Have you heard about the church the Passion movement leader, Louie Giglio, and Chris Tomlin are planting in Atlanta, GA?  It was a week or two ago when the website went live and I’m just getting a moment to post this.

Two observations that I want you to notice.  Go to their website and see for yourself.

1.  There is no children’s ministry or even childcare.  They are calling this a church.  Hmmmh.  They tell you upfront to plan accordingly.  Why wouldn’t you have childcare?  The bottom line is that the priority is the experience for the adults.  I’m sure there will be lots of single folks there but this is very interesting.  (Don’t read anything into that Discovery.  Just making an observation.)  Churches of all sizes have problems keeping enough volunteers in the children’s ministry.  Can’t we innovate beyond this?

2.  They are meeting once for the month.  I think you’ll see more and more of this in the future.  Churches will meet in a big gathering monthly and smaller gatherings throughout the month.

The church website openly states they are about encountering God.  (My interpretation…this isn’t about new information but an experience.  See, it’s everywhere.)

Thoughts?

Saturday I shared about the use of facebook, twitter, and the focus of my blogging.  Blah, blah.  I don’t want this blog and the other online tools to be about my words.  Yet, here I am typing.  I want to throw out a focus.  I want to challenge you with some words and then you comment on them.

My vision/dream/desire (let’s go ahead and put it all out there) is that this online interaction can champion a cause that is grossly underrated in our church and ultimately spiritual existence.  What is the underrated area?  I’ve been talking all around it for weeks.  (See this post for a summary.)

• That churches (including the one I pastor) learn deliverance comes through prayer.  (2 Cor 1: 10-11)  Recently my life has been saved on almost a daily basis through others praying for me.
• That we learn the power of the experience we can expect to get from Jesus (a stream overflowing from within…John 7) and why we so often don’t experience it.
• That we learn how to position ourselves to experience God’s love through Jesus.  I can’t make myself live the fruits of the Spirit at any higher level than I do presently.  Time in God’s presence will do that.  The burden is on Him to change us.  We show up and receive transformation.

As this vision get clearer and tighter, I envision a tribe of us committed to living out these ideas and learning to walk in them more and more.  How can we start now?

• When you read something stirring, challenging, or encouraging on this blog, share it with others.  Your blessing grows when you share it.  (Email, forward, link to it, etc.)
• Comment away.  Many of you email your comments.  I love them.  Go ahead, take the plunge, and put them on the blog.  I know some of you email stuff you would want to stay private.  That’s cool, keep emailing.  For the rest of us, enhance our journey through your contribution.

Any thoughts on what this tribe is being built around?

Any more thoughts on building it?

I’ve said before that I want my blog to be helpful.  I’ve also said recently I wanted to focus it on the area of identity formation, at least for this season.  The experiences of our lives and faith are the primary shaping force of our identity.  So, experience and ultimately identity formation is what I continue to blog about.

As an outgrowth of this blog and my own desire to communicate this message, arguing for the role of experience in our spiritual identities, I’ve broadened my online presence.

• I’ve been using facebook for over a few months.  If you’re already there, let’s be friends.  If you’re not, consider joining.
• I’ve just started using twitter.  If you don’t know what it is, google it and find out.  It’s a way I can consolidate my online world.  I typically use twitter to update my facebook.

At first I was hesitant about facebook.  I didn’t want another email account.  Yet, I took the plunge and I’m glad I did.  It’s fun and it also allows me to use the format to communicate to a broader context.  I’ve gotten emails from friends that I haven’t talked to in over 10 years.  It’s thrilling when they share how God is using something I’ve written on this blog to work in their lives.

I’ve also found as a pastor it allows me to have points of connection that wouldn’t happen otherwise.  With 3 small children, Brandi and I can’t do ministry the same way as when we there the only 2 in our house.  It’s not that this season has to be inferior, just different.  And all these online tools help with that.

Tomorrow (UPDATE - Monday) I’ll share what I’d like to with these tools.  Any stories from your social media use?

Sometimes I want to pray or talk to God.  Sometimes I don’t.  When I don’t want to talk to Him, I think it could be boiled down to two reasons:

• I’m mad.  I don’t think He’ll do anything.  The bottom line for this reason is trusting His goodness.  If I can’t see His goodness, I don’t want to “converse with the Almighty”.
• I’m shamed.  I don’t feel worthy.  For so long we’ve been told.  “You’re a worm.  But God loves you.”  I picture Adam in the Garden with God.  God walks up and says, “You’re not worthy.  I’m here because you need me and that makes you worthy.”  Actually I think it would’ve gone like this:  God, “You’re worthy and I’m here.”  The two don’t have to be related.  C’mon.  He’s the groom for crying out loud.  What decent groom would say to His bride, “You’re a terrible bride but you have worth because I’m marrying you.”  No, instead, as the perfect groom, He loves us and celebrates us as the apex of creation.  No more of that garbage that says, “the only thing good about is Jesus”.

Whether I’m mad or shamed, it takes faith to approach God.  Faith that He is good, even when I don’t see it.  Faith that He is forgiving, even when I don’t feel it.  Faith that I’m loved and worthy as God’s creation.  Faith that I can come close, always, through Jesus.

Following up from yesterday… If we were able to fit God into our beliefs, then we would have the mental capacity to size up and understand God.  Let me say, God can be known.  He made Himself knowable (experientially) in Jesus and ultimately through Scripture.  However, just because I know someone doesn’t mean I’ve plumbed their depths.

If our minds could reason and understand God fully, wouldn’t that make us God?  He is bigger than my beliefs.  That is why I have faith.  Faith is not an intelligent belief system.  Faith is being certain that though I don’t see God, He is real.  Faith is being sure that any hope I have of things coming together in the future, eternally, can be counted on.  Faith is welcoming a promise today even though it might not come in this lifetime.  (See Hebrews 11)

I think this is part of our wrestling matching with suffering and the questions that follow.  Where is God in this?  Why would He allow this to happen.  The issue for Job’s friends was this…  Could they have faith even when their beliefs got trashed?

The roots of my faith and spiritual heritage are in the, ahem, (read in a whisper) Southern Baptist Convention.  Why is that embarrassing?  I could list some reasons like silly boycotts and clanging resolutions.  But that’s not the real issue.  The main issue for me is the absence of life and vitality (click the link for an article on the SBC decline) while having a focus on correct beliefs.  Conservative leaders died on the hill for the authority of Scripture and making sure the group’s beliefs were faithful to Scripture and enforced.  The problem?  You know where I’m headed here.  Correct knowledge is not enough.  Getting your beliefs “lined out” isn’t enough.  A creed isn’t personal.  (While I pastor an sbc church, there is great variety for beliefs as we come to Jesus.)    UPDATE— (That sounded a little more harsh than I would’ve liked.  I’m thankful for and honor God’s working in the past through the SBC.  I guess I don’t have as much hope they can embrace the needed change.)

Maybe it’s because I just finished doing some research in Job or it’s my own life experience.  But allow me to quote Oswald Chambers, who wrote My Utmost for His Highest, lest you call me a heretic.    These are his words from Baffled to Fight Better, his book on Job.  Words in parantheses are mine.

“They (Job’s friends) have stuck steadfastly to his literal words and taken their standpoint not from God, but from the creed they have accepted; consequently then not only criticize Job and call him bad, but they totally misrepresent God.”  pg 39

“If God is only a creed or a statement of religious belief, then He is not real: but if God is, as the book of Job brings to light, One with whom an individual gets into personal contact in other ways than by his intellect, then anyone who touches the reality of things, touches God.”  pg 51

“There are things in the experience of us all which call for a revision of our credal findings about God…The sign of dishonesty in a man’s creed is that he finds out defects in everyone but himself…Job stuck steadily to the facts, not to consistency to his creed…It is a most painful thing for a man to find that his stated views of God are not adequate.  Never tell a lie for the honor of God; it is an easy thing to do.”  pg 54-55

“Job is seeing for the first time that God is the only Refuge, the only way out for him; yet he cannot get at Him through his creed, it is all confusion; the only thing to do is to fling himself on God.”  pg 58

“Men have tried to get at the truth of Christianity head-first, which is like saying you must think how you will live before you are born.  We instantly see the absurdity of that, and yet we expect to reason out the Christian life before we have been born into the realm of Jesus Christ.”  pg 132

Some of may need to burn your copy of My Utmost for His Highest.  Who knew Oswald Chambers placed such a priority on experience?