Mission Serve

This past week, I had the opportunity to serve as the speaker at Mission Serve’s Denver, CO project.  The theme of the week was Viral: the Good News of Jesus Christ can go viral when His people are the church and are making disciples.  The week consisted of the students working on various work projects from striping a parking lot and preforming general maintenance for a non-profit resource center in the area, to working on a rental house for a church plant so the space can be used for meetings, to helping Habitat For Humanity build a house, and working for a catholic school who is without a custodial staff.

Mission Serve drew groups from Colorado, California, Missouri, and Arizona.  The students worked hard to accomplish tasks that the different groups could not do on their own.  We are grateful for their energy and effort during the week.  I had the privilege to work with some amazing people this week.   I always walk away from a week like this tired physically but encouraged.  As I re-enter, real life I am reminded that I too must make disciples and I pray that God uses me to impact the lives of many in the neighborhood of Lowry and beyond.

 

If you would like to know more information about Mission Serve click here.

Tension Point

Much is made of the Great Commission, and rightfully so.  It provides the church its marching orders from Jesus.  We are to be making disciples.  Discipleship is a life long process.  In the evangelical church world we tend to focus on conversions, sometimes to the detriment of making disciples.  Making disciples must be our focus.

Lately, God has had me contemplating the Great Commandment.  Part of what God is shaping us to do here in Denver is to love Him with all of our lives, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are not forsaking the Great Commission, but instead taking it to the people who need it most.  We are actively engaged in neighboring and discipleship.  We seek to make much of the God who has created us, loved us, redeemed us and called us.  We desire to show God’s love to others though our lives.

In a place where the institutional church is marginal at best, we desire to be the church present in our neighborhood and city that cares for the people and helps them to see the one true God who loves them.  This means engaging people where they are.  There is tension between living out the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

Love of Christ

“I pray that you may have the power to grasp how wide, and how long, and how high and how deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses all knowledge.” Ephesians 3:18
This is my prayer for our neighbors! We are surrounded by very successful professionals, intelligent upwardly mobile families with high levels of education and much worldly success. This leads to a contentment with life as it is, a feeling of being blessed with many things and no real “need” for God. The love of Christ, which is in us, is what fuels us to live in and love on this neighborhood. We have already been told in different ways that neighbors see something different in us and are drawn to it. We want them to grasp the love of Christ and see that unique love surpass all knowledge and “success”. Pray they will see Him in us, have ears to hear the Gospel and our testimonies, and experience His great love personally!
We are having gospel conversations more regularly now, as we have met and can call many neighbors by name now. We know God is deepening our connection with several specific neighbors and we are praying for salvation for these and for a chance to disciple them and see them grow in Christ!

Making Disciples

One of my life long goals is to learn something new every day. I am an information hound who enjoys books, documentaries and museums. But knowing things and gaining information is not the be all end all of the Christian life. Information does play its role, but that is not all that Jesus asked of us in the great commission. He asked for us to make disciples and to teach them and to baptize them.

Discipleship cannot be fully understood outside of the Jewish culture and the ultimate rabbi, Jesus. Jesus called men to follow him in all that he did and to dedicate their lives to imitating him. There were times of formal learning but there were many more times of informal (relational) learning. Discipleship in this sense requires proximity more than information.

After all, our goal in making disciples is not smart people, but changed people. As we follow Christ, may we lead others to imitate Jesus just as the disciples did.

Thinking like a Missionary

If you were to ask me a year ago about what church planting would look like, I would have given you a much different answer than I would today. My idea of church planting was mostly about the service and quickly gathering people to fill a space and to meet the budget, so that your church could be self sustaining. But this past year has challenged me to think more like a missionary in a community and not so much about programing, people for number’s sake or budget needs. The Kingdom of God,along with disciple making, must be the focus. Part of this shift in thinking is the context and other parts are what God has been showing me about the church, discipleship, mission, and the Kingdom.

Missional Communities will be the driving force in our church. These are groups of people who do life together, intentionally spend time with non-believers, minister in the community around them, and share meals and bible study regularly. These groups are messy, relationship driven, intergenerational, and outwardly focused. (As I type this, it excites me to think of the people we will meet, minister to and with, and the impact we will make in Lowry and beyond because of groups like these.) We will gather together for worship and we will have children’s programs, to some extent. But our main focus will be building a community of disciple makers. We want to not just think like missionaries; we want to live like missionaries.

God at the Movies

This past weekend Amanda and I went on a date to celebrate my birthday. I was privileged to have a late lunch and take in a movie with my sweetheart. Our movie of choice was Les Miserables. Having seen the movie that came out a few years ago, I knew the story line but I was taken back by the musical version. As we sat there glued to the silver screen, several biblical themes came to the forefront and, since then, I have not been able to put them to rest.

First, the idea of justice verses mercy, personified by Inspector Javert and Jean Valjean. Both men claimed religious reasons for their actions. Javert reminded me of the Pharisees while Jean Valjean made me think of Christ. Javert wanted justice to be done at the cost of humanity, while Valjean was more worried about the person than the law. Too many times, I am so focused on doing the “right” thing that I miss the rights of the person. As a believer, I struggle to show mercy like Christ. This idea throughout the film revealed my sinfulness and focus on rules, not souls. I am to show the mercy of God in this fallen world, not demand justice that I myself cannot enforce or live up to.

Secondly, discipleship is seen in the life of Jean Valjean and Cosette. When Valjean follows through on his commitment to care for Cosette, he promises that he will always be there for her and love her. Later in life, Cosette voices those same words to her future husband. Our goal as followers of Christ is to make disciples. This is not a class you take or a number of books to be read; discipleship is walking together toward God. It is allowing Christ to shine through in our lives so that it will be reflected in those who we are discipling. Those we disciple will look like us. It is my prayer that I am leading people to follow me as I follow Christ (to take the words of Paul in 1 Cor. 11:1).

Finally, the theme of revolution loomed large in Les Miserables. These young men were captivated by revolution, not just for personal glory but for the betterment of their people and those who would come after them. Are we willing to give our lives to the revolution that God is creating though His Son, Jesus? Are we captivated with the ideas of the Kingdom of God, the redemption of man through Christ and the desire to see all nations turn to Jesus in repentance? If not, we are missing the whispers of revolution that is God-created and God-centered.

All this from a movie. God is so good to speak to us if we will only listen. Ephesians 5:16 tells us to redeem the time. We need to allow God’s redeeming desire to flow into all parts of life, even a night at the movies.