First, it was interesting, then coincidence, then weird, then confirmation. God was speaking to me through his word…and through the words of others. It is refreshing…that God is doing new work in me once again. Not to say that he took time off…but this is a fresh wind of the Spirit blowing through the dusty chaff in my life. Praise be to God.

I find the Spirit speaking to me again in the words of Romans…specifically today from Romans 14-15. The theme: acceptance.

“Accept one another, just as Christ has accepted us.” Romans 15:7

Easy words to read with a cup of coffee in one hand and the Bible in the other, but wait, what does that say again? Accept one another just like Jesus accepts you?

Well now…that makes me need to step in front of the Jesus-mirror and examine the me who Jesus has accepted. The me who has trampled on grace more than a few times in my life. The me whose pride can easily jump into the judgement game at a moments notice. And yet, Jesus accepts me…and I am supposed to accept others in the same way?

But what about those who insist in their rightness…what about when people are showing off their spiritual arrogance and ignorance…oh, yea, Jesus has accepted my pride. But what about when people are spewing out hurtful and untrue words about us…um, yep, Jesus has accepted ours. But what about….um, yep.

Look at the context: Often we are tempted to read these scriptures through the lens of positioning ourselves in the place of the “strong” and others in the place of “weak faith.” We all tend to read scripture this way…it makes us feel better about ourselves. But what if we take away the jockeying for position…and just hear the Spirit speak these words, “accept others just as Christ accepts you.”

Today’s church is full of jews and gentiles (ok, I know I am stretching the context here a bit…wait, actually I’m not that much). We are a people labeled and divided by the have’s and have nots, insiders and the outsiders, republicans and democrats, upper-class and middle-class, conservative and liberal, cool and not-so-cool, the pre’s and the post’s, and the us and them.

Our divisive language does exactly what the evil one hopes it will do…it divides us. It separates the body, keeps us from discerning God’s leading and distracts us from fully participating in God’s mission in God’s world. We too are a people living inside temples but yet living outside the message of Jesus. We see ourselves as a circumcised people (part of the right family) who hold the rights to the Kingdom all to ourselves. But wait…aren’t we the gentiles? Of all people…shouldn’t we remember to hold loosely the “right” of being right?

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Do you get it? God is a God of hope…of hope. Hope that fills us with joy and peace….so that…we may be filled with the power of God.

Do you see it? Hope..hope that is from God…fills us with joy and peace…so that we may GO into the “not hope” and bring hope.

Lord Jesus, as you continue to mold us into your image, help us accept others as you accept us. Keep us from judgement. Mold our thinking and give us hope that enables us to accept others as you have accepted us.

I would recommend these two books to every pastor (they were recommended to me from a local pastor/friend). In a day when rhetoric and rebellion are two of the active ingredients in most transitioning churches (and by “transitioning” I mean moving toward a re-centering of our teaching and practices in the Missio Dei), we need to have concise and coherent resources to offer those living in the tension. It seems that most disgruntled churched people have arrived at their conclusions as a result of lacking shared definitions and an off-balance reliance on a local-church-narrative holding more weight of influence than a story-of-God-narrative.

Too often, I too, have allowed my own thoughts of Christ’s Church to be taken hostage by ego, pride of performance, or confidence in comfort. As a pastor, I am often tempted to wish for the dreams of success and notoriety (most times determined by the size and strength of the church I pastor). And the same is true for others who identify themselves with the local church gathering because of its particular cool-factor or recognition in the community.

These days in our local community called New Beginnings Church, we are seeking to focus ourselves on the Missio Dei (mission of God). We are seeking to re-center ourselves on God’s vision for His Church. It is a strange feeling sometimes…different from what we are comfortable with, requiring much more of us than before and often leading to a “dream shattering” for some who hold their own dreams more dearly than God’s truth.

Perhaps these words from Bonhoeffer best describe the reality of our story over the last several months:

“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, if it insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.” – Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p 26-28

If our preaching and thinking defaults to “us being saved” as the primary focus of the Gospel, then we have trampled on the work of Christ.  We have lessened his goal of redeeming the whole world…to see it once again unimpaired and rehabilitated as the splendor of God’s creation.

It is not God’s goal for us to simply preach “be saved.” The fact that salvation can be experienced by us is an example of the incredible power and mission of God’s big picture of redemption, but it is not the primary goal.

Often we wear thin God’s energies with our constant plea for attention for ourselves. We pray, “God keep me from this, God, please deliver me from that…”. We beg for his attention and demand his efforts in our lives. But if we ever get in touch with the total reality of God’s redemptive mission, we would never bother God again with our personal complaints.

Like the Apostle Paul we would welcome the pains, heart-breaks, and disappointments because these things keep us reliant on the power of God.  These things point us too and remind us of the work there is yet to do in this world.

When God’s mission becomes a reality in our thinking, our calling is clear. We are called to join him in the big picture of redeeming the beauty and goodness of the created order. Our mission is to do more than focus on problems of individual sin and guilt as though God’s mission is primarily focused on “saving us” from being eternally punished for our individual sins. God’s mission is much larger than us…but thanks be to God that it includes us!

“Let us praise him that he hath given us to see the deplorable state of all that are round about us; to see the wickedness which overflows the earth, and yet not be borne away by the torrent! We see the general, the almost universal contagion; and yet it cannot approach to hurt us! . . . God will arise and maintain his own cause. And the whole creation shall then be delivered both from moral and natural corruption. Sin, and its consequence, pain, shall be no more; holiness and happiness will cover the earth. Then shall all the ends of the world see the salvation of our God. And the whole race of mankind shall know and love and serve God, and reign with him forever and ever!” -The Mystery of Iniquity, The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley.

- Some of these thoughts are paraphrased from Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest, pg 21, 23-24.

In Mark 5:36 we find Jesus on a healing spree and people were asking for help at every step. One of those asking for the attention of Jesus was a man named Jairus. He was hoping for Jesus to come and heal his daughter. But before he could get the attention of Jesus, someone came and told him it was too late, his daughter had died.

I love what is recorded about Jesus’ response…”ignoring what they said”…he continued to press forward on his mission of hope.

Always in leadership there will be those who will criticize and doubt. And it is easy to get distracted and lose hope in the midst of the hope thieves. But Jesus gives us a great picture of continuing to press forward and ignoring what they said, encouraging others to believe.

Right now I am learning how to lead people into new places that involve the chance at failure. We are dreaming and discussing how to take some strategic risks that we hope will have huge spiritual impact…but like any change, it involves the risk of failure.

Today I watched a great video about the the lessons of failure. It is worth every one of the eleven minutes it takes to watch…so today, will you come to class with me? Let’s learn together. Click on the “bookie” link to watch this video.

Bookie from LifeChurch.tv on Vimeo.

The last couple of months we have been trying to lead and position nbc for God to use us to influence our community with the message of Christ. Our leadership team has been in prayerful dialogue about how to expand our influence and increase the spiritual depth of the people who are calling nbc their church community. Recently we have recognized the need to reshape how we assume people grow…and what we need to be as a church in order to better reach and grow people. I thought it was interesting to read Craig’s thoughts today that mirror a lot of the conversations we have been having within our teams.

Craig writes: “To reach the next generation for Christ, we must be three things: Conversational, Missional, and Generational.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Click here to read the rest of Craig’s post.

Today I read a great quote from a documentary about Ernest Shackleton’s journey to the South Pole in the early 1900′s. He was looking to build a team of men that would accompany him…so he placed an ad in a newspaper looking for the right men.

“Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.”

I am starting to believe the Spirit-led life must involve similar risk…and it makes sense. Risk involves us letting go of control and trusting in the unseen…trusting in the One leading.

The level of risk is equal to our measure of trust.

What risk is God calling you too?