesn't work, so that's a bummer. Again, I love it here, but am really missing Robin. She will be here Friday night, and Tanner and Jessica will hang out until Sunday. Hope you are all doing well, and I will keep you updated here and on my blog. Pray for us that we will find jobs quickly and that God will continue to take care of us as I know he will.

Mmmm, Dublins...

2008-09-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

As you all know, we are heading out to the promised land sometime next week. I will be going on Monday to scout the land of milk and honey, and Robin will follow with Jessica and Tanner helping, to complete the conquest. We are pretty excited. The title comes from the fact that my path will go through Dublin. I am going to wake up at 5 AM on Monday, stop in Dublin to pick up a 24 pack, and stop only for food and gas after that. Should be fun.

A few things I have been thinking through as all this is going on, and maybe it can help you all when you make your moves.

The first thing that is really hitting me is God's strange provision. God does not behave like a genie in a bottle or something and just show up and give us our wish. But, he also promises that in the same way the birds of the air and flowers of the field are taken care of, we will be too. And we have been. We don't know where it is going to come from, but we have had several random acts of kind generosity extended to us. We have had people pay more than we asked for furniture, we had some friends take us to ice cream and give us a check for 100 bucks the other night, and today after I played basketball with some old guys, a man grabbed me on the way out and handed me a hundred dollar bill. Its really strange. We didn't ask anyone of them, but each was the presence of God to us by giving us some money. For me, sometimes it is hard to let people do things like that for me, I want to be a "rugged individual" because I am a good American, but that is not the way of the kingdom. We have to let people give to us at times, because that is God's plan. We are so grateful to have such wonderful friends at a time like this. So for you guys that are moving too eventually, it may seem like the money won't be there, but I think you might be surprised what God can and will do.

The second thing is that getting a job is pretty overwhelming sometimes. We both go through fazes when we are upset and feel like we will end up destitute on the streets, and we both go through fazes when we are upbeat because we know that God holds the future. The good news is that we haven't both been really down at the same time yet. Keep your heads up people! It may seem like you aren't getting a job immediately, but just know that God's work is the right place to be. (Plus our whole economy is about to crash down anyway, so we will all just be poor together, find some abandoned farm and eek out an existence there, while we learn to knit our own cloths and generate power somehow to play video games, jk)

The last thing is that I know that as long as I have a few things in life I will be just fine. Robin and a few friends, and enough food to eat and water to drink. A place to sleep and a change of boxers. This has taken a really weird tangent, but I just want to try to reassure everyone, God has promised to look out for us. For Robin and I, help has come from the strangest places (I forgot to mention that a large payment was made to our credit card, and we have no idea how it was made, now that could just be an error which will eventually be fixed, or it could be God providing in yet another strange way). I get hope from strange things, like the fact that we have a good place to live and that they gave us our first month for free... Anyway, we are praying for all of you, as you are hopefully praying for us. I will keep you up to date about our lives on this blog and my personal blog, so please keep in touch. Plan trips to come see us, to come find places to live and places to work.

Last, I want to leave you with something that was prayed for me today. The guys I play basketball with prayed that God would change the city of Denver through us. That is my prayer too. I pray that we will be the light in the darkness and that we would be the ones that are the presence of Christ to a wounded world.

Tumbleweeds

2008-09-10T13:15:00.000-07:00

Not much going on at the moment, so that is why I haven't updated too much. We have found a place to live and have started getting all our stuff together for it. For as much as people make out of cost of living in Denver, I think it will be pretty comparable to Dallas or Houston. The average gas/electricity for our particular apt for a month is $93. Not too shabby. We got cable and internet for about 70 a month, so all in all, we will be paying about what we would expect in any big city. So try not to freak out.

We are both trying to get jobs now. I am considering the possibility of working for the post office or something like that. I applied for a ministry job at a nursing home, so if you think about it, pray that I would get it. I don't have much else to tell you or for us to think about. Things are getting closer and I am excited. Hope you are all doing well.

The happiest season of all...

2008-08-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

I am talking, of course, about football season. If you do not share my love, I feel sorry for you... and maybe you feel sorry for me. Anyway, wanted to give everyone a few updates about what is going on, and see what you think.

We met together last Saturday at Tanner and Jessica's place and we had a great time. We had some delicious spaghetti and Dr. Pepper. Then there were some primary things we talked about.

The first is we tossed some names around. It looks like "Refuge Community Church" was the consensus favorite of everyone at the meeting. That isn't set in stone, but I like it and so I think it will be our working name for awhile. There were some other great ideas, and I think we should continue to toss them around, but for now I think Refuge works well. I liked "Levi's table" and "Koinonia" so I was thinking we could find a way to integrate those into ministries at the church. Like maybe we can call seeker Bible studies "Levi's table" or something, and church fellowship times "Koinonia" or something. Anyway, something to think about.

Second, we talked some about leadership in the church. I think most of you have looked some at bylaws, but basically the plan is to do away with committees and elders and whatnot, and just have deacons. I think this will take some red-tape out of it all, and will also help us to be able to have high standards for our leadership. We can talk more about that later.

Then the last big thing we discussed was the fact that we cannot be a church running around aimlessly, trying to fulfill every desire at once. There are a lot of large groups we would really like to reach, such as gay/lesbian, homeless, college students, and single mothers. However, those are pretty different groups. We need to be intentional about which groups we really try to reach first. I think we talked about trying to really reach out to college students and singles at first. If we can somehow help those groups feel needed and wanted, then they will also be good groups to use in ministries to those other groups. This is not set in stone either, but I think we need to beware of trying to do too many good things at once, and sucking at them. For those of you that were there, what do you think or remember?

For the rest of you, what are your thoughts? The proverb of the week: Proverbs 11.2 "When pride comes, then comes disgrace; but wisdom is with the humble."

Colorado crazies!

2008-08-12T14:12:00.000-07:00

Haha. I know that's a ridiculous title, but it just popped into my head. Anyway, as most of you know, Robin and I recently decided to just sell and or give away most everything we own. If we can't fit it into our two compact cars, we are gonna get rid of it. So, if you are in need of something, we may be getting rid of it. I have a lot of books, if you guys that are coming this weekend would like to rifle through them and pick some out, they will be free for one night only! We have some furniture, a fairly nice TV, 32" for 100 bucks, and a nice TV stand, one year old originally 200 bucks, now on sale for 50. And some DVDs that I would probably just give away. So let me know if you have been envying our couch or blender or something.

Now that I have shamelessly peddled our stuff on the blog... about the meeting on Saturday. There are a few things I would like us to discuss in some detail, and I may think of a few more before then, but I wanted to give you the head's up now.

Church name: this would make some things easier for all of us, so that instead of just saying Denver, we could say the actual name. There have been some suggestions, and some ideas. Grant likes "Levi's Table" Robin likes "Refuge" I have tossed around "Hesed" (which is the Hebrew word for covenant love) and there are probably some more that I am forgetting. Let me encourage you to really try to think of some original ideas and we can toss some around at the meeting. I would like to try to have a name by January or so.

Leadership: This will be an ongoing discussion, but I think it is something we should try to really get a hold on quickly and work together to have a healthy leadership in our church. This is a place a lot of churches and church starts specifically fail.

Reaching the Lost: We need to come to the table together and try to have a good strategy (I hate the word) for reaching those who do not know Christ. We need to be a church on a mission. In addition to that, we need to be sure that we do not have two hundred different missions going on at the same time. We need to pick a few things, especially at first, and do them well.

Those are the three major things right now, I will have a few more by Saturday. Any thoughts?
Proverbs 15.7 "Better is a little with fear of the Lord, than great treasure and trouble without it."

MISC.

2008-07-30T08:36:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone, gosh, its been three weeks, sorry about that. I promise I wasn't just waiting on comments to post a new blog. I turned in my last assignment for seminary yesterday and went to youth camp the week before last, so it has been a little busy, but also I have just been a bit beat down with that stuff and I got a little cold last week. Anyway, I know you all don't set your watches by my blog posts, but I do want to be more consistent.

Those were some great thoughts on the last post though. Jessica, you blogged exactly how you are supposed to. We just want a way we can exchange ideas and that is what you did, so if it feels like rambling, you are probably doing it right. And I know exactly how you feel about serving somewhere when you feel called elsewhere later, it is tough. And I really agree with you about helping young couples to strengthen their relationships. I would really love to have regular marriage retreats at our church. I think it will be really good for those of us who are still young and will also help older couples to strengthen relationships.

Tanner, I really like the way you are thinking about things like that. I hope we can have some "seeker Bible studies" at some point. Right now I am kind of thinking of having one once a month. Andy told me there is a really good book about them so I think I will try to find it soon and work on that. It would be a really good ministry in Boulder, I agree with you on that. I also think finding a way to serve the homeless would be really great.

Bethany, I hope you are feeling better. I think the part about habit is true in a lot of our lives. I get comfortable doing the same thing every day, and then when I know I want and need change it gets tough sometimes. Also, I am really excited you have friends that may think about coming too. Especially if one is a musician. I have been praying that God will send us a musician soon, because it would be really good to have one or two around....

Anyway, I met with Dr. Cook and we talked some about our training plan. He said it was really ambitious, but we may want to extend the time period. I agree with that. I think we can get overwhelmed because I put a lot in there. If you haven't had a chance to look it over, just let me know and I will email it to you. If there is something you want to add in, just let me know. Some things I really want to do is to think through some issues well in advance so that we won't be surprised or caught off guard if and when they occur, so if you think of somethings, post em on here.

I have also talked with Andy quite a bit about focusing really hard on the first few months when Robin and I move. I really want to try to get a core group of native Denver people to join our vision when we get there, so I think it will be really important for us to work hard when we move and find connections with people. If we could have 15-20 people in addition to you guys who will be moving next summer, then I think we would have a really great beginning core of people. So pray for that. There are also some people that I have talked to who are thinking about coming and are not sure. Pray that God will guide all those who are considering it. I think it would be wonderful if all the people I have talked to come, but I also know if they are not passionate about this, then they could be miserable. And the last thing I would ask you all to pray for is some church to give us their old facilities. I am praying that either a church has outgrown facilities and will be moving, or that the church is dying and wants to give their facilities to a new work of God in the area.

I hope you are all getting some good rest and doing some good reading. I would recommend "They like Jesus but not the Church" if you don't have anything right now. Great book. Let me know if you need anything, and if you have any thoughts on this stuff.

Is this thing on?

2008-07-09T08:28:00.000-07:00

Seriously, where is everyone? Well, last week I put together a tentative core training plan. Sounds kind of intense, but I don't think it will be. I think it should be a really good time for us to sit down as a community and figure out whats going on in our world, what we believe and what we want to do. I plan on us getting into that next fall, 2009. Obviously projections don't always work out, so I know we will have to adjust it.

Last week I read "Sexual Ethics" by Stan Grenz. It wasn't really a delight to read, but it was good. I think his attitudes can really help us to minister to the homosexual community. I was also thinking I want us to have a really strong singles ministry. I think that is a group that is really under-appreciated by many churches today. One thing I have also been thinking through is a ministry to parents that we try to give them time every month or every couple weeks to be by themselves. I know it is hard these days to get that chance, but I think it would really help strengthen marriages and I think that is something I want us to be about as a church.

Basically, I laid out five major purposes that I think we should have as a church. I know these aren't ground breaking, but I think they are the Biblical purposes for the church. Mission is the main one, all the rest fall under it. By mission I mean helping the world to know Christ and helping the church to know him better. Service, worship, community and discipleship are the other four. I think you can see how they fall under mission but are distinct in their own right. I think most would agree that those should be the main purposes of church. What do you guys think? I want us to try to make everything we do be represented by those things. So, something like a parent's night out ministry could fall under community, because the couple is developing community and the kids and the people watching them are developing community. It could also fall under service because it is a service to the families to have a strong marital bond. Anyway, I could go on but you get it. We can express this in another way, that is just the way I am thinking about it right now, hopefully it evolves some and becomes better. You guys have any thoughts on all that?

We are trying to get together in August. Anyone up for that?

Proverb of the week: "Do not let loyalty and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart." Proverbs 3.3

August and Everything After

2008-06-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, sorry about the delay in updating. I wanted to leave the trip story on a little longer, but then when I planned on updating on Friday, the week caught up to me. Anyway, first thing is first, lets try to have a get-together in August. I have said on facebook that we are good to go for any Friday or Saturday except the 2nd or the 15th. I prefer a Saturday, but if Friday is best for everyone else then that will work. I will have some things to discuss, and we can hopefully make some solid plans at this meeting.

I read "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places," by Eugene Peterson this past week. It was an excellent book, I would highly recommend it. It gets a bit wordy, and it reads more like a sermon than a book, but I would recommend it nonetheless. It is basically saying that Christ plays in each of us that have trusted and decided to follow him. There are three different ways he looks at how Christ plays, in creation, in history and in community. The first two we can observe but not really participate in. Christ playing in community, however, we can have a direct hand in. Part of our job as a church, I believe, is to help people be a part of a community. That community can help them to become what they were born to be. Peterson states the need like this "Life was at stake- their lives, their souls, their souls in community. People can live correctly and behave rightly and worship politely and still live badly- live anemically, live individualistically self-enclosed lives, live bored and insipid and trivial lives." Hopefully we can help people move beyond trivial lives to lives that matter. Lives that effect the universe, the lives of others. Christ promised we would do greater things than he did, and we can. This is part of my prayer for our church.

I hope you can all join us in August. It should be a good time. Does anyone have anything they need prayer for? I wrote some tentative bylaws/constitution and emailed it to some of you, if you did not get one and would like to look at it, let me know. It is open to change, so don't think that is the only way everything will go. I know it seems a ways off, but we can begin building community here and now, through this blog, through email and facebook. Not ideal, but it is a start. I look forward to eating, drinking and making a difference for the kingdom with all of you. The proverb of the week is Proverbs 18.1 "the one who lives alone is self-indulgent, showing contempt for all who have sound judgment."

4 people, one minivan, 2500 miles and two hotels

2008-06-16T20:48:00.000-07:00

We just got back about two hours ago from the road trip. Some idiot (probably me) turned our AC off before we left so it is really hot in here. So since I won't be able to sleep, I figured I would give the rest of you a trip recap while it was fresh on my mind.

We headed out from Waco at about 6 am on Friday. We were pretty worn out, but the new Weezer album kept me company while Robin slept on the way to Bethany's house. We got in there at about 8.30 and after a brief stop at the golden arches for some health food, we were on our way. I took the first shift, because I like to get the worst over with mostly. So I drove us from Dallas to the motherland (Oklahoma City to the layman) where we stopped for a bite of lunch. We all discovered soon that the land between Oklahoma City and Denver is both humongous and desolate, I hate Kansas.

We finally got into Denver at around 10 or so and made our way to our hotel. If it could be called that. Tanner and I went into the Homestead Suite lobby and began the process of checking in. The woman was busy yelling at someone and telling them that she herself had just gotten in and didn't know why her room door was hanging open. I tried to not laugh too much, but it was pretty funny. After the whole ordeal, we finally got to our rooms. There we discovered that instead of a queen sized bed in each room, we had just one double sized bed. This wasn't acceptable, so I called the front desk. The informed me that the beds were queen, and to make a long story short, I spent more than an hour holding on the hotwire phone line and we moved on to a motel 6, they left the light on for us.

As we began checking in at the motel 6, by this time it was at least midnight, maybe closer to 1 am, the police showed up. The clerk told us he would be right back and proceeded to help the officers, who had showed up just in time apparently. We never found out what happened, but I like to believe we just missed a huge gang fight. Anyway, we finally got to bed late that night, and ended up in a bad hotel thanks to hotwire and my not double checking everything. Note to all of us, be sure to always double check everything.

The next day I woke up a few hours before everyone else because I am such a poor sleeper, so I took the opportunity to drive around a bit. Let me tell you all, the town is beautiful. Just being able to look at the mountains directly ahead of you as you drive down streets is wonderful. The grass was green on each side and a blue bird perched on my shoulder as I drank my coffee, except the part about the blue bird. Anyway, everyone eventually got up and we set about exploring our future home.

The first thing I noticed was how many people just hang out outside during their Saturday mornings. People were bicycling, running, and walking dogs. The first part of our trip was to just look around downtown. We saw the art museum, looked at all the cool architecture, and ate at a cool Philly Cheesesteak place Tanner suggested. It was delicious.

After lunch we decided to go check out the mountains, we drove around and found a little town called Golden just to the West of Denver. Golden was a quaint little town with wonderful architecture and a Coors plant. So we decided that since we were going to plant a church here, we had to take a tour of the Coors plant. It was pretty fascinating actually. They offered us free beer, but we didn't have much. We were all pretty worn out after this, so we went to dinner and then to a coffee shop and chilled for the evening. Tanner and I watched some crazy movie with the Rock and I played my DS.

The next day we started by going to the Red Rocks amphitheatre. This was the coolest part of the trip to me. Willie Nelson apparently prefers this venue to all others in the world, and I can see why. We stayed there awhile, and ton of crazies were there running the stairs and stuff, pretty hardcore since we were all wiped out from walking up once.... Anyway, we eventually got some lunch and went downtown again. This time we checked out the 16th street mall, which was also huge. So big they have a bus that takes people back and forth. This was only after a parking machine stole Tanner's money, it hated Texans...

We ate at a really cool diner and then headed to Boulder. Boulder was really cool. It is full of young people and life. They were having a Jewish festival in the downtown at the time, so I enjoyed seeing the Hebrew shirts etc. This will be a great place for us to hang out, meet people and stuff like that. Then a man from the "Truthians" gave Tanner a brochure about why Jesus is Satan, and I almost talked to him about it all, but really decided against it. Maybe once I live there I can meet some Truthians... Anyway, we headed to the hotel before dinner again.

We got up at 5.15 this morning and headed out. Now I am worn out, as I am sure anyone who tried to read all of that is. I will post pictures soon. Those of you who came, please add your impressions, etc.

The Challenge of Jesus

2008-06-07T12:25:00.000-07:00

This past week I read a book called "The Challenge of Jesus" by NT Wright. Basically it was all about how we can affirm who Jesus was an is in our post-modern world. Wright does a very good job of being balanced. He affirms that we should and can affirm the historicity of Jesus Christ, but also that we have to contextualize the story as we retell it. It cannot look the same in every culture.

I don't have a ton to say about all that, maybe because I'm pretty worn out right now. But I did want to check in. Bethany, Robin, Tanner and I are going to Denver this coming weekend. I am really pumped about it. I will give you all updates as we get back. I will post sometime this week before we go. Then pretty soon I will email my book reviews and the other stuff I have been working on. Peace upon you all. Pray for great things.

Texts Under Negotiation

2008-05-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a book called "Texts Under Negotiation" by Walter Brueggemann, and his name will be on the spelling exam later. It was pretty good. It was short, so that was a bonus, but he basically was talking about how in our postmodern world, we do not have to try to cram every scripture into one theology. He thinks we should let them all speak for themselves, on equal weight and equal footing. Part of his reason for this is that he is an Old Testament guy, and the OT often gets relegated to secondary for Christians.

However, I do have a few problems. It seems like while we should let each scripture speak, we also have to be logical. Something cannot be a square circle, as I like to tell my youth from time to time. This is the tightrope I think we are all going to have to walk. In our postmodern, pluralistic world, everyone will like to say that "all truth is equal" or "that is true for you but not for me" and that is just not always right. Perception goes a long way to determining reality, but not all the way. Just because we cannot find objective truth, does not mean it does not exist. I am not sure how we can go about reconciling all of this, maybe that is just something we will have to trust the Holy Spirit to do. What do you guys think?

We are set for Denver trip, I am contemplating getting a handheld video game to pass some of the time, I would recommend we think of things to do in our long ride... Pray for me I am preaching at our church this Sunday and next, and I am really excited and really not wanting to do it. (A common feeling when I go to preach). Does anyone have prayer needs? I look forward to our journey together and I know that this is of God, because when people ask me to explain it its kind of hard, but I know its right. Nice run-on sentence too.
Proverb of the week: "A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich." Proverbs 10.4

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

2008-05-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

Hey guys. I finished "unChristian" and really enjoyed it. David, I think I agree with Andy when he initially told me that it really goes well with "They like Jesus but not the Church" by Kimball. I got a bit bogged down in all the numbers Kinnaman had, but I think he has some really great points also. I think the best thing he did was point to such a rampant problem that we as the church in the United States must confront. The book I am reading now has some really good answers to that.

This week I have been reading "The Gospel in a Pluralist Society" by Lesslie Newbigin, he is British so that explains why he misspelled his first name... but anyway it is really good. He is talking about how we can go about telling people in our society that Jesus is the only way. We are very much in a world today in which it is not popular to tell people that their way is not the way to God. But that is very much the message in the Bible.

To fill everyone in, I have also been meeting with Andy for my mentoring program, and we have been working on talking through some of the things that may be problems for us. So far, I think the largest that we have identified is leadership, and integrating new people into the life of the church. We are going to need some way to run our church, to make decisions, and I think everyone needs some access to that. This is probably something we will need to discuss and talk through next time we all get together, but it is also something we all need to be thinking about. It should never just be the pastor making every decision, nor should it be that everyone has to have a vote about whether we will mow the lawn next week, or something trivial like that.

As far as the scouting trip to Denver, where is everyone at on that? We have 5 for sures, and two more slots, we need to know soon who is in and out. We also need to know if we are going to be gone for 4 days or just 3. Robin and I are down with either, and like I said some of the great people from our current church have offered a free place to stay if we want to take them up on it. I'm ok with whatever.

Proverbs 6-8 "Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways and be wise. Without having any chief or officer or ruler, it prepares its food in summer, and gathers its sustenance in harvest." Be praying also that God would send us musicians. We need people able to lead in worship for our gatherings. Please be praying for one another, and for me. It is always welcome. Chris

unChristian

2008-05-15T11:32:00.001-07:00

Hey guys. I have started my mentoring experience this week, so I will be reading books and also doing some things for the church. I will post each week sometime between Tuesday and Thursday for at least the next ten weeks or so.

This week my reading is a book called "unChristian" by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. So far, this book is basically talking about why there are so many people our age and our generation who not only reject church and the gospel, but reject Christians as well. They refer to our generation and the one directly before or after (depending on when you were born) the "Mosaics" (born 1984-2002) and the "Busters" (born 1965 and 1983). I'm not too fond of the name, but they make some pretty good points. I will summarize what I have read so far, then when I write my book review I will email it to those of you who want to read that.

Basically, there are two entire generations that see very little need for church. Which I can see very clearly in my own current youth group. If you have an friends who are not Christians, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. We have got to figure out who to repair the terrible image people have of Christians, and more importantly of Christ. At the same time, we must continue to seek the gospel and be true to the Bible. How do you guys think we can work on this? What do you think is the most important thing to people our age and a little older and younger?

Also, we are planning a scouting trip to Denver for June 13-15 or maybe a day longer. What do you guys think, 3 or 4 days? It is a ten hour trip, which is a lot in one day. We also have people at our church that own a cabin place around Amarillo, who would put us up and feed us for a night or two on our way or on our way back. I think what we could do is stay there one night on the way, then one night on the way back, and jsut get a hotel for one night in Denver. That would split up the travel time and also save a bit of money by only paying for one nights rent. What you guys wanna do? I think Bethany is also working on procuring for us a minivan to use, hows that going? I think there are seven seats in it, so with Robin, me, Bethany, Erin and Tanner in for sure, that leaves two seats left, let me know if you want to come.

The Inner Ring

2008-04-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

hey party people. Sorry for the delay between posts, its crunch time in the semester, and Robin and I got addicted to the American Office somewhere in there. So anyway, sorry.

Just to confirm, we are on for a week from Saturday. May 3, Bethany and Erin's, be there! We are having tacos, I think. And we are going to have a great time. David and Desiree we would love it if you guys could make it too. Bethany, I need to get directions, so we will be in contact.

One of the things I have been mulling over is something that C.S. Lewis writes about, called the "inner ring." He writes at one point, and this is a paraphrase, that the craving for the inner ring is something that can make a man who is not yet very bad do very bad things. Basically, the idea of the inner ring is that you are an insider. Think about it for a minute. There are all sorts of ways that people try to make themselves an "insider." It can take the form of what clothes you wear (think about "goths" that insist they are against conformity, but strangely all look alike) or it can take the form of the way people vote (only republicans get to heaven) or what foods you like (ewww, mushrooms?). There are all sorts of ways we try to put ourselves in the inner ring. Donald Miller describes this in "Searching for God knows What" when he talks about the lifeboat. What people do you want in the lifeboat with you? Who would you save?

This will be a problem at our church. We all went to Howard Payne. We all have known each other for a few years. We have spent significant time in Texas. There are things we will tend to talk about that sometimes outsiders will not get. I think part of our goal is to explode the idea of the "inner ring." To begin to truly live and allow "outsiders" to become "insiders" at our church. To help people to see that they have a place. It will take us being deliberate and taking time, and being uncomfortable. For instance, there is a new guy at our current church. He is really strange. He loves all kinds of martial arts. And he stares a bit. But where should he be accepted, where should he be cared about? Church. Now I am not advocating Robin hang out with him, but I do think that I should try to get to know him at church and things like that.

A good biblical example is the mixture of the disciples. How do you think they responded when Jesus called Levi, or Matthew the tax collector? Here was someone who was a traitor, someone who took their money and spent it how he wished, and now Jesus was calling him too?!! Something to think about. The Proverb that I would like us to meditate on this week is Proverbs 10.19 "When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but the prudent are restrained in speech." We are looking forward to seeing everyone, post your prayer requests, and pray for us, we are getting a new car tomorrow or Saturday, I will no longer have that cursed gas guzzling truck!

Change...

2008-04-05T08:14:00.000-07:00

Its been awhile since I have truly been inspired in class. But yesterday I was. Instead of meeting at school. we met at a place called "World Cup Cafe." It is a part of Mission Waco here in town. The cafe itself was really cool. They had a map of the world in tile over the bar, and they sold a ton of fair trade stuff around. It is right in the middle of a really poor neighborhood, and part of their goal is to help transform the neighborhood by keeping some of the money there. They have changed it enough that there are no longer prostitutes all around, and that the old movie theater that used to show pornography now is used by Mission Waco to have concerts for local youth. What a change! I was just thinking that they are really ministering to whole people there. A man shared with us how he used to be a drug and alcohol addict, but now with the help of Mission Waco was helping others to overcome their addictions. He had been clean for five years. He was working as one of the cooks at the cafe.
Not everything is easy, but it is very rewarding. The people there have seen a lot of change. I think these are things we can emulate. Not exactly as they do it, but look for ways we can minister to whole people. Try to find ways to help people out of addiction and the depths. I know we can't know for sure what the community will need until we get there, but we can certainly be thinking before then.

David and Desiree Miller are checking us out now, so we need to stop gossiping about them... really though, they are thinking about coming with us, so they are checking out the blog now. Hope you guys will welcome them. Just so everyone knows, we are planning a get together on May 3. We can meet at Bethany and Erin's in Garland, and just talk about fears and excitements again. If you want me to bring stuff to talk about I can, but I thought it went pretty well the last time. Let me know. Bethany, just leave a comment and let me know what you need people to bring, what you want to have, etc. We can then hook it up.

Due to popular demand, I will start posting proverbs again. We do need some wisdom after all. Proverbs 23:4,5 "Do not wear yourself out to get rich; be wise enough to desist. When your eyes light upon it, it is gone; for suddenly it takes wings to itself, flying like an eagle toward heaven."

Easter eve

2008-03-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

The thing that really excites me about Easter this year, is that the next time I celebrate Easter, I will probably be living in Denver. We will hopefully either be in or looking for a house. I will be done with my master's degree. But I don't want to overlook this Easter. Easter is by far our most important holiday. This is the time we remember not only the crucifixion, but the resurrection which makes the crucifixion our hope.

I am near the end of my last semester of class, and as I have told you before, I will be doing what is called "mentoring" over the summer. Part of what I will be doing is some stuff for Denver. I will be working on our basic polity, our "training plan," our tentative plans for many different things. I am going to need you guys help though. I am supposed to have a "lay committee" during mentoring. They are supposed to help me figure out if I suck as a minister or not. My mentoring is already a lot different than everyone else's, but I still need something similar to a lay committee. Here is where you guys can help. I need email addresses, I need you to check this blog, and actually comment, and I need feedback. This will not only help my mentoring (and me to finally graduate) I think it will help our church. If you are not 100% on coming to Denver, that is fine. Any of you who check this blog mean a lot to me anyway, so your input will be valuable. This way, I can email you updates, bylaws, etc. and you can help me make them better. It won't be a lot of work, if any, just some reading. So, if you want to be part of that, either leave your email here, or send it to me, my email is here on this site. Seriously, it will help a lot.

As far as other stuff goes. The plan right now is to get together, at Bethany and Erin's, either April 26 or May 3. If both work for everyone, I would prefer the May date. If someone cannot make the May date, the April will work for us too. Bethany has said she has been praying that God would guide her as to when to move. We also need prayer for that. I think asking God to provide financially for the move would be a big help too, since moving is not cheap. Tanner and Jessica have a wedding coming up, so they could probably use some prayer. Grant is working about 10 jobs right now, and Desiree is about to start graduate work. What about the rest of you clowns? You have prayer requests? I really, really get more excited every day. I am praying that God will provide and guide each of you, by name, unless I don't know you. If there is anything I am missing or forgetting, let me know.

2008-03-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long delay between posts, it has been a pretty crazy couple of weeks. We are on Spring Break this week, so of course I have crammed a ton of stuff to do into one week. We took time to change the youth room I inherited. It was institutional white, now it is cooler. Hopefully.

I appreciate the thoughts on the last post, it is not easy to think of your own crucifixion.

For those of you who made it to the little get-together a few weeks ago, what a great time. For those that couldn't make it, we missed you, but we want to do it again either in late April or early May. Any dates work best for anyone? Some of the things we talked about were just that we were all a bit scared by this whole thing, but the good thing was that we will all be in it together. We talked about frustration with churches we are in, and things we really enjoy about them. Overall, I would say it was really positive to get together like that.

So, when would everyone like to try it again, where would everyone like to meet, and does anyone have any concerns? Keep praying for each other, keep seeking God for guidance and courage. I am excited about our future and look forward to working on the kingdom together.

What is a disciple?

2008-02-29T12:46:00.000-08:00

I am taking a class now called "Discipleship in the New Testament" we talk about... thats right, discipleship. Right now we are walking through the book of Mark and looking at what was meant by discipleship there. It is really pretty amazing stuff.

Today we were talking about what it really means to follow Jesus, surprise surprise, and we came to the place where Jesus begins telling his disciples about what is going to happen to him. They, of course, mention that his talk is not becoming of a Messiah, so he should cut it out. Then he mentions again, that he must be crucified, and Peter rebukes him. Why were the disciples so upset by Jesus talking this way?

I think it is because they understood something that we often times do not. They understood that if this is how their Messiah would be treated, then they, if they continued to follow him, must also give up their lives. That was just not something they really were all about at the moment.

The gospels are so great to read because there is always someone you can identify with. The disciples are idiots, they don't want Jesus to be crucified because they don't want to pick up their own cross. We are idiots because we just want Jesus' crucifixion to stay in 30 AD. If Jesus is the one we follow, we must be willing to give up our lives. Let me encourage you all, moving to Denver, moving away from loved ones and giving up secure jobs, towns where you know your way around, places where everybody knows your name will be difficult. But, if you are called to do this thing, God will be faithful. This is the path we walk, the way of the cross. I think in our culture it is much more subtle. We will not be persecuted, but we may be broke for awhile. We will not be crucified, but we may be lonely. We will not be made to stand trial, but we may suffer through trials.
For you, taking up your cross may mean not coming to Denver, I don't know. I hope very much that you are listening, struggling, and talking with God though. Dr. Gloer is fond of saying, when driving at night, he can't see all the way to Dallas, but he can see as far as his headlights go, and that is enough. God may not have made it all clear yet, but again, pray. I am praying for you, mostly that you will all come, but also that God would guide you. What do you need prayer for now? What part of taking up your cross scares you right now? How can we help?

Change the World!

2008-02-13T15:23:00.001-08:00

I think the great hope we have is that we will change the world. We have to believe that. The world we are in is full of depression, greed, sin and suffering. We know that our world seems to be going down the pipes, but I think some of the great hope we have is that we really can change the world.

Really.

We can change the world.

We can make a difference. We can bring the light of Christ to those who have lived in oppression and darkness. Our great hope is that Jesus died and rose from the grave, and we can follow him, someday soon. What changes do you see the world needs?

Robin and I are excited some of you are coming to visit in a week and a half, and I appreciate the update Bethany, the rest of you slackers need to post an update. Love you guys and pray for you by name every night. Peace and joy to you.

Family Systems

2008-02-06T21:09:00.000-08:00

Hopefully, our church will be a lot like a family in Denver. There are obvious reasons for that, most people really love their family, family know the truth about you, family are those people you can really count on. But what I am talking about this time is a little different.

When does a person become a family? When there is more than one committed right? So when Robin and I got married, we became a family, we were now a small family. When we have our first child, we will no longer be the same family. But we will also not be completely different. We will be the same people, but the family dynamic is not the same. That child will never know what it is like to be in a family of two, until the child gets married. Now imagine we have another child, that child becomes a part of a new, different family. The old family traits are still there, but by being born the family has changed, it has grown, but the dynamic will be different. The second child will not know what it is like to be the only child, and the older will have to adjust to accommodate the younger. Many times this leads to some resentment on the elder's side. Many times the middle child is constantly stuck in the land of its not fair, I know because I am one. This happens if the children don't adjust and change.

Now, how should a church be like that? I think, and this especially applies to us as we will be a small, young church, we have to adjust to new parts of our family. We have to no longer be the same church that we were before. Our character as a church should remain, our direction shouldn't change, but maybe we can adjust how we go about it. If you had a job, but someone comes on who can lighten your load some and is gifted and enjoys doing that particular job, maybe it will be time to move over and adjust the family. This is why Jesus told the disciples the parable of the workers in the vineyard. He knew that they would often resent the latecomers, and he knows that we might too. We have an obligation to help these people to be a part of our family. How can we do that in practical ways? What else do we need to do that is like a family?

What is going on with you guys? Give me some updates, let me know you are doing ok. We are looking forward, there are nights that I can't sleep because I'm so excited, and its still more than a year away. Please pray, and I continue to pray that God would provide us a meeting place, hopefully a free building, but it may be much less. Remember also to watch LOST tomorrow night!

Odds and ends

2008-01-29T18:08:00.000-08:00

Ok people, this is not going to be anything profound, but just wanted to get some things together and such. Tanner and Jessica are planning on coming into Waco on Feb 23, I think Erin and Bethany may be able to come, and I assume Grant and Desiree will be in town, so any of you other jokers think you can come in? Tyler, Brandon, dunno who else has been lurking, but basically, I think we can just eat together, Robin wants to make enchiladas, and just talk, nothing formal or anything like that. Would be fun and would give us all a chance to maybe talk in person.

Also, I am doing what is called "mentoring" over the summer. Basically, I have worked it out to work on Denver stuff and get class credit for it, pretty sweet. So, a few things that I plan on doing are by-laws, constitution and basic gameplan. Probably more, but I will let you all know. So here is where you guys can come in. If you would like me to email that stuff to you guys as I am finishing it, I would love additional input. Basically, I will just do the basic stuff, and it will all need to be ratified so that you can all have a say in how it looks. Mostly, this is just stuff we need to have done and will give me an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone type of deal. So, here is what I need, you guys to email me your addresses and also to let me know if you can help some over the summer, not sure what else we'll need. I also plan on visiting some other churches, so if you want to visit a church and let everyone know what you think, you know take notes and such, let me know. Anyway, appreciate you guys and keep praying that God would provide for us, its much closer than when Tyler first put up this blog!

No offense or anything, but...

2008-01-21T16:19:00.000-08:00

How often do we hear that phrase, immediately followed by something that could not be taken any other way? "No offense or anything, but this food sucks." "No offense or anything, but you really need a haircut." "No offense or anything, but your ministry is dragging the whole church down."

When we get started, each of us will have roles to play. Each of us will also have jobs to do. Each of us will come up short sometimes. I will drop the ball on a sermon or two, that is a fact. But we should not accept it as something that should happen often. One thing I think we really need to work at together, is the art of thinking together. Each of us will have responsibilities, but maybe someone will have some good ideas to help you with yours. And maybe you will have some good ideas for someone else.

We need to work together to ensure that we are open to constructive criticism, and also constructive at giving criticism. "Criticism" often gets a bad name. We should not shy away from helping each other to improve what we do. If there is something about my sermons that drive you crazy, or I say "um" too much or something like that, I hope we can find a way for you to tell me. Do not walk up and say "No offense or anything, but I slept all the way through that one. That was a snoozer!" I am confident we are all going to Denver because we want have an excellent community, and I think we can each help everyone else in some ways. What do you think about all this? Is there a good way to offer some help to you? How can we work together at this to help be excellent together?

Forgiveness

2008-01-09T13:05:00.000-08:00

Robin and I have started helping with the youth at a friend's church here in Waco. We are pretty excited about it, good to be back in a church for a few months until we move. Anyway, as side note, it is by far the most welcoming, kind group of people I have ever been around. One thing I want us to think about is how we can become like that.

But onto to main topic. We talked about forgiveness in the youth Sunday School, and the old guy that led the group told a very sad story. He said that when his daughter was young, a teen aged boy came over to his house and molested her. He was obviously still in some pain about this, but he talked about how he thought for awhile that when the boy got out of jail, he would go and kill him.

Eventually, he ended up on his face in his bedroom, praying for that boy. He talked about how God was helping him still to learn how to forgive, and so I started thinking about forgiveness too. What is so astounding about forgiveness is not what it does for the one who is forgiven, but what it does for the one who forgives. Bitterness eats at us on the inside, it tears away our humanity, it threatens to turn us into something less than human, and in the process tempts us to think of others as less human. As a church, we must help one another to forgive. Let me encourage you now, God wants you to forgive for your sake.

Maybe not much to comment on this time around, but again, if there is something you would like to talk about go ahead and mention it and I'll come up with something. Let me tell you all some of the things I am praying for, they may or may not happen, but maybe you can join me. I am praying that God will provide us a building. That some church would be closing its doors, or some other business and that they would just want to give it to us. I am praying that we would all be ready to move at around the same time. I am praying that God will provide jobs for each of us, places we can be salt and light in the world. I am praying that we find a way to be united as God wants us to. What about you guys? As I mentioned before, we want everyone to come into town for some Saturday afternoon, we can cook dinner and just catch up, nothing official, but maybe dream a bit and encourage one another.

Politics

2008-01-06T18:41:00.000-08:00

Maybe this will draw Tyler back in... or Brandon. Right now we are in the midst of a huge campaign, the primaries are being decided and such. I personally think that there is no one that we as a church should absolutely support. I think each has some pros and some cons, personally, I really like Barack Obama. But here is what I'm getting at. It is ok if one of you doesn't like him or anyone I do like. I think as a church it is important for us to try to be informed on the issues, to encourage people to vote or to make their voices heard, but also to be sure that we do not try to say that "Jesus would vote for Huckabee" or something foolish like that.

Many have horrible feelings toward church because church often over steps the boundaries and begins to try to elect "God's man" or whatever. I guess, this is kind of hard to get at, what I'm wondering is, what role do you all think we should play in these types of things? Should we try to make all the candidates known, and their stances on issues so that our people can be informed, should we just ignore politics all together? This is complicated, and I don't expect us to figure it out completely, but I do think it is something we should try to come to agreement on. Hopefully we can agree to disagree on candidates, while finding some common ground about how to talk about politics. What do you guys think?

tentative plans...

2007-12-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

Just finished a book by Henri Nouwen titled "The Return of the Prodigal Son." It is a book that was inspired by Rembrandt's famous painting depicting Jesus' parable. Unless you have a lot of time, I don't know that I would recommend the book, however, he has a great conclusion, which may be worth your time.
He spends the first two thirds of the book talking about the roles we play, and talks about both sons, then he finishes by talking about how eventually, we should begin to take on the role of the father. We should begin to welcome people home. To be the one that expresses forgiveness, to be the one that has a party over the one who was dead. Those of you who are going to move to a whole other state just to start a church, I think God expects all of us to take on the role of the father to a certain extent. I understand we will each experience times of being the prodigal and needing to come home, and times of being the elder son and being a judgmental jerk, but overall, we are going with the purpose of starting a community of faith where there was not one before.

So that is the "devotional" side, here is the practical. OK, doing some thinking about some tentative plans. I am thinking through how we can go about a lot of things, so here is some of what I am thinking right now. Hopefully most everyone can get to Denver between July and September of 2009. Those were dates most everyone I had talked to felt fairly comfortable with, and I understand that may not work out. But I am thinking once everyone gets there that will get there, we start meeting.
Now, I think for about 2 to 3 months we can just meet, just those of us that are there with the express purpose of starting this church (which remains nameless). What we will do at those meetings is a lot like Bible study, but maybe a bit more involved. We can discuss important issues, difficult topics. Obviously the most prominent, at least in my mind, is homosexuality. We will work through the issue, and while we won't have all the answers, we can at least have a starting point, and at least be on the same page. We will also need to work through budget, and things like that. So what things do you think we will need to talk and think about?
I am thinking after we have had a chance to do that for awhile, we can expand some, begin to have worship services, specialized groups, figure out a place to meet, even if its temporary, structure children's and youth ministries, and on. This is obviously only tentative, and I really do want some of your input on how you think this can go, how you would change it, etc. I think the time where it will just be the founding core will really benefit us because we will get to know eachother better, we will have a good, unified vision, and we will all have similar goals from the outset.

Proverb of the week "A scoffer who is rebuked will only hate you; the wise, when rebuked, will love you." Proverbs 9:8. What you jokers think?

Who are we?

2007-12-17T13:53:00.000-08:00

I had the great pleasure of seeing some long lost friends this weekend. It was great. We were talking about church, and they were telling us how they are finally at a church that they love, that they believe in. It was great to talk about why.
So one of them was telling us why she loved it so much, and she said some friends had come to visit. She said after the service was over, the friend, who was not a Christian, was telling her how much she loved it. She was just so happy to finally have a church that they didn't have to say "well, look the preaching isn't great, but the music is ok right?" or "Listen, I know the service sucked, but you can really build community here" or anything on those lines. Her new church could represent itself. It was a good community, not perfect, but good, that was capable of making a good impression on people without having to be explained or excused. This is what I hope we can become.
On that note, what are some ideas you have had for a name? We don't have to decide now, but if we could get some of the ideas out there, then maybe we could start to think and pray and narrow it down. Some that I would like to eliminate, not because they are bad, but maybe either over done or just copies: Mars Hill, Grace, 1st Baptist (JK), Agape. I'm sure there are more, I'll post them as a I think of them. Here are some I have either thought of and kind of like or really like: Hesed Community Church (Hesed is the Hebrew word for covenant, love, etc), Refuge, I like Koinonia (Greek for fellowship) but I think it maybe overdone, can't remember more now, but I would love to hear your ideas. And its ok if you hate my ideas, I'm not married to any.
Love you guys, and hope you have a good Christmas, let me know how you are.

What are we for anyway?

2007-12-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

I posted some of these thoughts on my personal blog, but I think it is really something we should probably toss around. Right now on facebook, there are quite a few groups for or against a boycott of the movie "The Golden Compass." Now, I just couldn't contain myself and had to get on one of the boycott groups and ask them why they were wasting so much energy on a movie, and I have to ask you guys, why are Christians most known for what they boycott today?

Probably if you went up to the average guy on the street and asked him what Christians were all about, he would probably say something like "Well, I know they don't like the gay community, and I know they are against abortion, and I know that they don't like Harry Potter," and it could go on. I think it is a great shame that we are probably most known for what we are against, be it evolution, the big bang, abortion, homosexuality (and I know we need to talk about that, it will probably be a round-table discussion when we are all at Denver, much better to talk about in person).

Jesus told the disciples that they would be known by their love, kinda seems more like we should be known for that huh? So it will take us some work, to establish that we should not be known for what we are against, but what we are for, which should be humanity, the disenfranchised, those who cannot help themselves, those who are outcast and lonely. So the question now is, what do you think we should be known for? Love doesn't count, thats a gimme. My answer would be reconciliation. I think we are called to help reconcile people to God, and to be reconciled to each other. I think that brings healing and helps make the world a better place. What about you? What do you think we should devote energy to making ourselves known for?

The proverb of the week "Many proclaim themselves loyal, but who can find one worthy of trust?" Proverbs 20:6

Fears

2007-11-26T18:56:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I start to think about starting a church in Denver, it seems like it is only a dream. It seems like it is at least a decade away, so why worry. Then there are other times, the other night for instance, when it seems like it is going to happen tomorrow.
When I am really honest with myself, there are some things about this that really scare me. What happens if something happens, and none of you are able to go? What happens if we get there, but we can never find a place to meet? What happens if I can't get some job that will be flexible with hours, or if Robin can't get a job? What happens... The thing is, there are quite a few things that scare me about all this, and I think that is normal. This week, I just want to invite all of you to share what scares you about it.
Or if you would rather talk about wisdom, here is the proverb that I thought you may like this week. "The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit." Prov. 18:21

Give Thanks

2007-11-24T08:53:00.001-08:00

Happy late Thanksgiving everyone. Hope you got to see some family, hang out with people you don't see enough, etc. What are you thankful for this year? I am grateful for you guys, thinking of moving a long ways from where you are to start a new community of faith. I am thankful to have such a loving and understanding wife, someone who really believes in me, someone smart, and beautiful. Hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving.

Wisdom

2007-11-12T18:01:00.001-08:00

The other day in my Scriptures 2 class we were talking about wisdom, specifically Proverbs. We were talking about how smart everyone in our country is today, but how many problems we have because people do not have wisdom. I think this is a good note for us. We are considering something that is not easy by any stretch of the imagination, something daring and difficult. I think it is extremely important for us to have wisdom.
Back in the day, all the best and brightest got together and discussed the Bible, theology, and God. Now the best and brightest study money, science, and law. Many of them have never sat down and thought about how life works. Many of us have never sat down and thought about how life works. So, I think each post from now on I will include a verse or two from Proverbs. We can either discuss it, or whatever topic happens to have caught my attention lately. Hope that works for you guys. So for today, what do you think wisdom is? Who do you think of when you think of wisdom? Ever had a situation where you needed a lot of wisdom?
Proverbs 18:13 "He who answers before listening-- that is his folly and his shame." Thoughts?

Football

2007-11-05T10:36:00.000-08:00

One of the real difficulties that many people have had at churches in the United States today is that it seems like ministries are phony a lot of times. "Come on over and we'll do something that no one really wants to do, or thinks is worthwhile, but we will do it because we always have..." This is the attitude we find a lot of times.
Last year, during football season, I started having guys over to watch college football with me. Sometimes they had to endure me yelling and cussing at the TV, others they got to see my jubilation when we won the Big 12 championship. I never intended in the beginning for this to be a ministry, but I think in the long run it turned out to be one, in a way. I was able to make a connection with a couple guys that otherwise I might not have had. They had to see me at my worst, but in the end I was able to convey, hopefully, something of the change that Jesus has been in me. I think God wants us to minister where we are passionate. We can find a connection with almost anyone out there, but I think it should always be genuine. Each of you has something you are passionate about, and something that you can connect with people that maybe the rest of us don't have. What is something that God may want to use in you, to make a difference as we start the "Fancy Walrus" together... I really laughed out loud at that... pretty ridiculous... so what has God made you passionate about that maybe you could share with people that need to be shown God's great love?

Dreams

2007-10-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

One of my ultimate dreams for our church (and by the way we may want to start thinking of a name, to simplify things) is that someday we will have some type of care for single parents, and mothers in specific. I think that this is a group that Jesus would hurt for, and one that all too often our churches have really neglected. I would like to find a way to help with child care, groceries, laundry, emotional injuries, mentoring for boys without fathers, etc. This passion and idea of mine has grown from previous hurts in my life. I realize that this will not be something that we will have at the beginning, and it is not something that will happen overnight. But it is a dream to work toward.
Is there something like that that God has put on your heart? How would you like to work towards that goal? It is important in this whole project to remember that nothing happens overnight, and these ministries will take energy and work. What do you think?

choice

2007-10-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

great thoughts guys. when i think about the things we will go through as a community, as a team, there are a lot of things that go through my mind. i think about what will be our first baptism, our first eucharist, our first marriage, our first funeral. there are exciting times ahead, i think we have this wonderful chance to start from the ground up, to learn from other churches victories and failures, and to make, not a perfect church, but maybe a perfectible one.
i think about the stresses that will push on us, and this makes me think of marriage. in marriage, and i know you are all aware of this, you choose a person, that person chooses you, and you go. you set off for a new life, a new adventure. worries press in, money gets tight, decisions must be made. sometimes one spouse sacrifices so the other can do what God has called them to do, but the point is that the first priority for each is the other. each wins some, each loses some. but each, in the end, has gained the other.
i think this reflects on the way we should do church. there are a lot of things that we will have to decide on. what color will we make the walls, what time will we meet on sundays, or saturdays, or whenever. how will we elect leaders, will we elect leaders. the thing i think we have to keep on the very front of our minds at all times, is that we should first commit to people, jesus and eachother. there is no other way for us to make it. if we come into this with the idea that we must meet at 6pm every saturday, and we must have children do bible drill, and youth must go to super summer, etc, then all is lost. these things are subordinate. i want each of us to be aware of that before we head in, when times get tough, when we are broke and when we don't know where we will meet next week, we have got to decide first and foremost that we will be loyal, that we will care about eachother.
this does not eliminate criticism, or accountability, but those things should always be done out of love, in the interest of the other. we should refuse to talk behind eachother's backs, we should encourage, we should build up, we should choose eachother. it is my prayer that this is the type of community we can build, what do you think?

denver

2007-10-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

The great difficulty with moving to a strange city and starting a church there will be that most of us will be moving without jobs. We may not know where our next meal will come from. I think that is legitimate concern. This is why I think it is important to seriously evaluate whether you are called to do this. It will not be easy, at least not at first. But I think, to steal a line from Caedmon's Call, "had to walk the rocks to see the mountain view." Things that are worth doing are not always going to be easy.
I don't want this to sound trite, but I do believe that where God calls us, he provides. If you feel a little, or a lot, discontent with your present situation, then it may be that God wants more for you. I think we have an opportunity to go to a place where there are very few that follow Jesus, and an opportunity to create a community that can help others find the God that loves them.
You may feel called to be a part of this, God will provide. Robin and I really felt like God wanted us to move to Waco to finish school and God provided her with a great job. Not immediately, but eventually. I think when things get tough we have to remember that God doesn't necessarily provide in excess, or before we need it, but we should remember the birds of the air and the grass of the field. He provides for them right on time. So you may be struggling with indecision or difficulty as to embarking on this adventure with all of us, please pray and evaluate what your life would be like with or without this little experiment we are going to be doing. And remember that God knows before we do what we need and how much we need.

busy busy busy

2007-10-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

hey everyone, sorry i have not been all that consistent with blogging. i have a 20 page paper due tomorrow, so its been occupying most of my weekend and most of my wrath. OU also lost on sat, so i was a bit depressed about that, but I'm getting over it. i just wanted to ask what kinds of topic you guys would like to discuss here.
also, im watching "the way of the master" on tbn right now. there is no way we will ever use that in denver. it is awful. sorry. i just could not live with myself if i was ever the pastor of a church that endorsed it. so, what do you guys want to talk about?

the opportunity we share...

2007-09-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

we were talking today in one of my classes about what it means for humans to be created in the image of God. classically, the Old Testament affirms that even after sin, humans still bear the image of God. people are told not to murder because that is taking the life of someone who was made in the image of God. in the New Testament, excluding a passage in James and one in 1 Corinthians, the image of God is found in Christ. and as we grow in maturity in our faith and our intimacy with Christ, we become more like him. the image of God grows in us. we are still taught in James and 1 Corinthians that all humans deserve dignity and respect because they were created in God's image. i dont really want to take an overlong time in discussing the theology behind it, but i think it can be summed up by saying that part of our job as the church is to help people rediscover their image.

one of the great opportunities we share is to start over. we can create our own community, set our own priorities and show people who they were created to be. this, i believe, should be one of the main priorities of the church, this is a key to evangelism. people are searching for identity, what makes them special, what sets them apart. as Christians, we believe God made each special, each unique, each with a wonderful and beautiful identity in his own image. as we work together to form this community, we must keep in mind that our fellow workers and those that exist outside of the church were made in God's image. we also must help share this wonderful message with the world. here is my question. what does this mean practically? how does this theology take shape in our lives and in the life of our church?

gifts

2007-09-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

"12-13You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you're still one body. It's exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.

14-18I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge. It's all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, "I'm not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don't belong to this body," would that make it so? If Ear said, "I'm not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don't deserve a place on the head," would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.

19-24But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, "Get lost; I don't need you"? Or, Head telling Foot, "You're fired; your job has been phased out"? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the "lower" the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it's a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?"

1 Corinthians 12:12-24 (The Message)

one of the things i would like us to think through together is our giftings. i am not advocating a cookie cutter spiritual gifts test so that some of us can then wonder what "prophecy" means or whatever. i am suggesting we are honest and open with one another about what we think some of our strengths are and some of our weaknesses. i feel like i am gifted with leadership, but also cursed with stubbornness, for example. it will be important that we are open and honest with one another. i really feel like i could go through and list out many of your strengths because i know you all pretty well, unless someone that i dont know just came and started reading, but that would take away a part of it. it is important that we realize our own strengths and how we can fit in to help this body grow and work. we will not all be gifted in the same ways, hopefully, because otherwise we would all just stubbornly argue a lot.

so, hopefully this will elicit some response. what do you think you are gifted in? do not feel like this is bragging, it is ok to be honest with what you are good at, especially if you are honest enough to know you are not good at everything. i feel like, as i said before, i am gifted with leadership, and vision. i think i can help others to discover their respective place in Christ's body as well. what are you bringing with you? and please, no false humility. i know each of you well enough to know that each of you is very gifted in quite a few areas. (hopefully this goes better than the last one)

if only they knew...

2007-08-25T18:10:00.000-07:00

"no one would love me if they knew, all the things i hide" Caedmon's Call- Love Alone

i think in the darkest part of our hearts, each of us has identified with that statement at some time or another, possibly more often than not. we live in a world surrounded by people that refuse to allow anyone to know who they truly are, for fear of rejection or judgment. unfortunately, we have each gone to churches where this holds as well. rather than being a place where people are authentic and real and transparent, all too often church is a place where people pretend to be something that they are not.

a few of our tasks as a congregation will be to encourage authenticity, while also encouraging growth and change. we need to be a safe place, where people can know that god wants them just as they are, but we also need to let them know that god is not content to leave them as they are. this is an incredibly difficult task, and as such, it will take each of us being very much honest and very much open about our struggles as well as our triumphs. there are, of course, boundaries and times when certain things are appropriate and inappropriate. this is a part of the journey we are embarking on. how do you think we can bring this about? what are some practical ways to implement this type of honest community?

bethany, thanks for sharing about your life. it is good for me to have an update and that is helpful while we pray for you. you guys can pray for me, i really am hating school right now. i realize that i need to go, and the things i learn will help me in ministry, but i also just want to get there and begin. it is also hard for me to watch robin work really hard so that i can finish school. i want to be able to help. what needs do you have?

a world drowning...

2007-08-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

"...It is waking up to the realization that the church isn't here for we who believe, but rather that we in fact are the church, and we are here for a world drowning in disbelief. Relevant engagement of culture, when born out of the heart of God, is less about marketing and more about passion. It is Paul offering up his own damnation if only Israel could be saved. It is fleshed out in the willingness to become all things to all men that we might somehow save some." Erwin McManus in The Church in Emerging Culture
most of us have heard a lot of things about becoming all things to all people. some use it as an excuse to do whatever they want, others use it as a reason to be even more legalistic than they were previously. things we need to think about as a community are, what kinds of things are we going to be doing to draw people into our fellowship? will we do some things that would make us seem more like a business?

i personally am against things like billboards for churches, slick advertising campaigns in order to bring more people in. i dont think that is what paul meant. i think paul was talking about meeting people where they are, in the places they live and work, and letting them know that they can belong to a group that will accept and love them the way they are, all while refusing to let them stay that way. how we go about implementing this on a day to day basis may take some work, some practice and some experimenting.

what does it mean to you?

So we can understand...

2007-08-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

"...Because although he (Jesus) knows us, we do not know him very well. We are lonely and empty because we do not know him very well. We are vacant inside, deafened by the continual wind of our emptiness, and only his presence can fill us. Yet we fail to know him well. Sometimes this is because we don't want to know him and sometimes because we don't know how.
Why do people continually want to revise the prevailing view of Jesus?
To relieve the pain of this dilemma by changing Jesus into something we can understand.
What is Jesus' alternative plan?
To change us into something that can understand him..." (Frederica Mathewes-Green from The Church in Emerging Culture

most of us are currently going through something right now, be it a change in job, change in town, change in anything, that seem difficult. it may be all of those things. i think the challenge for us, is to view these things through God's eyes. to see that maybe he has a plan, and maybe that plan involves some difficulty right now. i think for each of us, god wants us to be different tomorrow than we are today, to be closer to knowing him, closer to following him as we should.

i know for me, i am having to learn that i can't do everything. that sometimes i have to let other people do difficult things to help me, and that is a part of life with others. what is god teaching you? as he prepares you to go and do this thing in denver, what are some lessons you are having to learn?

a few books you guys may like to pick up, and i know we all wish we had more time for reading, but i think these would help considering the type of church we would like to be: A Primer on Postmodernism by Stan Grenz and the book i quoted at the beginning. if you all would like i can continue to recommend books, just let me know. or if you have a book that you think would benefit our little project, post it.

organization

2007-07-28T09:47:00.001-07:00

or as the brits would say, organisation...
anyway, this was something that we could/should have done much better while i was at nexus. this is a tricky area, because if you do it well, you should never really notice or have to work on it, but if done poorly, the entire ministry could suffer very much.
the things we need to work through together, and hopefully i can start drafting things for us to think through, are things like, church polity, how will we make major decisions, how will we make minor decisions, what directions will we go with certain things, say our music guy or youth girl or children's person decides that he or she needs to leave, how will we fill that certain role. what roles will we have, what ministries will we create.

on the one hand, we do not ever want to give the impression that this is a business and must be run as such, that is not the purpose of church. there are certain things about church that are messy, and necessarily so. it is a place where ragamuffins tell other ragamuffins where to find bread, to steal a paraphrase from brennan manning.

however, we should also have the insight to learn from those that have foolishly ignored any kind of structure and injured themselves and their ministry. for instance, when it comes to how money is spent, all too often that is left at the sole discretion of the pastor. this then turns into a dangerous practice in which the pastor has more pressure upon him or her than necessary. it also opens up avenues of temptation for the misuse of money.

the things we need to work through together, and maybe the most important, is a system of checks for ... checks. how do we make sure no one can abuse money, while at the same time trusting eachother? also, how do we want to make decisions? the thing we have to keep in mind while we work through these things is that our church may very well grow very large, and it may very well stay small. we have to have some sort of process that works for either.

this is not a popular subject, but once we have this kind of thing worked out it will enable us to do ministry and care about people without worrying about the same things over and over.

the move went well, we are here in waco now, jobless and disorganized. pray that god would provide, and please, leave any needs you may have here for the rest of us to know. it is not to early to build our own community.

The Countdown

2007-07-19T08:49:00.000-07:00

As I sit here in Brownwood's finest coffee shop filling out my FAFSA... again. It hit me; 2009 is right around the corner. I better get crackin'!

updates

2007-07-05T15:43:00.001-07:00

sorry, were pretty busy getting ready to move at the moment, only six more shifts at starbucks, pray that i dont murder any customers before its all over. just want to let you all know, robin had a couple job interviews in waco a little more than a week ago, so be praying that one of those would work out. its kinda tough to be moving on, scary but exciting at the same time.

so, whats the word on you? update us all, let us know whats going on in your life. once i get moved, i will find a series of things to post on, to get all of our brains working.

excellence

2007-06-12T18:48:00.001-07:00

sorry for the long span between posts. i was enjoying that discussion. i just had one or two things i wanted to add to place. i would love for us to find a place that was first used for a different purpose, and restore it and turn it into a church, or a new church, i love the metaphor of redemption in our building as well as our people. i would love to have a location near schools or in the middle of downtown, someplace people that are poor can walk. and i would love to have something of a greeting, either over the door or maybe in another way, something along the lines of "welcome all you sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, adulterors, thieves, come and be redeemed," and that is very open to editing.

now, onto the topic i would like us to discuss in some more detail, the idea of excellence. all too often i feel like churches use the fact that they are working for god as an excuse to do some very subpar work. all too often it is used as an excuse to not plan ahead of time, to wait till the last minute, to put less energy into the work than we would with homework, or work for our jobs. i think that is pretty insulting to god. we have a much higher calling when we do work for the lord, therefore i think we shoudl put even more energy into it than we might with the things we do with less than eternal impact.

so i think it could help us to discuss several things; why do people so often not put their full effort into church work? why are they so apprehensive to plan ahead of time? and what can we gain by being very forward thinking? what are some ways we can encourage one another to do a better job, how can we help someone who is putting less than excellent effort into their work? it is very important that from the beginning we are honest with one another, but tactful at the same time, a lesson i am continually learning the hard way, but one that is necessary.

it was really great to have so many different voices respond to the last post, and it is ok if you just dont have something to say, but i want this to be all of our church, from the ground up, this is a place where we can share thoughts and ideas, so the more the merrier. anyway, keep us all updated, and lets really be praying that god brings us through our current ordeals with our eyes upon him. im excited every day about our future together. hope you guys are well.

place

2007-05-31T18:47:00.000-07:00

i know each of you has a home. think in your mind of home. now why is that place home? what is it about that place that makes it home? what about an encounter with god? is there a certain place where you "feel" god more than anywhere else?

when we are really honest, we know that god is everywhere. place does not matter that much to him. but also when we are really honest, place matters to us. so it matters, but it doesnt, but it still does. this is a tension we live in.

so this week, i want us to discuss (dont hold your breath, i know), what kinds of things we would like to have as far as facilities go. place does not matter that much for a church, but it matters incredibly. what things about a church make it seem like home? how can we cultivate a place of worship with the building itself? one thing i love about nexus is that we tried to make it where our building would tell a story. someone could know what we are about by being shown the facilities and having some things explained. what ways can we do that in denver?

i dont want anyone to misunderstand, it is much more important who is in the space than what the space is, but i also think we should strive to have an excellent place, even if it is not that way at first. so. lets just throw out ideas. they can be complete, or incomplete, they can just be thoughts, or they can be things you are passionate about seeing. lets just keep in mind, we will not be able to do everything, but i think this is something good to think about a long time out.

as always, lets be praying for one another. i know we can pray for tyler as he is in the land of florida, wanting to end his life, for bethany as grad school decisions are being made, for tanner as he is going to the middle east and spain, for robin and i as we are beginning to move, for grant as he looks for a job and as he and desiree settle in. i may not be up to date completely, so if im behind just update. hope you all are well.

representatives

2007-05-15T16:40:00.000-07:00

ok. i dont know if you are like me, but this stupid "way of the master" thing is making me crazy. my friend matt the other day said some lady approached him and just started rattling off questions. didnt ask his name, didnt say anything about caring for him, nothing of that, just started into questions about his eternity. and the thing that makes me crazy about this whole deal? we are lumped into a category with those jokers.

so i started thinking about what all that means. for me, it means i have to begin to really think through things before i say them, because when i say them, that also says something about my wife, it says something about my church, it says something about each person within the church, it says something, most importantly, about the god that we profess to worship. fair? i dont really know, but fact? no doubt.

so, as im thinking through that, i also come to the realization, that although we should be very careful in remembering that we represent eachother, we also have to love with some recklessness those that are outside. so much so, that sometimes our name must be dragged through the mud a little bit. jesus was, after all, a friend of prostitutes and tax collectors. not great company. so it would seem that we are trying to practice the dialectic, as the great dr. roark would remind us. so, i guess for us to discuss, how do we keep each other's reputations clean, while at the same time loving those that would make us seem very unclean? what difficulties do you think this presents? how do we overcome those? essentially, where do we go from here?

and, if you need prayer, please say so. we need to be supporting and lifting eachother up even now, from what seems a large distance of time.

context

2007-05-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

something i have been thinking a lot about lately, is that everyone, everything has a context. i know this lady that comes into starbucks fairly often. shes a bit on the rude side sometimes. i have heard she is not a very good sport when it comes to athletic events. so sometimes i am tempted to write her off.
but then i get to thinking. this lady lives in brownwood. not only that, but she is probably nearly forty and single, and no doubt lonely. so when i am tempted to write her off, i realize that she has a few reasons to be a little bitter. now, this doesnt mean she maybe shouldnt be a little more pleasant, or maybe a better sport, but it also means that i should look on her with a grain of salt.

every person we meet has some sort of context. each has hurt, maybe is in the process of hurting, maybe has never felt truly loved. as christians, as the church we have an obligation to see deeper, to really try to see people through the eyes of god, which means that sometimes we have to forgive things before they are asked, and look at people with a graceful eye. what are some ways you have looked on people in an ungraceful way? what are some ways we can cultivate that at our church? how can we forgive people for these shortcomings while at the same time not condoning poor behavior or allowing them to be jerks? what are some other thoughts on this in general?

still, if you have need of prayer, or if there is something you would like to discuss on here, let me know. i am exceedingly excited for what god wants to do in denver, and what he is doing in each of you as we all prepare.

fights

2007-04-30T20:38:00.000-07:00

well, that was a rousing success. i guess we all had a lot to say...
ok this week, i want us to talk a little bit about what is worth fighting for. i was just in a business meeting, no fights broke out, but i know that they have a propensity to happen in that type of setting.

one thing i have learned/been learning since i have been married is that some things are not worth fighting over. we should not be willing to die on every hill, as it were. this is something that we should very much be thinking through as we all consider helping to start a church. this is not something a community can really decide on together, but that the individuals within the community must decide on seperately. what are you going to die for? what fights will you participate in? which ones are better to keep your mouth shut on? these are things to be considering within yourself.

the other thing, and it is really my fault for this not being my first post, is that i really want to encourage you all to be praying. there are about eleven of you that i can count that are pretty solid on doing this thing, then several others that are considering it, then several others that are just praying for us. so, what are some ways we can pray for one another?

these are some ways you can pray for me and robin, personally right now: it is difficult for us to be leaving brownwood, we are sad, and robin needs a job in waco, i need some refreshing and healing, ive been burning the candle at both ends for too long, my family is always a concern

for our future church: that god would guide us in our leadership, that he would guide us in our roles, that he would provide us with a place to meet, that we would each deal with much of our baggage or at least acknowledge it as we draw nearer to our beginning, that we would draw near to god, and that we would draw near to one another.

so, questions you can answer: what is worth fighting for? what are some ways we can pray for you?

ok vent time

2007-04-24T06:05:00.000-07:00

alright, each of us has some serious gripes with churches. the last thing i want is for us to simply be some reaction to our problems with the church as it is today, but i also think it is important for us to see the problems and make some changes. this is not to say we should throw out everything that has been done before, because there are a lot of good things done right now in churches, and some ways that they are run are very intelligent. but for this week, lets just say what some of our problems are with church in our day. next week we will talk about how we can respond and do things differently, but this week is our chance to be critical. feel free to respond anonymously if you need to, and lets not have negative personal attacks, just talk about some issues we have. for example, i know of a church in houston that people in the ministries each have a baptism quota that they have to reach each quarter, or they will lose their ministry job. i have an issue with that. so. vent away.

what is church?

2007-04-16T19:30:00.000-07:00

as we all contemplate beginning this journey together. some questions i think it would be good to begin with are
what is a church?
what is the church?
the apostles creed has a statement near the end "the holy catholic church" so what does it mean to us, "holy," "catholic," "church." lets dialogue about what each of those means, what we want it to mean, etc.
one of my seminary friends and i were talking the other day about what church is. i think it can be anywhere, anytime, whenever more than one christian sits together and talks about god. he thought it was anytime we gathered for a specific reason, namely to worship. what do you guys think? im not sure there is a right answer, but i think it is important to think and talk about.
if this falls flat, let me know a better way to start these discussions and i will try to make them better
so. what is a church, what is the church, what does it mean to be the holy catholic church?

Ladies and Gentlemen...

2007-04-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

We are looking at quite possibly the single greatest blog ever created; yes, even better than R$%##$ blog!

This exists so that we can feel free to talk, curse, argue and express any feelings about Denver.

I for one feel that Christ has lead me to dive into this venture, I'm pretty stoked. So, let the blogging begin!