TATTOO on the HEART

What is missional? Part 4: Awe

// July 25th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

Acts 2:42-44

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.

I absolutely love this text.  But it certainly has been manipulated a lot over the years.

Church growth people actually hone in on verse 41 where “three thousand were added to the church that day.”  It’s proof for them that God counts and that focusing on growth is valid.

Teaching, fellowship, etc. – the 5 Purposes.  Yes!

All the people who want to argue that the early church has the model we should be following, they love this text.

House church people and communal people love the breaking of the bread that’s done in homes and the essential of community.

They’re all classic cases of missing what is blatantly obvious right in front of our faces.

Awe.

People weren’t just impressed.  People weren’t saying: “Wow we have 3000 more people now, let’s do this again.”  People weren’t just sharing possessions and saying, “I hate capitalism.  This is what God commands us to do.”

People were in awe.

Do you get that? Awe.  Awestruck.  Shaken to their core.  The fear of God was there – not that they were afraid – they had encountered the One who was bigger than life, than possessions, than situations, than poverty…they couldn’t fear death any longer, because He proved that He had the keys to it.  Even their lives that could be taken from them at any moment by the authorities could not stop this movement.

There was a heavy expectation.  A deep profound sense of transformation actively going on in their very being.  The Kingdom of God – His rule and reign – was breaking in on them.  It must’ve been crazy to find yourself going through life worrying about the things that people worry about – jobs, paying the bills, feeding the kids, your camel breaks down – and then to become Spiritual beings simply having a human existence.

Have you ever been in awe?  I don’t mean “Yay, God.”  I mean in awe.

You see, when you’re in awe of God – those are the times when what you’ve just seen is unexplainable.  It’s against the forces of nature.  There’s not a theory in physics that can make an excuse for it.  Sociologists would be dumbfounded.  It would be easier to believe “these are just not the same people.”

I think we’ve been too easily impressed.  I think we follow men and we look at structures and we hold up models, but tell the truth: has anything every captured your imagination?  Has there been something that you’ve seen in, around, or through the Church as you’ve known it when God was so huge that you found your spiritual capacity to fully understand it was too limited.  And when I say Church as you’ve known it, I mean everything – small, mega, para – all of it.  Have you experienced God in such a way that you could not even wrap your head around what was happening?

I put a blog up some weeks back that continues to be the feature story on my main page about my wife, Jessica’s healing.  I can’t tell you the $1000′s we’ve spent, the number of doctors we’ve seen, the medications taken, the alternative treatments that we’ve tried, and perhaps million prayers that we’ve prayed.

People have watched – anyone remotely close to us – and have seen the physical toll that it took on my wife.  And suddenly after a prayer that was not unlike many of the prayers we prayed, she was miraculously healed.

I started sharing the story.  I mean, we’ve seen God do some pretty cool things, but when you’ve endured something that a lot of people would just say is going to be a part of your life forever, experiencing God like this can just turn you upside down.  Jessica and I didn’t know how to react.  We were stunned, elated, praising God, and sometimes on our faces. 

Awe.  I’ve got to stop trying to describe it, because I can’t.  When God steps in and brings something that only He can bring, we realize what a limited vocabulary we have, because in our experience, He’s never been known in that kind of a personal way.

And you know what we did?  We told everybody.  We told the world.  Jessica spoke at a church locally.  People who we didn’t know were calling wanting to hear the story first-hand and document what had happened.

Then the sick started coming forward.  “Maybe God does heal” – people would start thinking.  People began seeking God.  The lost…I’ve got goosebumps again….the lost that we know drank in that story like you wouldn’t believe.  They shared our joy.

People started visiting us.  “We just have to see you” they’d say.  “I can’t believe she’s the same person” – we’d hear that one a lot.

What is it?  It’s a collective sense of awe.  When a person is brought from death to life, when new is brought out of old, there’s only one explanation…Jesus.  He’s the only One who does things like that.

And there’s no one who doesn’t want to hear that story.  Sure, we had some skeptics.   There were a few Christians I knew who’d call just to ask if her healing “stuck.”

But it is undeniable what God released within our connections with people through this single story.  Though one individual.  Faith, joy, celebration – people were awakened out of a spiritual slumber.  People came to the feet of the Master with their broken stories.

People want to know this God that you know.

Do you know someone that just blows you away when you’re around them in the sense that you feel the presence of God when you’re in their vicinity?  Not that intimidating religious stuff.  But the people who know God and talk about Him in and their experiences in such a way that you’re finally like, “Shut-up!  I can’t take your stories any more.  I must have my own.  I must know this God!”

That’s what awe does.

And when I look at the early Church and I see what’s going on, I’m not a bit surprised that 3000 people became part of it in a single day.  Wouldn’t you want to be a part of that?

Hey house church people…It was a priority for those people to get together every day in homes and have dinner together, because when God is actively involved in your life, when He is bringing radical transformation and His presence is so real and tangible, and things are happening, those are stories that MUST be told. It becomes necessary to get together. The daily – get it daily experience of God at work required that they get together.

You ever have something that’s so killer that you call people and tell them to drop everything to hear your story?  I think that’s what was going on.  “Hey guys, we have to get to together over to Ray’s house tonight because we’ve got to celebrate this.  I’m in awe.  I want to bury my face in the carpet with you guys because I don’t know what to do with myself.  Let’s invite everyone we know.  They’ve seen who we were before.  They need to know this.  To experience this.

You know, small group pastor, that’s why we can’t get people involved in small groups and we have to do these ridiculous 5 week series to convince people that they need relationship.  People hate that stuff because there’s nothing that really binds.  There’s nothing to talk about.

But when God starts showing up on a daily basis in your lives and bringing awe, you don’t have to have any other reason to show up.  You don’t need icebreakers and 3 fast songs and 1 slow song to get people in the mood, it happens…sometimes spontaneously.

It does make me wonder what the church has become.  If we need to have clever teaching series that are “relevant,”  If we need to play cover songs that you hear on the radio, if we need to get people out of the doors in a one hour service, then we have to ask ourselves: “Who are we kidding?”

Because if you have to sell Jesus, then you haven’t met Him.

Or at least, you’re not still meeting Him.

Could God be wanting to bring us something that is so unbelievable and undeniable that we’d be thrust into the community saying, “You MUST see this.  You have to meet this Guy!”

A few years back, I heard Tommy Tenney say something that I’ll have to paraphrase:

There’s a reason why 7-Eleven has to stay open 24/7.  It’s because their product demands that they stay open to meet the needs of the community.

And maybe that’s the reason why the Church is only open a couple of hours a week.  Not much product on the shelves.  Or at least nothing that anyone wants.

God, forgive us for the things that have impressed us.  And bring us the awe of You.

What is Missional? Part 3: Witnesses

// July 22nd, 2009 // 3 Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

In August 2005, I packed the last few reminders of our youth room into a various assortment of cardboard boxes.  Finally after years of existence in a strip mall in the suburbs of New Orleans, we were going to be moving into a real building.  Most of this stuff didn’t make the cut for the new youth room, so I was going to give it all away over the weekend as we said goodbye to the place over the course of several youth services.

I was so busy that week, I never even heard a report of a possible hurricane that was making its way into the Gulf of Mexico.  In fact, it wasn’t until that Friday that the situation was seriously mentioned in my circles.

My first response was, “Whatever.”  I was tired of all the drama every year with hurricane season.  I went home and told Jessica about it.  She’d heard nothing, of course, because the Lifetime channel isn’t the best place for current, breaking news (nor brilliantly-written, well-acted movies as it were).

Our pastor told us that we’d just hold on to see how the local government officials would treat the situation before we’d make a decision regarding weekend services.

As the weekend progressed, it became increasingly more obvious that we wouldn’t be conducting our final services.  Bummer too, because I had some really cool stuff planned and a pretty decent message.  It was still frustrating, though.  I called up a friend of mine who was a youth pastor in Miami and said, “Thanks a lot, David.  This isn’t funny. Why did you have to send that thing our way?  I’ve got too much work to do this week to be dealing with another  evacuation.”

And, of course, the nation watched how that story played out.  For the first week and a half of evacuation, I watched helplessly from my uncle’s condo in Destin, Florida.

Fortunately, I was able to connect with staff within a couple of weeks later and the city allowed us to come in and begin doing relief work.  Our old building was trashed, but our new facility ended up being a launching pad for relief workers and supplies to begin pouring in to the city.

As our ministry seemed to increase (We started early in the morning till late at night) and take on new forms, a lot of city-based ministries ceased to exist.  It was saddening to call pastors and leaders around the city to ask them to be a part of what we were doing, and to get the response, “Our building was damaged.  We can’t do anything right now.”

For the first time ever, there seemed to be an overwhelming opportunity for God to show up in the moment as an answer to desperate prayers, but, unfortunately there were very few local churches were there to be the incarnation of Christ.

I was quickly having my understanding of ministry revolutionized as I walked up the sidewalk past the remains of the worldly possessions of  the people in our neighborhoods bringing dinner, or some tips on saving photographs, or a small team of people to gut their houses.

At the time, I was heavily connected to youth pastors across the country and I remember sharing with them something that I thought was pretty mind-boggling at the time:

“If your LCD projector went out this week, if your power was off, if you had no running water, or your building flooded, would your ministry cease to exist?  Would you still be a church?  How would you function? ”

You see, I think that the Church has become really poor at defining things.  For instance, the way we’ve defined “ministry” and “evangelism” and “worship” and the way we’ve quantified those things have ultimately caused us to become a caricature of ourselves.

MEASURING GOD…

I remember, as a Jr. High Pastor, flying out to a conference in California and sitting through a seminar that dared us to be brutally honest and evaluate our ministries.  We needed to be goal-specific and to quantify everything that we did.  Otherwise, how could we possibly be effective?

When I got back in town, that was exactly what I was going to do.  So I scheduled a meeting with my pastor regarding this matter, and he was overjoyed to meet with me at Starbucks to help me answer these important questions.

I asked, “How do we know if we’re effective in evangelism?”

He said, “By how many people show up as opposed to before.  Growth.”

I asked, “How do we know if we’re effective in worship?”

He said, “By how many people are engaging during the music.”

I asked, “How do we know we’re being effective in making disciples?”

He said, “If people are coming consistently on the weekends and getting involved in small groups.”

It was reasonable enough to me then.  But it’s amazing how the weighted evidence of gatherings and worship sets and excel spread sheets literally floated away overnight with the uninvited visit of Hurricane Katrina.

We were left with two choices essentially: pack a bag with our meager belongings and go somewhere else or find the right way to define the Church.

WE ARE ALL WITNESSES

In Cleveland right now, it’s nothing to cruise around town and find these billboards that pay homage to LeBron James.   It is the opinion of many people that LeBron is the best basketball player walking the planet.  Regardless of where you stand with that opinion, it’s difficult to argue his ability, especially with the number of times he does something on the court that you’re forced to rewind, put in slow-mo and still ask, “Did he…How did he do that?”

Nike has done something incredibly ingenious in the marketing of LeBron.  They’ve unleashed a campaign with LeBron James using the slogan “We are all witnesses.”  The line is just pregnant, isn’t it?  There is a sense of urgency and expectation.  If you’re not there, what will happen? You’ll miss it!  You could have been a witness.  You could have told the world what you’d seen.  But you can’t, because you missed it.

It’s interesting that it’s a multi-million or multi-billion dollar campaign that essentially says, “You were all a part of seeing this.”  It’s pretty passive, but at least you’ve got something to tell your grandkids.  “Here’s where I was on the planet when LeBron…”

It’s been said that imitation is the greatest form of flattery.  Before it was sloganized, “The Greatest” said it:

Acts 1:5-8

…in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Pardon me while I rub my goosebumps back into my arm….

Jesus walks the planet in perfection and overturns the works of sin and the enemies of God.  He overcomes all evil and even death.  And when He rises again, He takes the keys to the Kingdom and He does this:

“It’s not enough that I’ve come to suffer all things and to win out victoriously over all.  You will now be my witnesses.”

And when He said that we’d be His witnesses, He wasn’t saying, “You’re going to have a great story to tell your grandkids.”  What He actually did was unfathomable.  He tossed us the keys to His Kingdom.  He called us out of the darkness, out of the role of passive spectator into light. He gave us all authority and power and a mandate to go out to the ends of the earth.

You will be my witnesses.

You will make the invisible reality of me visible.

You will do the works that I have done.

You will do greater things.

The world will take notice.

You will go in my authority and power and share what I’m doing in every crack and crevice on the earth.

That’s huge, scary stuff don’t you think?

So now when we evaluate what we’re doing on this planet with our 70 years, how do we define that?  And how do we know God is at work?  How do we take what Jesus said explicitly and compare that to the way it looks now?

“There’s a lot more people here than there was.”
“More people engage during worship.”
“There are more small groups.”
“We raised some funds.”
“People raised the their hands.”

Does anyone see the problem here? We’ve sold out or settled somehow.  Was this what Jesus promised when He said He was going to send the power His Spirit – the same power that raised Him from the dead?

It’s not even close to the same thing.

You see there was something else that this power was doing.

Acts 4:13-14

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it.

You see, when God is at work, the world can’t help but be amazed.  When you have no flash, you have no program, you have no building, no worship band, you’re really only left with one thing: your witness.  Your story.

And when people looked at those followers of Jesus, what they knew of them and the transformation that was so apparent in front of them absolutely stunned them.  They knew they’d been with Jesus.  There was such a transformation that even their very speech patterns couldn’t be resolved.  “They’re unlearned, how can they speak like this?  Where is this authority coming from?”

It unsettled and shook the very religious authority and they couldn’t say, “Yeah whatever” because even the people who were in close proximity were being transformed as well.  When they walked through town, people were being healed in their very shadows, because of the One who was overshadowing them.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of settling.

When God is at work – and I truly believe He’s not lost a step nor an ounce of desire to bring radical transformation into every person’s life – it is going to be so powerfully evident.  It will rock a whole community.

There will be amazement.  You know why?  Because the people won’t be spectators for a big show, but their very lives will be the big show – exalting a real, ever-present, powerful, loving God.

What do you want?  What do you desire to truly see?  More programs or more God?   Another statistic or another God story?

Witness. The term is pregnant – just as full of expectation as it was the day it rolled off the lips of an ambitious, demanding Jesus.

Be careful how you answer that, because God is calling you to act on it.  To be His witness.

By the way, He’s the King so it’s not a democracy or anything.

What is missional? Part 2: Missio Dei

// July 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

Missio Dei is a heavy Latin phrase that brings a smile to my face everytime I hear it or see it in print.

When kept in the context of the Scriptures, missio Dei correctly emphasizes that God is the initiator of His mission to redeem through the Church a special people for Himself from all of the peoples (τα εθνη) of the world.  He sent His Son for this purpose and He sends the Church into the world with the message of the gospel for the same purpose.

Furthermore it means that God is not a passive God, but that He is actively at work throughout the world trying to bring the Kingdom (His rule and reign) into the world and upon people.  The result of His Kingdom means that people are set free, they are transformed, they are given a new identity, and they live empowered by the Holy Spirit and out of a heart repaired by the overwhelming love of God that enables them to, in turn, love and reach out to the world.

This is who’s mission?  It’s God’s mission.  He started it.  And He will finish it.

Now when Jesus walked the planet He was the “sent one.”  He proclaimed this Kingdom of God not just with words, but His very deeds demonstrated the power and love of God and left no question as to His love for the world.

But what most people don’t take notice of is the fact that Jesus lived a life of relationship and dependency on the Father as He was on mission with God.

John 5:16-19

Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him; not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.

Would you have said that Jesus’ life was normal? You might be thinking, “No, it’s not normal.” It really depends on who’s saying normal. Because in Jesus life and times, what He did on a daily basis drawing crowds to Himself of the people who just wanted to hear Him speak, blessing kids, feeding thousands of people with a kid’s meal from Long John Silver’s was normal. People walked who’d never walked. People gained hearing who’d never heard. People saw the sunrise who’d never seen the light of day. People dead and in their graves – rigormortis had settled in; they were stinking and somehow their lungs expanded and the blood flowed through their veins again – this was all a day in the life of Christ. It was normal.

RELATIONAL RESPONSE

How did Jesus live out this life? If you notice, no place was safe when He was walking the planet. He did a few things in church (the synagogue), but the whole of His ministry was spent among real people, among the broken, in a broken world. Things broke out when Jesus was walking into cities, attending weddings, fishing – even when he was 3 days late for funerals. And the reason wasn’t just because He was God in the flesh.

Jesus modeled a way of relating to God as He did ministry. Jesus remained intimately connected to God the Father. He got away if that’s what He needed to do. But the important thing is that when He left those times of solitude, He didn’t walk away from the Father. He remained with Him.

The very nature of being sent was to reveal and represent the Father.

We toss this term “incarnational” along very loosely these days and thereby render it powerless.  Truly being incarnational doesn’t mean you hang out in coffee shops and that you do social justice in your community.

For Jesus it meant:

“You want to see the Father? Then take a good look at me.”

“Do you want to know how the Father desires to respond in this situation?  Then take a look at what I’m doing.”

Jesus wasn’t trendy, or cool, or hip like the Church often tries to be.  Jesus simply intimately connected to the Father; He knew what God was doing, and God’s heart desire was the engine that propelled the heart of Jesus.

Anything that is NOT initiated by the heart of the  Father is religion; because all mission is birthed out of relationship.

If it’s not what God is up to, then it’s just what we are up to and trying to initiate in the absence of God.  And, quite frankly, it’s not just religion, but it’s sin.

Do you want to be incarnational?  Then speak the words of the Father.  Do precisely what God desires to do in the moment.

That’s scary for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons:

• They are afraid to assume that they know what God wants to do.
• They aren’t hearing the voice of God so they have no clue what to do.
• They’re pretty sure that God hasn’t sent us the same way He sent Jesus.
• They think it’s audacious to say, “You want to see what the Father desires to do at this moment? Then take a look at what I’m doing.”

I think Scripture has made it abundantly clear that God reveals what He is desiring to do in a relational way just like it was for Jesus.

John 15:15

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Jesus is holding back anything.  But often I do question our desire to actually seek and sometimes to wait for the Father to reveal what He’s wanting to do.

And the  other matter with regard to audacity is simply this:

The world already thinks that you speak for God.

The world already thinks we’re audacious.

And I think it’s pretty audacious how we’ve assumed that God wants a distant, general relationship with humanity that is so superficial that it causes us to be so uncreative and distant in the everyday places where God was once known to work, to heal, to transform, to save through the life of our Master Jesus Christ.

And if you think it’s pretty dangerous to send people out like Jesus with them doing the works and speaking the words of the Father, then you probably wouldn’t be comfortable with Jesus’ discipleship program:

I am sending you just as the Father sent me – John 20:21

Misso Dei.  Seek to save what has been lost.

Join God in what He is doing.

Make the unseen Father seen in the moment.

Allow every moment and every space the place where we pray: “Father, let your Kingdom come right here, right now.  Whatever is not what you’re desiring, let it be undone.  It has to stop.  And Father, whatever it is in Your Kingdom, let it me so in this place in this moment.”

What is missional? Part I: The Wrong Question

// July 8th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

What are you guys doing?

In my opinion, the question often precedes the deathnail in the coffin for a church or ministry.

What are you guys doing for evangelism?
What are you guys doing for disicipleship?
What are you guys doing…

And we go to conferences to hear professionals who’ll sell us their next book or give us the step-by-step so that we can do what they’re doing.

What are you guys doing?

Is it just me who feels like there is something wrong with that question?

What is who doing?  You guys?  Them?

What about the question: “What is God doing?” Or an even better question: “God, show me what You’re doing.”

I’ve been blessed to have the opportunity to speak at various churches and youth events across the country.  I’m still genuinely in awe of the fact that I get to do this.

And when a pastor or youth pastor calls me to ask me about coming in, I always ask them: “What’s God up to in your ministry?  What do you see Him doing?  What has God been speaking about specifically?”

And this isn’t a shot on anyone, but, you know, I almost never get a clear answer (if one at all) when I ask that.  I hear some stories about the group and where they’ve been and what they’re trying to accomplish, but I never hear: “God’s at work doing this…”  “God has told us to…”  “God has put _____ in our hearts.”

I almost never hear that.  It’s the norm unfortunately.  And it speaks to a much deeper issue.

Because if we don’t know what God’s doing, if we aren’t hearing His voice on a regular basis, if we don’t even hear Him for ourselves, how can we possibly know what He’s doing in our communities?

And so, because we don’t hear Him or have a clue, we go to conferences, seminars, workshops, blogs, podcasts, etc.  Because someone out there has the answer.  Surely Rick Warren or Bill Hybels or Alan Hirsch or Brian McLaren or Alan Roxburgh is hearing from God.

And I wonder if these guys are feeling the pressure to hear from God for your community.  Because what God is doing in their community may very well NOT be what He’s intending to do in your community.

Listen: a core value, an essential, a mark of being a follower of Jesus – of being His – is that we hear and know His voice.  Look at this:

JOHN 10:3-5
The watchman opens the door for this man, and the sheep listen to his voice and heed it; and he calls his own sheep by name and brings (leads) them out. When he has brought his own sheep outside, he walks on before them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will never [on any account] follow a stranger, but will run away from him because they do not know the voice of strangers or recognize their call.

Here’s Jesus:  “You can tell which ones are Mine, because my voice is unmistakable to them.”
But we don’t know God’s voice often but we know Rick Warren’s PEACE plan, and we have an acrostic for the 5 Purposes.

I’m not knocking great men of God; I’m only saying, why is seeking God’s voice so worth it to them and it’s not to us?

Are we afraid He’s not going to give us a mega ministry?
Are we even more afraid that He’s expecting too much of us?
Are we just afraid that God’s not going to speak?

No offense, but if you’re not hearing from God, you don’t have any business directing people towards a vision He hasn’t given you.

And how can you move forward if you haven’t been lead? How can you not ask the question: where is my Master going?

God’s not general and He’s not hiding His will from anyone.  He’s incredibly generous with details.

EPHESIANS 5:14-17
Therefore He says, Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine (make day dawn) upon you and give you light.Look carefully then how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise (sensible, intelligent people), Making the very most of the time [buying up each opportunity], because the days are evil. Therefore do not be vague and thoughtless and foolish, but understanding and firmly grasping what the will of the Lord is.

It’s God’s mission.  He started it.  He’s already at work around us.

Being missional or being “sent” means that we have to know what the Sender is up to.  We must know His intentions.

Father, Sender, show us what You are doing.

to be continued…Look for Part II