Highlighted Reading-Part 2...

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that one of the books I'd read during my recent vacation was Life After Church: God's Call to Disillusioned Christians by Brian Sanders. I'd pointed out that if you were to pick up my copy of Life After Church, you'd notice the passages I'd highlighted. This post will provide the second installment of what me and my highlighter found meaningful in the chapter titled "Our Building Project."

Community. Church isn't church if it isn't done in community.

What makes us the bride of Christ is that we are something together that we are not alone. For this reason, church, if it is to be fully church, must involve some level of community, people relating to other believers in light of the other two components of church: worship and mission.

You can have a group of people who worship together but never really interact. In fact, it can be a very powerful and beautiful experience, one that enriches everyone involved and brings glory to God.

But it's not church. It's worship.

Likewise, you can have people gathering in community, like a sitcom cast or sports team. Those relationships can be very real, rich and meaningful, but they're not church.

People leave churches in part because the force of life on a church without deep community is centrifugal. Any pressure, disagreement, conflict or philosophical difference can end in "divorce" because the bond isn't there. We have to build churches where people can really know each other, where they are connected in a deeper way than a loose commitment to a certain style of music or a pastor.

Here is the irony of community: you as an individual will never reach your personal destiny, fulfill who you are, use your gifts effectively or unlock your potential until you're in community. The personal and the communal are inextricably bound, because God is found in his body.

Highlighted Reading-Part 1...

One of the books I read during my recent vacation was Life After Church: God's Call to Disillusioned Christians by Brian Sanders. I'd started the book prior to leaving on vacation, and had shared some of my initial impressions of it in an earlier post.

If you were to pick up my copy of Life After Church, you'd notice the passages I'd highlighted. This post will serve the same purpose as your reading over my shoulder, and seeing what me and my highlighter found meaningful in the chapter titled "Our Building Project."

Acts 9 tells the story of the conversion of a religious zealot named Saul. Saul spearheaded a wave of persecution against those who would later be called Christians. All that changed the day Saul had a blinding vision of the resurrected Jesus calling him to worship, community and mission.

Saul was being called into the church. These three things (worship, community and mission) are what Jesus calls all of his people into, and they are the three essentials of what it means to be church.

Worship. This is the first element of the minimum for church: the worship and acknowledgement of the one true God and his incarnation Jesus Christ. I don't mean worship in the sense that we commonly understand it, as a time of thinking about God and his worth, but rather the offering of one's life to God in total surrender in proportion to the revelation of his worth. This is worship.

Unconsciously we have thought of church more as a building or weekly gathering than as a living, breathing being known to God. Gathering just to worship, while important and good, isn't enough to be called church. It is worship. Just as gathering believers to worship and even for deep relationships, while important, is not church if those same people don't participate in some way in the Great Commission.

A Gator Tale...

Florida resident, Leslie Strickland, said she had nothing but good intentions when she loaded a badly hurt six-foot alligator into the back seat of her car and took it home.

Leslie had hit the alligator with her car on a Friday night and went back to rescue it the next day… but wound up spending a night in jail, charged with possession of an alligator, a felony in Florida.

Strickland said she drove the gator home, wet it down with hose and then tried unsuccessfully to reach somebody with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission.

After neighbors told her it was illegal to have the alligator, Leslie loaded it back into her car and drove off in search of a pond to release the alligator into.

But the alligator started to thrash its tail. Distracted, Leslie veered off the road and hit a mailbox. Witnesses told police she tried to drive off, but her car got stuck in the ditch. So she got out and walked away.

Police arrested Leslie at her home nearby, adding a charge of resisting arrest after she struggled with officers who tried to handcuff her. She said she "freaked out" at the prospect of going to jail.

The game commission finally removed the alligator from her car… it died later.

There's a moral in that tale somewhere...

Enjoying the Holiday...

I know this is an old clip... but having spent so many great 4th of Julys nearly blowing my fingers off with fireworks, I'm taking vicarious pleasure in this kid's painful predicament. (I will duly repent.)



Enjoy your holiday!

The Future & You...

Vacationing in the pleasant environs of North Georgia, I discovered a copy of the February 1989 edition of LIFE Magazine... an issue in which the editors turned on their crystal balls in order to give their readers a glimpse into "The Future & You."

I found LIFE's gaze into the future interesting. Here's their preview (from the vantage point of 1989) of the coming revolution in telephone service:

* Video will be added, allowing callers to reach out and see someone.
* Portable phones will shrink to the size of a tie clip-and may double as such. (Seen any cool tie clips lately?!)
* Distinctive ring tones will reveal the identity of the caller.
* Simultaneous voice-simulated translations will permit callers to converse with people speaking different languages.
* At-home medical examinations will be conducted via the phone.

What's your picture of the future twenty years down the road?

Time To Think...

I'm loving being in vacation mode. It's been great having an unstructured week of reading, walking, thinking and praying. A big downside to leaving vacation mode is that it becomes much more challenging to find time to just think.

I found the following on Inc.com as a part of a larger article titled Innovation: How To Stay Creative. I'm thinking the creative team at BrightHouse has provided us with a bright idea.

"The five last bastions of thinking are the car, the john, the shower, the church or synagogue, and the gym," says Joey Reiman, CEO of BrightHouse, an Atlanta-based innovation consulting firm whose clients include Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines. Note the absence of office from that roster.

In addition to nearly five weeks' vacation, BrightHouse's 18 staff members get five Your Days, in which they are encouraged to visit a spot conducive to reflection and let their neurons rip. No mandate to solve a particular problem. Just blue-sky thinking -- often under actual blue skies.

Reiman believes this unstructured cogitation is just as important to a project's success as time spent hunkered down in client meetings. Or as he puts it: "I think; therefore, I am valuable."

Make Us Dangerous...

I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting Mark Batterson, the lead pastor for the National Community Church in Washington, D.C. I have heard Mark speak at a couple of conferences, and I read his blog frequently. My impression of Mark is that he practices what he preaches... and he's a straight-shooter. Here's a recent post from Mark's blog with the kind of challenge that keeps a God-fire lit under me:

Jesus didn't die to keep us safe. He died to make us dangerous! The will of God is not an insurance plan. It's a daring plan. In fact, the will of God doesn't get easier. God gives us more difficult, daring, and dangerous things to do! Read Hebrews 11.

In the words of a daring twentieth-century missionary, C.T. Studd: "Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell."

The church needs more Studds! And you can quote me on that.