Vital Question #2

How are we helping people to encounter the Living God?

I talk to an enormous volume of people who say that Church is not helping them to experience, know or grow in God. As a Pastor, this is alarming, for sure.

We have spent a great deal of time investigating what it means to encounter God. What constitutes a "God encounter" and how do those occur? In fact, can they be fostered? Are their environments in which an encounter is more likely to occur? Obviously we could debate these ideas in a hundred directions.

I believe people encounter God every time He reveals something about who He is, what He is up to in your life, or what He is up to in the world.

When I gain insight like that, I've encountered God. This can happen in any context, physical location or physical activity...that is what I love about God. It can also happen in the gathering of the community of faith, and must be happening consistently, for those who hunger and thirst for such encounters.

The best context for these revelations to occur is in worship and/or in the scriptures. At GCC we say "It is the responsibility of every believer to encounter God through worship and the Scriptures, both individually and corporately."

There are also significant "mystical" encounters in a person's journey of faith. Probably a hand-full of times, a follower of Jesus can expect to experience significant God moments that mark significant change, transition or transformation in his/her lifetime. These become demarcations or "altars" that are returned to throughout life to recalibrate our spiritual compass.

Being a community of faith that is safe, anchored in the scriptures, hungry to worship the living God and open to the supernatural ways God may want to reveal Himself is a key gift we can give to people on their journey.

Vital Question #1

How are we, as a church, helping people far from God to find their way back?

Because I could go all day on this discussion, I will limit myself to a bullet-point list, and in no particular order of importance. DISCLAIMER: I am not intending to state that GCC has this all figured out. We are processing these questions as a staff currently and intend to structure ourselves in appropriate ways as we figure this out.

* Remove every cultural barrier in our gatherings that hinders the clear message of God's reckless love for us. This includes language used, dress code, musical style, authenticity of the communicator, refusing to slam other faiths/traditions, respecting the journey of every person, etc.

* Run religion, and all it's trappings, far, far, far from us. This includes judgmental attitudes, legalism, hyper-spirituality, sacred cows, fundamentalist political statements, etc.

* Teach our people how to love, serve and honestly befriend unchurched or irreligious people.

* Serve our City. Care about and contribute toward the things that matter to our city. Education, schools, delinquency, homelessness, drug issues, parks, safety, the arts, sports, etc. The opportunities to serve our city, with no ulterior motive but to make it a better place to live, are limitless.

* Defend the rights of the disenfranchised. They are people, too, and are in fact the ones Jesus concerned himself with the most. Often churches overlook them because they can be messy, expensive and labor intensive. So what. That should be the business we are in.

* Serve families. Parents are hungry for support, training and encouragement, no matter what their faith compass is. We can contribute to strong families in our city.

* Volunteer outside the church. Yes, I just said that! Hospitals, boy scouts, girl scouts, public schools, libraries, athletic programs, etc are all powerful places for us to serve others, with no ulterior motives, and let those around us "smell the fragrance of Christ".

Share you faith constantly. And, if at all necessary, use words.

Thinking Systemically

I believe there are 10 vital questions that we, at Grace, must answer and the answers need to be systemic answers...the way we do things...for us to be the Church God is calling us to be.

I don't believe these questions will change. The answers must change as times, people and cultures change, but the questions remain the same.

Starting tomorrow, I will begin to take one question at a time and give current thinking going on at GCC.

Here are the 10 questions:

1. How are we helping people far from God find their way back to Him?

2. How are we helping people to encounter the Living God?

3. How are we helping people experience and establish intergenerational community?

4. How are we helping people discover and establish personal spiritual disciplines?

5. How are we helping people show Jesus to the world through servant-hood?

6. What are we doing to partner with and equip families?

7. How are we producing spiritually interdependent adults?

8. How are we reproducing leaders?

9. How are we helping people to discover, develop and deploy their gifts and calling?

10. How are we reproducing Churches?

I Love Our Church!

Today we had over 8 inches of snow on the ground! Did that stop our folks from coming to church? Not really.

Our attendance was down, but not dramatically.

The only problem was I lost my voice last night and it didn't come back. On top of that, we didn't video last night's service, so we only had audio. So, we improvised and chose a powerful message from Craig Groeschel of Life Church and showed it to the Sunday crowds. They were wonderful gatherings and God spoke to us.

By the way, we could improvise like that because of a great website with free video teaching of some of the best communicators in the world. Gotta love what God is doing through technology!

For those who want to keep up with our series, "Knowing God", the podcast will be on our website tomorrow morning, but we won't have any video.

Way to go GCCers!!!

The Self-Life Challenge

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it" Matthew 16:24-25

Deny yourself and lose your life. Hmmmmmm.

I think those are synonymous. In other words, we must deny or lose our self-life. What does that mean?

Consider the following questions:

* Where do I find my primary value as a man (or woman)?

* What does my inner self yearn for in my free thinking time?

* What do I dream about?

* If I could wave a magic wand and get whatever I thought would make my life complete, what would I seek?

* Does the answer to any of these questions indicate that Jesus does not occupy the throne in my heart?

* What must I crucify or deny so that I can give my entire heart to God?

So, what is Jesus saying to you, as His disciple?

Religiosity Sucks

I'm in Springfield, MO this week. On Sunday, Sue's dad had a horrific day and it looked like things were plummeting quickly. So, 2 of my kids and I jumped in the car and headed to Missouri to see him. He is dramatically better today, though we haven't heard about the medical issues in a couple of days, so we're waiting for the doctor visit.

But on to my point.
If you are familiar with Springfield, you know that it is the headquarter city for a couple of denominations and a visible demonstration, in my humble-but-accurate opinion, of the breakdown between religious people and everyone else.

It seems that many of the religious folk here are pious, sincere, detached, and completely irrelevant to the common man. The people in Springfield who are far from God tend to have an anti-Church and, often, anti-Christian perspective because of the gross disconnect between the world they live in and the world of religion.

Honestly, it makes me want to quit being a Pastor, open a small business and infiltrate the culture covertly with the love of God. This city makes me wonder if I couldn't have more impact that way than typical pastoring can have.

God, help your people to love you intensely, live lives normal folk can understand and love people as crazily and recklessly as you!

Lessons From Cancer

It's been a very difficult week. Sue's dad is fighting for his life against pancreatic cancer and then had to have emergency surgery to try and repair some torn sutures (sp?).

Last night and this morning, I sensed that God was speaking to my heart about a aligning my faith with my confession.

I've been obsessing over what the Doctors are saying, what they anticipate and what the prognosis is. I'm getting very sketchy information because Joyce (Sue's mom) has been all alone this week and she just doesn't remember what the Dr is saying, at least in a detailed way or what terms he's using.

I hear God asking me a question. "If I'm bigger than cancer, and greater than any medical treatment or procedure, and you trust me with all you've got, why are you obsessing over what the doctors are saying?"

Lesson? The only thing that matters is what God is up to, what He says, and what He plans to do. Absolutely no doctor, scientist, or whatever, can trump the hand of God. I'm not saying God will definitely heal dad, which I believe He will. What I am saying is that nothing matters except God and His activity in this matter.

The assessments of the world, the medical profession, the government, the economy, etc, just don't have squat to do with what God may want to accomplish. Therefore, navigate wisely, follow Doctors' orders and let God call cadence on your confidence and peace levels.

He is bigger...than everything.