This is our final post on this blog.  In the future one or more of us may start a new blog, but in this season of life we’re finding it difficult to keep up with blogging.  We turned off the comments section, but we’ll leave this blog up for a little while longer as a resource for anyone who might benefit from what has been written here.  The stuff written is a reflection of how we are works in progress, still learning as we go.  Thank you to all who have shared in our journey in E-Ho.

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If you want established churches to get excited about growing and starting new churches, don’t appeal to their fear that their brand of church is losing influence (even if it is).

The question is not, ”What will we do to keep ourselves from going extinct?”

The question is, “What will we do to show people what God is like?”

The first question is driven by fear.  The second by love.

Leaders motivated by fear are not the people you want working alongside you anyway. They may reach out to the community with you, but they will do it in a way that puts their own interests above the interests of the ones you’re reaching, and that is not Christlike.  That spirit is contagious.

Instead, appeal to people’s desire to show real love to the world.  It has been said that in all of our hearts is a God-shaped hole only God can fill.  We were made to be in relationship with our Creator.  We also were made to love like He does… wildly… sacrificially.  Find the folks who want to show the world what God is like by showing crazy love to their families and the hurting people in their community.  Then see what happens.  You can start by modeling crazy love yourself.  You may get fewer folks to join you in the beginning, but this spirit is contagious, too.  God’s kingdom grows from small beginnings and selfless acts of love.

Categories: the why
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Have you been asked to support church planting because of what it will do for your church or denomination (or your non-denomination as the case may be)?  I used to give these well-intended presentations, but now I’m skeptical.  They go something like this: “Our brand of church is in a state of decline compared to other denominations and the U.S. population growth rate. If we don’t do something, our brand is liable to become obsolete!  We’ll lose our identity.  Let’s not lose our slice of the Churched Population Pie. We need to reach more people to keep our brand of church from going extinct.  The way to do this is by starting more of our kind of churches!  We’ll get to know our neighbors and meet their felt needs.  They’ll see how caring we are and our brand of church will become more attractive.  When they come to our newly planted churches, we’ll win them to Jesus.  Imagine it.  Lost people will be saved, and our brand of church will stay relevant in the 21st century.  That’s why we need to plant churches!”

I get it, but then I don’t get it.  Really, why do we need to keep our slice of the pie?  Why focus our energies on preserving our brand of church?  Jesus Christ said the church he builds will not be stopped (Matthew 16:18).  He didn’t make this promise for your brand of church.  The Church will live on, but maybe church brands, denominations and non-denominations have life cycles.   

But even if your and my brands of church are here to stay, is preserving them really the goal of joining God in mission?  Our “bigger slice of the pie” presentations have emphasized a self-serving reason for Christians to engage their communities, and I think this will come back to haunt us.   Your community desperately needs you to show them the Selfless Savior, not the Self-Preserving Church.  So you want to introduce lost and broken people to the person and hope of Christ.  In the process, God may ask you to give up traditions dear to your heart to show His kind of love to your community.  Jesus’ teachings were full of such ironies.  Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and the humble will be exalted.  The last shall be first and the first shall be last.  Holding onto life leads to death, and dying to oneself leads to life.  For those of us who have grown attached to our ways of doing church, maybe the way to hold onto our church identity is to let go of it.  To borrow another analogy from Jesus Christ, you may be required to let the kernel of wheat fall to the ground and die so that new life can sprout where you are (John 12).  Are you willing to let go of finding your identity inyour church brand and find it in Christ alone?  What wouldn’t you give up so that others could know Him, too?

Go ahead, form new communities of faith, but do it out of sacrificial love.  And spur others on to do the same.  Live this way because you have wild love for God and people, not because church planting could preserve our brand of church and make us successful.  You are preaching Christ and him crucified, not your way of doing church.  The road to becoming a risk-taking, outward-focused church is not paved with self-preservation.

Categories: the why
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I’ve been curious to learn what my new typical day is going to look like, now that I’ve got a “regular” job.  I think this is still yet to be revealed. For what it’s worth, here’s what today was like.

I got up at 5:30 to read some of the Psalms, did my at-home physical therapy exercises (my old back injury and sciatica are acting up again), prayed with my sons, kissed my wife, and at 6:40am rode the bus to work so I can support my amazing wife and those precious little boys.

It felt so good to be on the bus to work.  After months of job-hunting, I appreciate more fully that I have a job while so many don’t.  And that the kind of job I have allows me to make a difference in the lives of families who are jobless and at risk of homelessness.

7:30am Start work.  While at work, I met another case worker who is starting home-based churches, referred to me by my supervisor.  Very cool!

5:30pm go home.  After work, I enjoyed some quiet (as quiet as the city gets) time with God on the bus ride home.  I intentionally skipped the second bus so I could add 15 minutes to my walk home (this was painful but I knew the exercise would do my sore back and leg some good).

6:30pm arrive home. Nothing tops the experience of coming home, walking through the door and being greeted emphatically by my three hyper boys with their tight, tight hugs and pretend stabs to my gut with their pirate swords.  They told me all about their first day at their new school.  The long version was so cute but too long to share here.  The short version: They were blessed with a fun and smooth first day (thank you, Lord!).  My beautiful wife also greeted me with a kiss and homemade tamales (made by our neighbor who is selling tamales to make a few extra bucks).  As planned, our family ate dinner with two of Meredith’s former co-workers who brought donuts for dessert, which thoroughly pleased our boys.  Meredith’s friends love to play with our boys, and our boys love to play with them.  So it was one of those social gatherings that you can feel good about as a dad because you know you didn’t leave your kids out of all the fun.

8pm open God’s Word.  These two young women, who are very, very turned off by religion but opening up to the person of Jesus Christ,  stayed for a Discovery Bible Discussion (aka Discovery Bible Study) after we put the boys to bed.  Just before we began, though, my son Isaiah prayed all on his own for Meri’s friends and the time we would be spending reading the Bible together, which was awesome.  If I’m not mistaken, this was our fourth time to explore God’s Word together with these two friends.  It is exciting to watch them discovering what God is like and opening up to Him.  It was also fun to hear one of these young women pray aloud to God, to hear her voicing her faith in God to the rest of us, and to observe her taking on the responsibility of facilitating the Discovery Bible Discussion.  It also was wonderful to hear the both of them identifying people in their lives with whom they will share what they’re learning about God.

10:30pm Time to unwind.  It was a late night so I’ll have to make up for it later with some rest.  But I couldn’t just go right to bed after our guests left.  I needed some additional time to unwind because, unlike my wife who usually gets reenergized by being around people, I typically need some alone time to recharge.  So I’m thankful my wife graciously allowed me some down time to check my favorite blog feeds, read Obama’s speech on health care, and spend some “just me and God time” in prayer.

Now, it’s time for bed.  Thank you, Lord, for a good full day. I’m sure tomorrow will be quite different and still very full and good.

Categories: stories, uncategorized
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People in LA need to hear about the God who delivers!  Several friends have described situations where Christians pleaded with them to be or get “saved,”  and to their disappointment they discovered salvation means no deliverance.  You gotta stop dressing in all black, stop wearing your lip piercings, stop listening to your favorite music, stop this, stop that… Is that really what salvation means?   

“Salvation” is about being delivered from something and to something!  From hell to heaven, you say?  Yes, but God delivers people FROM and TO stuff in the here and now, not just in the ever after.  Check it out!

In the early part of the biblical story, God sent his servant Moses to deliver the people of Israel from slavery and oppression in Egypt, which is a really BIG deal.  But the story doesn’t stop there.  God delivered them to something as well.  He delivered them to enjoy the promised land “of milk and honey” where they were meant to experience a good and lasting relationship (“covenant”) with him.  This deliverance wasn’t just about them.  It was about the rest of the world, too.  God delivered his people to be a “nation of priests” who would intentionally “be a blessing to all nations” intervening on the world’s behalf – thereby showing the world what God is like that all humankind would want to obey God, too.  That was the intent.  The Creator delivering all his created ones, not just Israel, from something and to something.  The first Exodus, the first deliverance.

To make deliverance truly possible for all of us, God eventually sent his Son (“another prophet like Moses” only better).  Through what he accomplished on the Cross, his Son delivered all humankind once and for all from slavery to sin (and delivered all of creation from the consequences of sin), which is a really BIG deal.  But the story doesn’t stop there.  God delivered us all to experience a good and lasting relationship with him.  This deliverance isn’t just about Jesus’ followers.  It is about the rest of the world, too.  Jesus’ followers are meant to love as he does, seek justice, and make disciples of all nations, showing all people what God is like that they would want to follow him, too.  God wants all the world to be delivered from something and to something.  That is the intent.  The ultimate Exodus, the ultimate deliverance!

What’s more, Jesus taught that his deliverence (a.k.a. the “abundant life”), while it will be more fully realized when he returns, begins now!  If that is true, then I am asking myself, what does a delivered life look like? 

Question: What did God deliver you FROM and what did he deliver you TO?

[A brother in Christ at the Hilltop Church in El Segundo, CA showed me the delivered from/to concept.]

Categories: the why
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Christians and Jesus-followers.  These are supposed to be synonymous, yet a 20-something woman with tattooed arms and pins in her lip doesn’t think so.  In last night’s Bible study she explained why she needs Christ not Christianity in her life.  After being burned by churches, she is reading the Bible for the first time.  Not only that, she is sharing God’s Word with her boyfriend and a close friend, whom she brought to the Bible study.  Holding a new Bible in her lap, she told the story of how her younger sister recently caught her reading scripture at home.  The sibling harassed her, saying, “What the ****!  Are you gonna be a Christian now?”  To this the young woman replied, “I’m not trying to be a Christian.  I want to follow God!”

Categories: stories, stuff to pray for
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Three new Bible studies just started, and possibly a fourth will begin this week. I am hopeful the individuals requesting these Bible studies will soon gather their family members and/or friends to read and spiritually journey with them.

Two of Meredith’s co-workers in their mid-twenties, who have teased Meredith for being a “Christian,” requested a Bible study with Meredith. So last night they came over for dinner and we read and discussed a biblical story that sparked a lot of discussion about what God is like vs what their impressions of “churches” have been like.  They told us stories of how they felt judged by their appearances (lip piercings, tattoos, all black clothing, etc) when they went to churches in the past.  They said they are looking for people who are really living out their faith and experiencing a transformed life, not just going to church all the time.  They have been burned by religious people, but they are very open to exploring a relationship with God.  One of the girls wants to bring her boyfriend to the study next time.  They also talked about bringing another co-worker with them. 

Categories: stories, stuff to pray for
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