Kingdom Workshops

Chris Tress and his wife Colleen work for Urban Youth Impact, a ministry to inner city kids in downtown West Palm Beach. When we first met Chris a few years ago, his situation was one of the things that helped me formulate the attitude our community would take towards people who were living and doing kingdom work outside the "umbrella" of our corporate identity. One of the most frustrating things for Chris was being approached by churches offering to help his ministry, but then being asked to "come under their authority" or something ridiculous like that. So I vowed that we would instead seek to become an upside down umbrella - giving to those in need as we were able and expecting nothing in return.

A few months ago, T and I had a series of conversations with Chris about the need to expose some of their full-time workers and volunteers to training that would move Urban Youth beyond convert-making and into disciple-building. We struggled with this question for quite some time, not least because I had been resistent to the idea of simply providing information to people without the potential for long-term learning and application to occur. Chris too, frankly, was tired of seeing people go through training programs and then get wrapped up in a culture of busyness that is such an easy path to follow in an active ministry.

T and I also recognized the need for some more intensive learning opportunities within our own community and within the larger network of friends we have in the area. This was the impetus for our trip to DC in March to visit the Servant Leadership School. A lot of good came out of that trip, but we discovered that SLS is in quite a period of transition right now and not prepared to directly support any new projects like ours. So, the question became, what is the next step?

In DC, a theme that kept coming back to us was the centrality of Jesus and the kingdom of God. Talking about servant leadership, being a disciple, justice, healing, spirituality, the inward / outward journey, etc. doesn't mean much without having the kingdom of God as the context and Jesus as the central figure for that conversation. It was obvious when we returned to West Palm that the kingdom was something on the minds of a lot of our friends. So if the kingdom should be the content, what should the context for learning look like?

We recognized that there would be some who would want a more formal classroom-style environment with opportunities for actual credit towards a degree. But in the majority of cases, we would be dealing with people who just wanted to make sense of Jesus and his kingdom "on the ground" so to say. We looked at opportunities that the Vineyard offers like VLI or VBI as well as smaller, more local expressions like Palmer's Underground Seminary. All wonderful things - but in our context it is hard to imagine those providing the environment for learning we were looking for on a larger scale (meaning more than just one or two people).

So if you've read this far, you're probably interested in what we've come up with: Kingdom Workshops. I've created a little website that will give you all the details so I won't go into everything here. Very briefly, Kingdom Workshops will be 2-day collaborative learning experiences around different values of the kingdom. They will not primarily be informational, but will be aimed at helping us understand and appropriate kingdom realities in our real lives. From the website: "The goal is to create a shared learning environment that enables everyone to participate in the discovery process. In God's world, there are no experts, only explorers." In other words, it will not be myself or T or anyone else getting up and lecturing about the kingdom. There will be some ideas offered, a lot of questions posed - but primarily it will be working out the implications together. The first one will be over Memorial Day weekend on the kingdom of God being the basis for the gospel Jesus preached.

Anyway, read over the site. We'd love feedback from our wider community of friends and welcome any help, ideas, etc. I will also be posting stories from the weekend and updates as we progress along this path together. Kingdom Workshops are not the "end" of this question, but really only the beginning.

Minor Leagues

Jackson and I took in our first ball game together on Saturday at the local bush league ballpark to see the Jupiter Hammerheads. It's a neat little park and we pretty much sat wherever we wanted to. It was also "Miguel Cabrerra" bobblehead night (who used to play for the Hammerheads before he made it big with the Marlins). Jackson was duly impressed with all the sights and sounds, including an immediate awareness that "everyone else has cotton candy." Later in the game he also recognized that "this is what it looks like when it's night out." All in all, it was a good time. Many more to come I'm sure.

Participation

I'm sitting on our back porch here at the condo watching late evening golfers play through and eating a big bowl of vegetables. I came down with a cold this week so its been kind of a slow day. But the kids are in bed now, Amber's doing yoga at the beach with some friends, so I figured it would be a good time to blog.

Something happening this morning that is worth posting about and I think is sort of a milestone event in the life of our church. It certainly is nothing that will make the papers - no dramatic healings or 1000 people getting baptized. No, this event is of the mustard seed variety...Insignificant on public radar screens, yet evidence of the kingdom among us, even among us as a church family.

After worship, I took Jackson and Chloe to the park as I often do on Sundays. Over the past few weeks we've had a few new families come into the community. They each found us through whatischurch.com, which is kind of odd because in 3+ years of having this website there have only been a few local residents come to our group because of the site and no one that I can think of actually stay. Now three couples have in the space of three weeks. Anyway, I was curious how "circle time" went, which is our way of giving everyone a chance to address the group (similar to an AA meeting), so Amber filled me in on the ride home.

She shared with the group that she has been having the desire to take communion together on a regular basis again. That has mostly been a sporadic practice for us in the past, but ever since last summer I have had the same desire. But here's the dilemma - if it is left up to me, it will continue to be a sporadic event. I've thought about delegating the task, because after all...good churches take communion together right? But that never felt right, so I've just let it go until it was the right time. This morning, the group decided to begin taking communion together once a month. And here's the kicker - every month a different person or family will take the responsibility to bring and serve the elements to every one else in the group, and one of the new families requested to serve the first time next week. The group also decided that on that particular Sunday each month we will meet at a park at the beach to give the Freeman's a little break from hosting.

Like I said, no big deal right? But wait, something enormously important could be missed if you weren't looking for it. No one told the group that it needed to come up with a way to take communion on a regular basis. No one asked for volunteers to fill a void that is assumed to be a function a church cannot live without. It just happened. The beauty is, now no one needs to be looking over some poor soul's shoulder making sure they pull their weight. The group together will assume this responsibility and make it part of our regular worship.

Excuse me if I sound like Dick Vitale, but you can't coach that.

In my many years of church experience, I have heard on more than one occasion someone complain, "Why don't we have more of _______?" or "Why don't we do ______?" It was rare that those same people ever suggested who might accomplish _______ or how it might be done. If they did, it was usually some already over-burdened leader who needed to champion their cause. To me, that is not participation - that is passing the buck. However, participation is also not just doing whatever the "leaders" tell you to do. True participation, and therefore true community and true discipleship, occurs when, as Paul says in Romans 12:3,4, "The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him. In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around."

I've Been Arrested

On June 2nd, I'll be looking like this guy. Hopefully without the grey hair and glasses.

Okay, whoever did this...be a man or a woman and fess up. You will be beat down severely, but you need to take your punishment...and you'll LIKE IT!

A Bible Story

Shhh...I had a Bible study last night.

Don't tell any of the emerging church police because they might un-link me from Planet Emergent. And don't tell anyone from the Vineyard because they might think I've gone "conventional" or something. I realize I'm placing myself in a precarious position by engaging in such controversial activities...but I don't care.

I called a friend last night who I love and care for deeply. I've seen this guy go from barely functioning as a human being to making some incredible strides in his relationship with God and others around him. One "sticking" point for him, though, has been the Bible, plain and simple. There are whole sections that freak him out. So on the phone last night, we started talking about a particularly difficult passage for him, the parable of the talents.

So we had about an hour long conversation about the meaning of the parable of the talents, particularly about the context in which Jesus tells this story. I won't go into what we talked about, because that's really not the point of this post. Actually, not talking about it is exactly the point. The result of our conversation last night was that my friend is one step closer to hearing the voice of Jesus in the scriptures instead of the angry and condemning voices he has heard in the past. It had nothing to do with getting the "right answer" or the even most complete interpretation. Our conversation was context-specific, the context being myself, my friend, and our Teacher.

One of the areas I hope to bring out in this new blog is talking a little more explicitly about what we've been learning over the past few years. For example, I'd like to tell more stories about what a renewed leadership might look like in communities of faith or what "mission" looks like on the ground in 21st century suburban south Florida. Obviously there is a certain amount of confidentiality in these stories, a line I won't cross if you will. But I think some of these stories need to be told.

I don't in any way mean to come off sounding like I have all the answers. I hope that is clear. All of this, like my phone call with my friend last night, is deeply context-specific and was not told so it could be emulated. My hope is that in telling these stories, I can craft a portrait - albeit an ever-changing and never-complete portrait - of the kinds of interactions between people that are where this kingdom we talk about so much is spreading. For some, my stories will be quite boring. (Go read Hanson's latest story if you want a little excitement with your coffee this morning). But, I think telling our stories is the way to really engage each other at the point of heart and action, not just idea or theory.

Google Maps

Everyone I know should know about this.

A New Beginning

I just have a few minutes this morning to fire off a quick inaugural blog. So why The Mustard Seed? This parable of Jesus has become somewhat of a paradigm for our life. We have spent the last four years of our lives in relative obscurity - working, having babies, making friends, seeing God's kingdom breaking out in unexpected ways. I say "relative" obscurity because our life previously was very public. Our story will give you a little indication of that reality. But now, Amber and I routinely look at each other and say, "I love our life." Not because we have it all together or everything we do is "successful", but because we are free to live as God intended.

So this blog will be mostly about the small, incremental actions of a family (and a community) that has been captured by the vision of the Mustard Seed...

"He put another parable before them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."