Faith Becoming Known

I received a phone call yesterday from a representative of Roanoke Bible College in Elizabeth City, NC. Patti took the call, expecting a request to come and speak to our teens about attending their school. Yet, the request we received was quite different.

It seems that Standard Publishing is conducting a regional seminar on RBC's campus entitled, Energizing Smaller Churches. It is an equipping opportunity for church leaders in the eastern US who serve churches with 200 or fewer in attendance. It seems that those putting together this seminar have "heard about how God is working at Community" and wanted to invite me to be a presenter.

My first reaction, after hanging up the phone was to laugh out loud. I appreciate the invite, but I think their vetting process needs some work. The reality is, if I actually felt like I had anything to offer (i.e., knew what I was doing), I might accept. But most weeks it feels more like God is doing His thing, and I'm just trying to keep up or, more accurately, stay out of His way. That's not a bad place to be but I'm just not sure that's the "how-to" stuff they are looking for.

Then it hit me... "the way outsiders view Community is changing." These people didn't know me from Adam, but they had heard what God was doing in this church. That brought a smile to my face. God is working, people are noticing the transformation, and God is being praised. That is the vision of our church - individually and collectively. During the smile-fest, God reminded me of something Paul said to the Christians in Rome: "Let me say first of all that your faith in God is becoming known..." Romans 1:8. Very, very cool.

Pray for wisdom as I decide what to do with this invitation. I don't really need another thing to do. Yet, if this is an opportunity to glorify God by talking about how He is working in our church and, at the same time, a chance to encourage the hearts of other leaders, it might be a very good thing.

New Series: Retro Church

For newcomers, going to church can feel like stepping out of a time-machine into another world with a foreign language, strange teachings and traditions from a distant century. If we've been in church for a while these activities can become so familiar they lose their sense of wonder. But the question remains: What relevance do any of these ancient practices have to my life? Shouldn't we just flag them as outdated and move on? Yet, they seemed to be at the heart of the life of the first-century church, but do they have value for us? How do attitudes and approaches of the ancient church mesh with our own? We’ll dig deeper to discover where these ancient teachings and traditions came from and why they are still important for us.

June 29 “What’s The Skinny on the Dip?” Baptism
Baptism seems like a really weird event to someone one who hasn’t bee raised in a Christian home. Yet, baptism was an important marker in the lives of the earliest Christ-followers. In this message we’ll explore what the Bible says about this strange, yet meaningful, expression of faith.

July 6 “They Expect Me To Pay For That?” Communion
What’s the deal with the juice and cracker and why does it matter to my life and my spiritual journey? In this message we’ll explore one of the “rites” of Christianity that binds us together as family and helps focus our hearts on Jesus Christ.

July 13 “Excuse Me, Are You In My Seat?” Hospitality
Making room for others is not easy for us. Yet, the early Christ-followers found ways to make space for others in their families, around their tables and in their worship. This message explores how we can recapture the art hospitality in an impersonal world.

July 20 “Isn’t Faith A Personal Thing?” Evangelism
Some of Jesus’ last words to his disciples called them to go and share their new-found faith with others – and they did. The church grew and the number of disciples multiplied and eventually, through the generations, it has come to us. How can we be the bridge that Jesus calls us to be to future generations in a culture that seems hostile to our message?

Putting Things Together

The part of the elephant we are eating this summer is to "pull different discipleship activities into one unified process for spiritual growth." Churches often do many activities that have a goal of helping people grow spiritually. These activities include: Worship, Preaching, Bible Classes, Small Groups, Ladies Classes, Retreats, Seminars, Book Clubs, Daily Devotionals, etc., just to name a few. In any given week the number of different messages these activities can generate is overwhelming. We might get one message in our Bible study, another message in the sermon, another during a Lord's Supper devotional and another during our small group. This makes all of them difficult to remember and even more difficult to apply. As one writer noted, they become a bed of nails. Lie down on a thousand nails and they won't penetrate the skin. Why? The pressure of each point is diffused by all the others around it. Too many different messages often won't penetrate our hearts and bring real change.

Therefore, our goal (with the "Fully Alive" series beginning July 27th) is to identify one “Big Idea” each week that is important to the spiritual growth of attendees and members, then use a number of weekly activities to reinforce that one message.

Toward this end we have several teams that are working hard to bring this process together. If you have a specific interest in one of these teams, please contact the team leader.

Preaching Team. Each week’s work begins with the Preaching Team and flows to other work groups from there. This team meets weekly to plan, brainstorm and formulate the big ideas, texts, and outlines for Sunday messages and define desired outcomes in the hearts and lives of the listeners. This team meets every Thursday from 3:00-5:00 PM. During each meeting the team discusses a message that will be preached two months in the future. Members of this team include: Brent Brady (lead), Sean McCarthy, Jim Waldo and Jay Sessoms (apprentice). When this group's work is completed it is given to the Discipleship Team, Worship Team and Resource Team so they can complete their piece of the process.

Discipleship Team. This team is responsible for creating five daily devotionals and one small group study each week which accent the "Big Idea." Each daily devotional consists of a Bible reading and 4-6 questions that encourage personal study and life application. The small group experience will allow further discussion and specific application of the Sunday morning message. Team members include Sean McCarthy (lead),Steve Raley, Charlie Fooks, and Michele Keeton.

Worship Planning Team: This team provides creative content and flow which ensure that our Sunday morning worship clearly communicates and reinforces the week's "Big Idea." Team members include Juliana Smith (lead), David Smith, Brent Brady, and Sean McCarthy.

Research Team: This team provides research items (i.e., articles, illustrations, quotes, insights, etc) to the above teams which, when appropriate, will be integrated into the final work each group produces. This team works independently and does not have formal meetings. Team members include: Brent Brady (lead), Bill Hill, and Anne Bass.

We wanted you to know that many people are working behind to ensure that Community provides relevant environments where you can continue your quest to "follow Jesus so closely that your life is changing to be like His."

Eating the Elephant

The old adage asks: "How do you eat an elephant?" The answer, "One bite at a time." I love that. It reminds us that most of the challenges we face in life are too large to tackle in one sitting. Success comes by making steady, intentional progress over the long haul. This is true in raising our kids, planning for retirement, enriching our marriages and growing a church.

A year-and-a-half ago our leaders began eating the elephant of transforming our church family. We had a vision for a healthy growing church that is welcoming newcomers, growing disciples and impacting our community. The elephant was big. God's dreams usually are. One thing we were sure of was that if we tried to do everything at once, with our limited resources, it was a recipe for failure. We knew we had to break this task into bite size pieces, find a logical starting place, and go to work.

One obvious, and often forgotten, part of this approach is that we will always see things that need our attention that we haven't gotten to. It is easy to see the parts of the elephant that haven't been eaten yet. I think one of the challenges of the adage is not to be overwhelmed and discouraged by looking at what has yet to be accomplished but to keep making steady progress "convinced that He who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion" (Phil. 1:5-7).

The first course of our renewal was a focus on our Foyer. The foyer is the place we are welcoming guests. With God's provision, we have spent the last year upgrading our facilities, refining our follow-up processes, lifting the level of our worship experience and learning to be good hosts. We have worked hard, and there is more to do. God is blessing our efforts and new families are connecting with our congregation. Our foyer is functioning well. Yet, we realize what we have just eaten is not the whole elephant. In other words, none of our leaders are interested in being a welcoming church with no spiritual depth, where no lives are changing, which is making no impact on our community. Therefore...

This summer marks a shift in focus in our transformation process, a second course. We are stepping down from our Foyer to focus on the Living Room. The living room is where our members do life together. The living room is the place where we truly focus on God's work of life-transformation, becoming more like Jesus. Our leaders are committed to be a church whose members are concerned about the things God is concerned about. Sean has come on board to help carry this burden. Tomorrow I'll share with you some exciting first steps that you will begin to see the week of July 27th.

Till then, keep praying for Community and eating the elephant of God's purpose for your life, one bite at a time.

Reality Check

I love our church. Amy Pfingst just came into my office and said "I have a reality check for you."

The backstory is that each person was given a flower yesterday as they entered our worship service. In the message from Jonah 4 I talked about how Jonah's concerns and God's concerns were very different. Jonah was concerned about a vine that he had not planted, tended or caused to grow, and only had a short-life span. He loved it because it provided him some temporary relief and comfort. In the story God was ultimately concerned about people who would spend an eternity somewhere. I asked each person to let their flower represent the things that kept them from sharing God's concern. I told the hearers to take the flower home, don't water it, and as it dries, turns brown and withers to let it be a reminder that the things we're most concerned about are often temporary and also to remind us to invest our lives in people.

Now it gets interesting. Amy said that on their way home yesterday Hannah (a seven-year-old with a green thumb) reminded her mother that they must put the flower in water as soon as they get home. Amy tried valiantly to explain my point and informed Hannah that they would not be watering the flower. Hannah repeatedly objected and and again asked "Why?". Amy responded: "Because Mr. Brent said so." Then Danny's voice came booming from the back seat (Danny is a six-year-old with Mike as a role model) "Mr. Brent is Not God!" I almost fell off my chair.

What can we learn from this little exchange. First, it is true - in fact - I am not God. A surprise to many of you I'm sure, but Danny is correct. Second, this exchange is a wonderful illustration of Jonah 4. If I had used the illustration I originally thought of I would have been run out of town on a rail. I almost bought a small tree and set it on the stage, and left it there untended to die. Not a good idea. Besides, some of you would have begun sneaking around and watering it anyway. Why? Because, I'm with Hannah, it just seems wrong to let something whither and die from neglect. But sometimes our compassions getsa little out of whack. Here's a question: how much compassion can we muster for any one of the 155,000 individuals who will leave this planet today - or the other 6 billion who will eventually?

Relevant Life, Relevant Church Part 2 - Sean

I’ve come to the point where I confidently believe that being relevant to our culture, and the people around us is not an option. Being relevant means that what we do as followers of Jesus, as a Church need to make sense and matter to unbelievers. We can’t forget the love that Jesus has for those who haven’t decided to come to Him yet. The Bible says that they are like lost sheep and He is willing to go after them. Not only does He go after them, he commissioned the Church to go after them and this is where relevance becomes more than just a good thought.

There’s this close friend of mine named Legesse Awoke. He’s from Ethiopia but came to America about 8 years ago. His native language is Amharic, but he speaks English really well, even though he has a thick accent. Eventually his brother came over from Ethiopia and moved in with him. Whenever I would visit his place, I noticed that the whole time he and his brother were speaking in English, even when they were just having a private conversation with each other. They wouldn’t speak Amharic. One time I asked him, “Legesse, why don’t you and your brother speak Amharic when I’m around?” He said, “No Sean that would be bad.” I asked why, and he told me, “Because you don’t speak our language. I don’t want to leave you out.”

It hit me, we, the Church; speak a different language and the result is that we leave others out! And I’m not just talking about the words we use, but they way we don’t explain things, the way we assume people know things in the Bible, the way we expect them to fall in line when they come into the church building

I even think about how God models relevance to us. God looked at us and realized we had strayed, but what did He do? He came down here Himself to be relevant to us. I think about the Bible – God spoke to us using human language – we know that the Bible talks about some kind of spiritual angelic language that we could never speak or know, but God chose to speak to us in human language. Not to mention the work He is allowing and protecting with Bible translation to all languages in the world! I even think about the story where God spoke to the Israelites and they trembled, and were scared to death! So God said, “Alright, I’ll just speak through Moses from now on.” Because God wants to be relevant to us!

Shouldn’t we follow Jesus? Jesus was relevant, how can we be? Until next time my faithful readers.

Relevant life, Relevant Church (Part I) - Sean

I’ve wrestled with so many questions in my life and one of the biggest questions is about the image and work of the Church and it’s the question “How important is it to be relevant to our community and the world?”

I ask this question because it seems like there is an ongoing tug of war among Christians about relevance. I know that some people are so afraid that being relevant is going to water down the message of Christ, but I’ve always thought that it doesn’t have to. I think one of the major causes of these arguments comes down to a definition of a word that is thrown around too carelessly. It’s the word “worldly.” We throw that word around as an insult but what does it really mean? I was looking through Bible verses in different versions that used the word worldly and I noticed that every time it was used it was always describing an attitude of a “me-focused world.” Every time you look up that word it has to do with a mindset that we all struggle with, the mind set that everything in this world is here for me. It’s forgetting that the world is bigger than us.

The word worldly is never used to describe a style, words we use, places or events it’s a mind set, an attitude that people get stuck in. Relevance does not mean we are watering down the message for a “worldly” substitute. Relevance means that we live life in the same world, speaking the same language, and embracing the same culture. For some reason, someone once thought that being a Jesus follower meant that you abandoned the culture you were in and created some sort of Christian sub-culture where we have similar music, but it’s just not as good, we have similar clothes, but they just have cheesy pro Jesus sayings on them – and some how we still live there in that thought pattern. In the thought pattern that Christianity cannot blend with the current culture we live in but it’s simply not true. In fact one of the most beautiful things about faith in Jesus is that it’s a faith that translates into any and every culture. I’ve learned that we are so much more influential and accomplish the mission of Jesus when we live with unbelievers rather than living in spite of them

So the question that scares me the most is what happens if we aren’t relevant? What are the consequences? What are we missing out on that God has planned for us because we’re too busy fighting over trivial stuff? More importantly, how are the people God has put in our lives suffering from our stubbornness? So how can we be relevant? We’ll talk about that next time.