Community Focus

It taught this last week at Incarnate Faith about community and wanted to share once of my main thoughts regarding the subject. We are all involved with different communities in our lives. Whether it it's work, family, golf, school or church. We all live in communities. At the heart of every community is a focus on whatever that communiity is formed for.



When we come to church community, our focus should be on Christ, but I believe that the American Christian church has gotten off track with the focus of the church community. When we look at the church, the main focus is fellowship. The word fellowship has killed the true meaning of community. Many churches act as if fellowship and community are one in the same, but they're couldn't be more wrong. Don't get me wrong, fellowship is a much needed part of community. Without fellowship, the community will die, but that's not it. Biblical community is focused on more than potlucks and get to know you events. True Biblical community is focused on Christ and what He did on the cross for us and what He continues to do in our lives day in and day out.



When we look at the first Christian community in Acts 2:42-47, their focus was on learning about Christ and being Christ to others. They took the command of Jesus in Acts 1:8 seriously and acted as witnesses of Christ to everyone they came into contact with. As a result, God blessed their community.



As we look at our own church communities, where's our focus? Is the focus on how many relationships I have in my community, or is our focus on what Christ did for us and what He's doing for us now? My prayer is that we are continually evaluating our communities in order to keep our focus on Christ.

There is a lot of talk about the emerging church. Many people's view of the emerging church is that it's a church movement for young people, with candles, black tablecloths, electric guitars and pastors speaking in shorts and sandals chanting hymns and creeds. The reality is that at the heart of the emerging church is a want to reach people who haven't been reached by the way church has been done until now. Here's a passage from "The Tangible Kingdom" by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, "

It's time to take a serious pause and reflect on the church as it has been in the past and is presently. Although we are wholeheartedly calling for a new church to emerge, we need to be careful with what we mean by emerging. When people are talking about emerging church, they're not talking about brand new ways of doing wild and crazy forms of church. Emerging doesn't have to be about lighting candles, finger painting during worship, offering tattoos in the church foyer, or reducing deep theological truths down to the level of a comic book. It doesn't mean church for young people only.

Have you considered that when the unchurched baby boomers reach retirement age, that they'll represent one of the most unreached people groups? Let's coin a phrase: "GenG" (Geriatric Generation. Therefore, if we're committed to reaching one of the fastest growing segments, "emerging church" may be based in retirement centers and have as its primary culture engagment reruns of Happy Days, Leave It to Beaver, and free denture giveaways.

Certainly, in the real sense, the church has been around for quite some time and might take offense at being considered "nonemerged." In another senzse, the church is always emerging. Therefore, the issue has nothing to do with "emerging," but what is emerging and if the new forms of Christianity and church are authentic to the iriginal ideals if Christ and appropriate to the culture that has lost interest in organized Christendom."

Ok, so that was a lot to digest, but the point is that at the heart of the emerging church isn't to emerge into some new, out of ordinary, weird sect of Christianity. It's heart is to look honestly at the current way of doing church, then look at the culture around us and see if what the church is doing is having an impact on culture. In most cases it's not. It's our calling and followers of Christ to find out why our culture is disinterested in the church and engage those problems, but that requires us to get out into our neighborhoods, coffee shopş, parks, grocery stores, businesses and restaurants not to evangelize, but to befriend, question and relate to a culture that need Jesus, but isn't interested in church the way it's being done.

This is the struggle that myself and other members of my church are working through. How do we ignite a passion to engage the culture around us and befriend the unchurched? Our attempt is a church plant called Incarnate Faith in Gilroy, CA. I'll be updating this site as we journey through the process of engaging the culture around us. Be praying for our church plant as we try to figure out what this all looks like in our context. I pray that you wiil ask God how you can befriend the culture around you and reach those who are currently disinterested in the church.

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Christian Realism, Which One Are You?

I was reading Scot McKnight's blog this morning and was intrigued by an book that he's blogging about. The ideas are what is Christ's view of the culture we live in? Here are the 5 ideas that are presented.

1. Christ against culture: the classic Anabaptist view.
Christ is opposed to the cultural expressions of this world and calls
his followers to another way.

2. Christ above culture: culture is providential; Christ arrives to lift that culture. He points to some in Thomas Aquinas.

3. Christ in paradox with culture: we are called to follow
Christ and dwell in a non-Christian culture. We are citizens of two
worlds. Niebuhr nuances Luther in this view. Another one is Reinhold
Niebuhr, H. Richard’s brother.

4. Christ transforming culture: God calls us to redeem the
world by a missional life. Calvin, English Puritans, Abraham Kuyper (do
I hear Bob Robinson saying “Finally!”?). The work is conversion and
cumulative, constructing institutions, and conquering existing
institutions.

5. Christ of culture: when Christians begin to see the
culture in which they live to be more or less Christian or see a “happy
reinforcement” of Christian values by culture.

So, where do you stand? I'm caught in between #3 and #4. If you want to read more click here.

Books That Have Shaped Your Ministry/Spiritual Life

What books have shaped and/or helped your ministry and spiritual life?

Any thoughts?

Hume Lake Retreat

So I'm heading of to Hume Lake in a few minutes to just hang out and get refreshed. Hume has a great program for pastors that allows them to come and stay at Hume for three days for free. Heather and I have gone in the past, but this is the first time I'm going by myself.

For the last year or so, I've been trying to leave twice a year for a personal retreat. I do some reading, praying, try to re-focus myself in ministry and life. These retreats are hard for me because even though I'm an introverted person, I like being around and interacting with people. Anyways, this one seems especially hard when I have a pregnant wife at home and it feels like the last month with having to move and things going on in ministry, has just been crazy.

My hope is that the next three days would be a chance for me to get focused on some crazy ideas of youth ministry that have been floating around in my head. I want to be able get these ideas to the point that I can express them to others so that I can talk about them. Oh yeah, I also have a 5 page paper to write on St. Gregory the Great today. Anyways, pray God will help focus me on this retreat and pray for Heather as she's home the next couple of days, give her a call or send her an email, or hit her up on Facebook if you can.

I was having a discussion with a group of students on Sunday. I asked the question about a time they showed servant hood. A student told me about how he let a friend borrow his textbook so he could do his homework. Initially it sounded good and legit. He continues to tell me about how his friend would give him the book back with all of the answers to the homework. He tells me this as if it's no big deal. My reaction to him was that that's not being a servant, that's called cheating.

What gets me about students in general and I believe more so this generation of students is that moral lines are not just skewed, but they're re-drawn. What was thought to be immoral several years ago, is just normal everyday life now. How do we as followers of Christ flow with the culture all around, but still keep our morals firm? I think that's a battle we will always be fighting.