A Time of Learning

 

I took the boys to this park on the edge of Puget Sound this week.  While there you have great views of the Naval Base and can hear sea lions barking in the background!

 

I wrestle each week with what to post here on the blog.  It isn't that I have to search long and hard to find things that God is doing here in Everett.  He moves every day and is quite active here, both in our hearts and in the hearts of people around us.  The challenge is that there are things that go on behind the scenes that sometimes are personal to people around us because the circumstance deals directly with their life.  I don't ever want this to become a place where we trumpet good deeds being done in an effort to make us look good.  That's popular in this age we live in but is totally inappropriate as a follower of Jesus.  We are commanded to not "do your good deeds publically, to be admired by others..." (Matthew 6:1), so while many great things have happened this week, because of their personal nature with people in our church they won't be posted here.  However, please join us in praising God that He is moving in lives here in Everett, and they are changing for the better!  Only He can do that.

I can focus instead on a great learning experience from Saturday.  A group of us from EFC went down to Renton to experience a training event titled "When Helping Hurts", which is based upon a wonderful book of the same title.  The basic premise of the training is that the world and the church don't do a good job of helping the poor because we are only treating symptoms of a much deeper problem.  We unfortunately have experienced this firsthand here.  Consider the homeless for a second:  many of them request money but when money is provided it only goes to alcohol or drugs.  The alcohol and drugs are often their "medication" to treat the deep sense of aloneness and spiritual emptiness that they feel.  When many people learn this lesson the hard way, their response is usually to back away from the homeless and stop giving anything because, after all, they won't use the resources the right way.  But doing that is also wrong, because the problem still hasn't been addressed.  On top of that, to back away in horror or disgust is to lack love for that person.

We learned to instead view the problem as a person being disconnected from God, themself, other people, and the community.  But before we get to this point, we have to view every human being in the world as being poor.  You might argue with this point, especially if you've heard me teach, by reminding me that you yourself aren't poor.  Economically you probably are not since all of America is in the richest 20% of the world population.  But how about spiritually?  Like it or not, you and I are spiritually broken people.  While we may attempt to know God and become like him, we still have this thing called sin which, no matter what, is a disease that persists in our bodies until the day we die.  So in light of this perspective, are you poor?

Or maybe you still don't consider yourself spiritually poor.  Are you poor in relationship with the rest of creation?  We were commanded by Jesus to:

John 13:34-35
³⁴ So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. ³⁵ Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

And yet we have a global church that isn't meeting the needs of orphans, widows, or the poor.   You are right in thinking that some in the church are doing these things, but not many in proportion to people who regularly attend.  Jesus also said that our neighbor is everyone around us (Luke 10:25-37), and yet how many of us can name a single thing we have done to show love to someone who is NOT in our family or group of friends.  Can you think of any recent examples in your own life?

Matthew 5:46-47  

46 If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. 47 If you are kind only to your friends,[s] how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. 
If we are all poor, then we are in this journey toward Jesus together.  We can walk alongside someone else who is poor and lead them toward Christ through discipleship.  This also was a command of Jesus.  Instead of giving money away, we can find ways to empower them to make lasting change in their lives, through our love for them.  However we must remember that a person who is barely surviving through 30 years of a broken life will not change overnight, just as you and I haven't changed overnight.  It may take years and a lot of frustration and persistence, but even if it does, is there any better way to demonstrate the love of Jesus to someone?  Isn't He doing that very same thing to you?

Our team is challenged with this new perspective, and I believe that the Lord brought this training to us at just the perfect time.  We are praying and considering His vision for our ministry in Everett, and what better way to do that than to constantly consider the best way to "love our neighbor as ourself"?  The more I read the words of Jesus the more I see that He calls us to give our lives away in love to Him and to others.  Our job now is to figure out what that looks like in our specific neighborhood and context.  I am convinced the Lord will show this to us.  Please join us in prayer as we seek the Lord's vision for this new ministry.

Further Information

If you are interested in this new way of thinking about loving those around you, I would encourage you to listen to my recent sermon on this very topic.  You can access it by clicking on the Sermon Recordings tab at the top of this blog.  I believe the Lord spoke in a fresh way through this lesson, and I personally learned a lot in just putting it together.

Sundown over the Port of Everett with the Naval Base in the background.

A Work in the Heart

Fall is on its way here in the Seattle area.  The leaves are beginning to turn and our morning temperatures this week dropped into the 40's once again.  Our weather continues to be second to none, but you can tell a change is already happening.  We have already lost almost 4 hours of daylight and the sun now comes up after 6:30 AM and sets around 7:30 PM.  Whereas people currently can be found outside enjoying the sun, very soon we will head inside to endure a cold and dark winter.  This reminded me again of our challenge in being here to plant a church.  There is a limited amount of time here to find people outside and connect with them.  Once they disappear into their houses, you might not see them again until next May!

 Sunrise over the Cascade Mountains.  The Lord drew me out onto our back porch several mornings this week to show me what He can create.  Psalm 19:1

Men's Retreat

Last weekend many of the men from EFC gathered together for the Men's Retreat. We drove to Maple Valley, Washington, a town pretty close to Mt. Rainier, and stayed at a resort with lake and mountain views. Friday evening started with some teaching from "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan, which is one of the top 3 most influential Christian books for me. All weekend we wrestled with the idea of what a lukewarm follower of Jesus looks like from Revelation 3, and were challenged by some of the more difficult teachings of Jesus including:

Matthew 16:24-25New Living Translation (NLT)

24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. 25 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.

Luke 14:33 New Living Translation (NLT)
33 So you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own. 

Matthew 7:21-23 New Living Translation (NLT)

True Disciples

²¹ “Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter. ²² On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ ²³ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’

 Left to right:  Shawn, Steve, Dan, Me, John, Steve, Mike, Mike, and Darrell.  These are some great men and I thoroughly enjoyed our time together.

We played paintball (in the name of the Lord).  Here I await yet another opportunity to be painfully gunned down by a fellow brother in Christ.
We were challenged by these words because the American church largely doesn't teach on them. We are told that we must give up everything we own but that it's okay to hang on to much of the silly stuff that we buy or pay for on a regular basis. Yet Jesus commented that it is very hard for a rich man to get into the kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 19:23-24), and here we are the richest society that has ever been on the face of the earth. Even the "poor" in America are among the richest 20% of the world's population. We in the American church have been blinded by success and material things, forgetting that the only thing that truly matters is a relationship with Jesus. We "honor him with our lips, but our hearts are far from him." Matthew 15:9

I walked away from this experience thinking hard about where I am as a follower of Jesus and about what He might have me do next.

• What are we supposed to do with this big house we have?  If I say this place is His, what does that mean for us?
• What kind of work does He want me to do? 
• Am I supposed to cut back financially so we can be stretched in our faith?  Am I supposed to give more?
• What do we do with our neighborhood?

Then I got to some tougher questions like:

• Have I given up everything I own to follow Jesus?
• What in my life right now requires faith?

As I got back to the routine of this week, I encountered a great quote from a church leader here in America. He stated quite simply: "attempt something so great for God that it is doomed to failure if He is not in it." Wow. That really challenged me and was like a not so gentle nudge to me to step out in faith as we look to plant a church here in Everett. I'm going to continue pondering those words for quite a while.

Determining a Vision

In this interim time of waiting, I have felt pressed by the Lord to ask Him for a vision regarding what we will do here. I have to admit that my initial reaction to "mission and vision" statements is one of cynicism. In the world of education these ideas have unfortunately been perverted as an end-all, be-all way of making a great school. I've seen many good vision statements in schools and school systems that the employees didn't care about or aren't aware of. Worse yet, I have been around numerous school leaders who disengaged themselves from implementing these statements once they were created because they had suddenly completed the magic task of creating them. However, vision statements have a real purpose when it comes to starting a church. They define things like what we are striving to be in a community, what we will spend our time doing, and what kinds of people we will work with. I believe that if leaders will sincerely pursue the creation of a vision and mission by laying it before the Lord, the world should look out!

For me that has taken the form of prayer with the Lord and writing down ideas that come to mind. I have a lot of great ideas on what a church should look like in this community, but the worst thing we could do is start a carbon copy of another church. That doesn't work because every neighborhood is different and contains a variety of people from various backgrounds and cultures. If we want stale and boring, we will copy someone else. If we want vibrant, different, and real, we go to the Lord! It is my intent over the next few months to jot down ideas during prayer time and gradually meld those into a vision statement for our church. Hopefully once that is created I will be able to take it to our church leaders for their input. It has always been my belief that the Lord speaks through your peers, and this instance will be no different. If I'm off track they will be able to tell me. While this is one of those things that is done in quietness initially, I'm very excited to spend this time with the Lord.

With this in mind, last night I got home from the service at EFC and just felt that the Lord didn't want me to turn on the TV and disengage from the world. Instead, I opened the book of Acts and began to read it in a totally new way. Instead of doing my usual thing of reading it chapter by chapter, I decided to devour the book in just a couple of sittings, particularly examining what the New Testament church looked and felt like. If you have never done that I would encourage you to do so. While I knew that their church looked different than churches of today, I was really struck when reading the book in a huge chunk about how startling the differences are. They didn't have a building apart from the temple, instead meeting in homes. Needs inside of the church body were known and dealt with immediately as people sold possessions to help those in need.  The apostles were invited to local synagogues in various towns and preached to large crowds, and people committed to Jesus via repentance and baptism. And on top of that it seemed that the Holy Spirit always seemed to know those who had truly committed to Him at the moment and He entered them when He recognized a changed heart. I can't help but contrast all of these things to the churches in front of us today, and dare I say, how we sometimes flippantly say we have committed to Christ by simply saying a prayer. Now that's something to really ponder.

I had time to compare these ideas to what the Lord had me teach on this week, which is on giving to your neighbor who is in need.  I suspect that the world today is skeptical of Christianity because often we don't appear to be any different from the rest of the world.  We don't care for each other enough, we aren't known for our love for each other (John 13:34-35), and often are blinded as the world is by ambition and the collection of more things (1 Timothy 6:9-11).  When it comes to providing for the needs of our neighbors, we would rather throw money at a problem and remain disengaged and separated rather than be like the Samaritan in Jesus' parable who interrupted his life to help someone (Luke 10).  This challenges me because, if we are to be different here in Everett, what will that look like? 

I hope that you can see as I do that the Lord is working on hearts here, mine included, and is drawing us to something new and amazing.  Praise the Lord who called this family to do his work, and who is patient in teaching a hard-headed person like me so that He can "make all things new."  (Revelation 21:5)

And on the 7th Day...

God rested.  It's that simple.

Our family is exiting a very busy season of life and has experienced tremendous tiredness over the last week.  We failed to follow God's commandment of keeping a Sabbath rest time and paid the price for it over the last week.  It began with us having to return the block party trailer to a location 90 miles from home last Sunday only to return home completely drained.  It further intensified for me with a very stressful week at work as the district gears up for the school year ahead.  I quickly switched back to my old way of relying on my own strength to get through the week.  The fruit of that is usually lost sleep, anxiety, irritability, and intense frustration.  Yep, I experienced all of those this week, and it was of my own doing.

I don't believe that God wants us to take a Sabbath rest specifically on a Sunday, but I do believe His word clearly indicates that one day of the week is supposed to be for rest and devotion to Him.  Yesterday we heeded the call and had a much better day of recharging and refreshment.  We had no obligations, nowhere to go, nothing to do, nobody to see, and no plans.  And in spite of the usual stresses of having 5 boys in the house, the day really was great.

Where did all of this come from?  These are further lessons from the Lord Himself as He prepares us for our current and future ministry.

We can't do it alone.
We can't do it in our own strength.
We can't generate "positive feelings" and have them carry us through.
We can't do it.

And that's exactly why we are here in Everett, Washington.  It's because He wants to show all of us that while we can't do it, He can.  That's exciting to me.

 

The grapevine on our back patio.  It has made so many grapes that we don't have room for all of them.  And it is a constant and visible reminder to us that we can bear no fruit for the Lord apart from what He does through us.

John 15:5 (NLT)

⁵ “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.

The Week Ahead

Next weekend I have been given the honor and responsibility of leading the Men's Retreat for Everett Family Church.  We will be studying God's word within the framework of the awesome book "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan.  It stands among the top 5 works of Christian writing that have been most influential to me.

The central idea of the book is that if we say we love God, it is evident and looks a certain way.  There is no such thing as a Christian that bears no fruit.  You may want to read that last sentence again.

Scripture indicates repeatedly that at the end of time there will be people who went to church and even did good works in God's name who don't make it into heaven (Matthew 7:21-23).  Why?  Because they never really knew Jesus.  They were just doing a lot of things and making a big splash (1 Corinthians 13:1).  Or, they attended church because that's what we do on Sundays.  But church attendance won't get you into heaven either.  Only Christ can get you there as he covers you with His blood and pays the price for your sins (Romans 3:25, Romans 5:9).

Many people point to that idea and say "good, I'm covered."  And yet their actions 99% of the time don't indicate that they know Jesus at all.  Chan puts it very succinctly:  if they suddenly stopped believing in God, you would see no difference in their lives.  The thing that needs to shake you and me up is that the Lord knows who are His and who are not His (John 10:14, 2 Timothy 2:19).  While we can fool each other, we can't fool Him.

This teaching carries great weight and it is supremely important that the men own what the Lord tells us about those who are His.  Please pray for us next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday as we study His word and come to Him.

Life in the City
In previous posts I have simply posted scripture because I believe it speaks for itself.  This will be another one of those times.  In the last post I described some characteristics of people who come to work with us to plant a church, noting that they need not feel that they have to pastor a church and preach.  This passage describes the work better than I could ever do.  This is what we must do in Everett.

 Jeremiah 29:4-7

⁴ This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: ⁵ “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. ⁶ Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! ⁷ And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.”

The only way to change a city is to change the people living in the city.  The only way to change the people in the city is to, with obedience and submission to the Lord, follow Him as He leads us into being involved in their lives.  To be involved in their lives, we must live and work among them.  And most of all, we must pray for our city because it is the Lord's limitless power that can change it.

May the Lord continue to glorify Himself as He draws people to Himself in Everett.