Uncharted Territory

God has been doing incredible things in my life. I know I have only begun this new journey of discovering God’s riches in a more real and impactful way, but I already feel as if I have grown so much. I also realize this is just another “zag” in my relationship with God along this life’s journey and that this new zeal for God is directly from his hand.

I have been challenged recently to take my gifts and talents to the next level. Many of you know that I feel as though I have been called to full-time ministry (at some point) and more specifically to help start a church with my good friend and mentor Steve. He has asked me to come on board as a co-laborer to help in the planning, implementing and forging of this new ministry. He has also asked me to be the music coordinator handling the worship (though this will encompass a small portion of my responsibilities.

To that end, I believe God is preparing me for this task. While I have been involved in one form of music or another most of my life, I have been playing guitar and singing these last nine years. I have only been a part of consistent lay ministry in this capacity for about six of those years and been involved in leading worship off and on for the last few.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to pray and consider coming on board with our church at Rock Eternal in a regular weekly worship leading role. Nervous at first, partly due to my insecurities as well as the fact that I don’t know 75% of their songs, I prayed and sought counsel. Then I was told that I would be teaming up with someone else in a co-leadership role which made me feel really good about this.

This guy is a great guitar player and knows the songs pretty well. He even went to some kind of worship leading camp for something like a year! Knowing that it’s not all on me and that I have another talented guy to work with has not only been a confidence booster but an answer to prayer as well.

It’s going to be a lot of work- learning the Media Shout program, bringing more organization to the ministry with monthly schedules and online detail of all the songs, as well as learning said songs. But I look forward to the challenge and to what God is going to do in and through me.

Please be praying for me as I take a more “center stage” role and strive at the same time to decrease as Christ increases. This concept is somewhat of a paradox for musicians and especially challenging for those involved in worship leading. Pray that I would be able to learn many of the songs quickly and memorize them as I attempt to free up the Spirit to engage the audience. Pray for Dave and myself as we both strive to take this ministry to the next level.

Passion

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but wordly sorrow brings death.

1 Cor. 7:10

Sorrow has consumed me lately. Especially this last weekend at a Men’s Retreat in Williams, Arizona. I was greatly convicted about many things. First, my lack of suffering in my life and my subsequent and constant complaining in spite of it all. Though my life has been relatively free of pain and heartache, I live my life as if I am constantly afflicted, plagued, and targeted with the self-imagined ‘bad luck’ that is nothing more than the reality of life itself.

I had been feeling sorry for myself and allowing the sorrow that comes from wordly attitudes and desires to overtake me, but now I seem to be experiencing a shift in focus to a more God-centered sorrow. Meaning that I have been learning what the effects and realities of sin really are. The consequences of the actions of people in my life as well as my own wretched sin have awakened me to the desperate state of my complacency. As the old adage goes, “sin always hurts the innocent.”

Recently I began to realize my lifestyle was not living up to what God has called of me. I was smacked upside my spiritual head with the help of some very encouraging, albeit hard-hitting and convicting messages from Adrian Despres* this past weekend on a men’s retreat I attended in Williams, AZ. For those who were there, I had been living a “2nd Chair” life and I realized how devastating that was.

Essentially, I was doing the bare minimum, acting spiritual on Sundays and not really living a passionate life for Christ; passion meaning ‘to suffer.’ Not that I want to look for suffering, but that it is evident by my life that I have been living the comfortable life- seeking entertainment and pleasure rather than living boldly for Christ which yields a natural by-product of resistance, persecution, and suffering (to some extent).

Realizing that I need to hate sin more and love myself less and live recklessly abandoned in my relationship with Christ, I am starting to gain a healthy perspective on life and my current pursuits.

Suffering is a natural part of our existence. Now I just need to learn to expect it and prepare myself for how I am going to respond to it when it approaches. Will I begin to feel sorry for myself or realize that in light of other lives throughout the ages and more so, in light of the suffering of my Savior, my suffering is fleeting and nothing but a moment in time? Will I instead see it as an opportunity to show others the love of Jesus?

I hope so. I pray that I would learn to decrease and allow my God to increase as I embrace his love and the suffering that comes hand in hand with a life lived boldly for Christ.

I would ask that you continue to pray for me as I learn to live wholly and completely for Jesus. I already have begun to realize a calling and a strong passion to equip others with tools to strengthen and fortify their marriages. In a world where divorce is on the rise and that those numbers aren’t better in the Christian Church, I have begun to weep for those who don’t take their marriages seriously. More to come in future posts as God reveals to me what this looks like in my own life.

Please visit http://www.fortifiedmarriages.com/page.php?7 for more details on fighting for your marriage- it’s worth it!

Please visit http://www.adriandespres.com/ for info on his ministry and heart for the lost.

"Unlearning the Love of the Dagger" Follow-Up!

In my post previous I paraphrased a section from a sermon by Charles Spurgeon. Since I couldn’t find the original text, I surrendered to reference it with my own feeble words. Thanks to my good friend and dear brother Fernando, below is the portion of his sermon, Lama Sabachthani (3/2/1890). He puts this so much better than I ever could. Enjoy!

"The last of the three points is this, let us abhor the sin which brought such agony upon our beloved Lord. What an accursed thing is sin, which crucified the Lord Jesus! Do you laugh at it? Will you go and spend an evening to see a mimic performance of it? Do you roll sin under your tongue as a sweet morsel, and then come to God's house, on the Lord's-day morning, and think to worship him? Worship him! Worship him, with sin indulged in your breast! Worship him, with sin loved and pampered in your life! O sirs, if I had a dear brother who had been murdered, what would you think of me if I valued the knife which had been crimsoned with his blood? —if I made a friend of the murderer, and daily consorted with the assassin, who drove the dagger into my brother's heart? Surely I, too, must be an accomplice in the crime! Sin murdered Christ; will you be a friend to it? Sin pierced the heart of the Incarnate God; can you love it? Oh, that there was an abyss as deep as Christ's misery, that I might at once hurl this dagger of sin into its depths, whence it might never be brought to light again! Begone, O sin! Thou art banished from the heart where Jesus reigns! Begone, for thou hast crucified my Lord, and made him cry, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" O my hearers, if you did but know yourselves, and know the love of Christ, you would each one vow that you would harbour sin no longer. You would be indignant at sin, and cry,

"The dearest idol I have known,

Whate'er that idol be,

Lord, I will tear it from its throne,

And worship only thee,"

May that be the issue of my morning's discourse, and then I shall be well content. The Lord bless you! May the Christ who suffered for you, bless you, and out of his darkness may your light arise! Amen."

From: http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/2133.HTM

Unlearning the Love of the Dagger

For those that read “Seeing the Trees Through
the Forest” this post is a sort of follow up with that one. Recently, I have become convicted on spending more time and energy with those ‘trees’ directly in front of me. No more so evident has this been than this week. Through the heartache of events that took place this week (though not out of the woods yet, pun intended), I have been confronted with an ugly truth. I do not hate sin enough- in fact, having seen the effects of sin in the lives of those I love, I have realized that not only am I no better then those who have stumbled or worse, I myself have even bathed in the tempting yet polluting waters of sin.

What is sin? Sin is that which separates us from God. It is anything that is contrary to the nature and law of God. Since God is holy and perfect, this encompasses much. I have heard that the etymology of the English word sin derives from and ancient archery term. The word sin, meant to ‘miss the mark.’ There would be one small read dot on a target and if the archer missed by a hair or by a mile, it was called a sin. Since God is and has set that standard, when we as humans miss that mark of perfection (even if just once), we are contaminated with sin and are separated from him because his holy nature requires that he have no part of sin. That is why Jesus had to die for our sins, to pay the debt we could not pay and restore that separated love relationship with God. Jesus was the final sacrifice and completely redeems those who accept this free gift.

So, now that I stand forgiven of my debt that I could never pay, and even now possess a positive balance in my spiritual account that I could never count, I should want to live a holy life and do good in gratitude and love for what he did for me. But many times, I don’t. The cage of sin that enslaved me has been opened, the chains and shackles removed, but I still try and find comfort in that dank, rotting cell.

I once read a quote from Charles Spurgeon that for the life of me I cannot find, so I will paraphrase. Basically, our love of sin is like watching our brother being murdered and then loving and cherishing the very dagger that is stained with his blood. Though he undoubtedly put it much more eloquently, the meaning is the same. Sin killed my Savior, Jesus Christ, and I have fallen in love with the very instrument of his death!

I have come to the conclusion, on this Good Friday, that I have not taken the reality of sin and its effects seriously enough. I have meandered into battle with no shield, sword or armor. Instead of taking the offensive, I have barely put up a defensive struggle while I allow the ravages of sin to assail me.

No more! I am tired of entertaining, flirting, and playing with the fire of sin that killed my God. I am tired of watching loved ones go through pain and suffering because I was too afraid to say something regarding sin all in the name of placating the masses. I am tired of watching sin ruin people’s lives. Most of all, I am tired of allowing that destructive force to have power and control over my life.

Sin always hurts the innocent (though there are no real innocents) and I need to remember that I am no better than anyone, and that I am capable of the most vile and unthinkable acts of evil. Perhaps then I will be more bold, more purposeful, more intent on pursuing Christ. I hate sin, but I don’t hate it enough though I am starting to. Seeing it’s effect on those around me as given me perspective and it’s time I gird myself up for the daily battle that lay before me and live each day as if it were my last.

I don’t want to love my Lord’s murder weapon anymore. I don’t want to pretend that everything is ok and that we are not in the midst of a battle of souls. I want to rush headlong into the battle armed with the Word of God and “storm hell with a squirt gun!”

It’s time to fight back.

"To Boldly Go..." Part 2

How many of you started singing to yourself “He’s got the whole world in his hands…” when you saw the picture in “Part 1”? You know you did, so don’t try and deny it!

The Christian church as it exists today in America, as a whole, is flawed. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any great ministries out there because there are! In fact I have been a part of a couple. I have family and friends who belong to Christ centered, Bible believing, and, I believe, God honoring churches.

But we are also seeing a shift in the paradigm of what church looks like, or rather, needs to look like. Many of us grew up watching the change in ministry as churches went from a conservative Baptist type to a contemporary style of worship service. The organ was replaced by a band, the pulpit with a music stand, choir with a vocal team, hymnals with upbeat praise and worship choruses, etc.

We also watched it model and become more like corporate America with its marketing strategies in order to lure the “unchurched” to their services with gimmicks and flashy PowerPoint. I have even read of one church giving away hundreds of iPods to bring in the crowds. Now that sounds like a great way to spend God’s money!

All in the effort of becoming “seeker sensitive” which, I feel is contradictory to Scripture since there is “no one who seeks God.” (Rom 3:11b). The problem is, since there are no real seekers, to expect people to think to themselves “hmm…something’s missing in my life, I think I’ll check out that church around the corner because I hear they have a great doughnut display,” is futile thinking. We need to be the ones who seek out those who need God in their lives.

If you took an honest look around at churches today, there is a significant decrease in one particular age-group. You’ll find that young adults between 18-30 are among the lowest attendees at many if not most churches. Why? They are longing for something more real, more tangible, more organic. They are looking for authenticity, transparency, and genuine relationships.

They’ve tried churches and found the hype to be just that and lacking in substance. Like the space-aged travelers of Star Trek, it’s time that we as Christians come back to a way of doing ministry that meets the obvious needs of the people where they’re at; where their hearts beat the strongest. It’s time to boldly go and take the message of hope to the people instead of expecting them to come to us.

That’s really the central idea of outward ministry at Ekklesia. Instead of trying to build a core team of believers from a church and waiting until just enough money is raised to secure a killer sound system, our plan is to take a handful of strong believers out into the world in twos and threes and start meeting and establishing relationships. As we frequent the same coffee shops and hang-outs and start meeting some of the regulars, we believe God will begin to grow our church from the “outside in.”

Ministry will take place where people generally tend to congregate, places where people go not just to procure goods and services, but to be around other people. We intend on finding one or two places we can meet at regularly (i.e. bars, coffee houses, etc.) and start establishing relationships. Rather than talking at them, we will talk with them- get to know them. As God begins to do a work in their hearts and as God inevitably brings people to a saving relationship with him, we will take these people and expand to other locations. Thus the church will grow. Perhaps slower than a traditional church-plant, but with people who have more of a vested interest in the life-changing reality of a relationship with Christ.

Not that Christians from other ministries will not be welcome. Far from it- the more the merrier! But we will not actively seek them out, trying to build a core first. Rather than spurring on growth via internal shifting (Christians migrating from one ministry to another within the body), we hope and pray God will grow this ministry through people we encounter who come to know the Lord and desire to serve him by spreading the love and truth of Jesus’ message.

In a nutshell, that’s what the ministry of Ekklesia will look like. There is obviously much “fleshing out” of this concept that needs to take place, but we are confident in Jesus to take his message out boldly. We are excited about making more and better disciples and bringing hope into the lives of those whom God brings across our path.

We, I, covet your prayers as we venture out into new and uncharted territory. Please contact me if you are interested at all in being a part of our prayer support, or in joining our mission to boldly go where many today have not dared to have gone before.

"To Boldly Go..." Part 1

Just to get this out of the way, I am a Star Trek fan. Now, don’t check out on me just yet…hear me out. I am a fan of the show because its world is filled with infinite possibilities. The story line (not unlike its setting) is deep and complex, interconnecting its many shows and movies spanning over generations in one cohesive universe. I think what I most like about the show is its mission. They fight battles, encounter “strange new worlds...and new civilization,” but at the heart of it all, they are explorers.

They are in the never-ending quest to pursue the knowledge of the unknown which I think resonates with us all. What makes them different than other future-based stories, is the show’s view of humanity having improved over the years to an almost utopian society of advanced humans. I think we all would long for a world governed by peace, harmony, intelligence, and selfless attitudes that pursue a unified goal.

The truth is, the road we are heading down as a society is anything but what this fictional world portrays. One need only look out his window or turn on the TV to see the pulse of our society; what drives us and what our focus is on, particularly in America.

The one beacon of hope that should be present, the church, doesn’t seem to be fairing any better. In fact, one might argue, that an epidemic is occurring in our nation especially amongst Christian Churches. You see, contrary to Star Trek’s mission of exploration and seeking out new life, we as the church in America seem to take the opposite approach. We expect the “new life” to come to us rather than actively taking the message of hope to those who need it.

Sadly, many of the churches in America have a “country club” mentality rather than that of a hospital. We seem to welcome the rich, influential, and beautiful, but neglect the poor, sick, and downtrodden. My meaning is both spiritual as well as physical. I also speak of these things in generalities. I am sure there are some who are getting it right. But it is no surprise to me that more churches today are closing their doors than ever before, and that the divorce rate within the church is on par with the rest of the country.

There has to be a better way, and in fact there is. Jesus himself modeled that for us. He spent time with people in the world. He went to the places where they hung out, where the pious religious leaders of that day refused to go in order to maintain their false sense of righteousness. Jesus went to the bars and he hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors (an occupation as disagreeable today as it was then). And through it all, he shared his love with those who needed it. After all, it’s not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick.

When it came time to send out the trained leaders into the world to spread the message of hope, he sent them out in twos and threes. He didn’t first gather together a core team of 100 people or raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for sound equipment and flyers. He simply trained the people in how to love, and sent them out. And where did he get this small team of men known as the disciples? He alone went out and gathered them from the world. He didn’t take a group of religious superstars from the local Synagogue.

Again, not that getting a team together and raising money is altogether bad, but I feel that this generation of people in America is longing for something more real; more organic. They are tired of the corporate mentality and the “pack ‘em in” philosophy of trying to use every method and marketing tool available to draw in the masses. It’s time to take the message of Jesus to those who need it rather than expecting them to come to us by means of our creative ingenuity.

From an ‘inside out’ way of ministering, Ekklesia will approach ministry with an ‘outside in’ philosophy. That is what this ministry will, by the grace of God, attempt to do, by taking whoever is willing and go out into the world by twos and threes, and seek out new life…to boldly go where we haven’t gone before: the world.

How? Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion…

Seeing the Trees Through the Forest

Carry each other's burdens and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Gal. 6:2 (NIV)

So continuing on with my desire to document what God is doing in my life via this blog and particularly in relation to the ministry project, Ekklesia, I wanted to pick up where I left off with the Wanderings in the Wilderness post.

In that post, I mentioned that things are starting to move again in ministry, and we have made some exciting developments as far as format and direction, but I also think there is still some forging that is taking place.

Boreal and temporal trees grow according to seasons. They grow during warmer climates and slow or stop growing during colder ones. Those harsh winters serve to harden and strengthen the tree after it underwent a huge growth spurt the previous summer. I have often thought about this in my own life. This as well as the illustration I frequently recall made to me by my pastor from our previous church, LifeQuest, and friend, Scott Morgan. He always says that with God “the way between two points is not a straight line, but a zigzag.”

Right now, it seems that God is hardening me after some interesting life-lessons learned. And though I would like to be heading in a straight line to the goal and plans I have, God has me on yet another zig- or maybe it’s a zag.

I am under the Biblical philosophy that my relationship with God comes first, my wife comes next as my first and most important earthly relationship and ministry, followed only then by my kids. From there all other relationships, responsibilities, and ministries come next. Though I believe this whole-heartedly, I sometimes lose sight. I have the tendency to look so far ahead, I neglect my present situation. I strain so hard at times to view what’s ahead through the forest that I forget about the trees right in front of me.

While, my marriage is in a good place (though I don’t make the mistake of letting my guard down and thinking it’s perfect lest I allow the enemy a foothold- there’s always room to grow, particularly within my own role as husband), and as a family I believe we are heading in the right direction, I am realizing the need of those around me.

There is a lot going on within my wife’s and my families: some are going through transitional times, some are going through difficult and trying, sometimes dry times. It seems to me that we need to be focusing more of our attention, time, and energy on those friends and family who need some additional love and grace extended. We try to remember to pray for all those we know, but some just need some extra encouragement and genuine fellowship.

So, during this time of hardening the growth God has been bringing me through, I am trying to be more conscious of the needs of those around me as my ministry. If I can do anything (without sacrificing my first ministry to my wife and daughter), I need to be diligent in giving of myself to be there for them, however possible.

Ekklesia is not stopping, the road to this ministry has not changed, I just didn’t see this particular zigzag coming up and now, I pray that God would use us as a source of encouragement, hope, strength, and love for those around us; those trees that are in my immediate path.

Having balanced my priorities, I know God will honor our desire for Ekklesia and the ministry He wants us to do in His own time, in His own way.