For regular listeners, and those who haven’t found The God Journey yet, we wanted you to know that we have updated the entire site with a new look and new features. Please stop by and visit some time.

And, if you’d like to let others know that you’re on a God Journey of your own, we have new images for people to add to their blogs and websites encouraging others to find out about The God Journey themselves. Check it out!

I found out a few weeks ago that we were running out of So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, and have spent the last few days getting that manuscript back to the printer with some corrections made and a new publisher logo on it. Hopefully we’ll get those back before we run out of our existing supply.

One of the valuable things we did on that book was put quotes on the first few pages from readers who were impacted by it. We have heard over and over again how much those encouraged others to dive deeply into the book.

We want to do that with the next edition of He Loves Me, which we will also have to print in the next few months because we are running out of those as well. If any of you would like to write a blurb for that book for us? We need short, pithy comments about the book, much like you find in the early pages of the Jake book, talking about how it impacted you. We wanted normal folks, not celebrities to let others know what they think of this book.

You can either email those directly to me or leave them here as comments. Please include your first name, a two or three word descriptor of you (electrician, university professor, father of two, high school student, unemployed musician, mother of 18, something like that) and your hometown. That will make you seem like a real person and that we didn’t make those up here one afternoon. We can’t promise to use them all, but will use those we think best taps the hunger of future readers. Thanks for the help. Blessings!

Care to read over my shoulder again? I got this today and I just love emails like this one. Nothing excites me more than seeing Jesus bring this kind of freedom into someone’s heart.

God’s timing is awesome. I have listened to the audio version of the Jake Colsen book a couple of times now driving back and forth between work and home. I cannot even begin to describe how accurate that book is, at least for me. Especially the chapters dealing with “house church”. I am Jake Colsen!!

I had left the institutional approach for a better pattern of church. It was a rather rational decision. IC wasn’t working, so I must be getting something wrong. I needed to be more like the early church. But, I was missing the most important thing. I was focusing on an “it” rather than “Him”. Thanks for helping me sort this out.

I did an interview yesterday with a Canadian Christian TV show, and we found ourselves on this theme a lot as well. This is one of those places in my life, I never saw coming. I spent 20 years trying to find the perfect ‘it’ that would contain Jesus and his life. I never found it and was finlly won over to the idea that Jesus did lot leave us with a system to perpetuate the church, but with his Spirit who would let us live deeply in his life…

Is there any other way to really live?

I have told this story quite a few times on various teachings, but someone recently typed it up from the Transition series and sent me a copy. I have never seen it in print. It is not original to me, and if I knew who came up with this joke, I’d sure give them credit. But it makes a wonderful point nonetheless…

A member of the clergy arrives in heaven and is greeted at the gate by Peter, Jesus’ disciple. “Well hi, how are you?”

“Fine,” the man answered. “Do I just walk in?”

“That depends,” Peter answered. “How many points you got?”

“Points? What points?”

“You know, points for doing good things.”

The man didn’t look too concerned. “I’ve done a lot of good things,” the man answered.

“So, how many points do you have?”

“I have no idea. How many points do I need?”

“You need one hundred points to get in,” Peter answers.

“One hundred points? Is that all? That shouldn’t be too tough. I worked at the soup kitchen for 20 years will that…?”

“Certainly. I can give you a point for that.” Peter answered.

“A point for each time?” the man asked hopeful.

“No, a point for the whole thing.” Peter seemed a bit preturbed.

“Only a point?” The man was shocked. “Well, I was a pastor for 40 years.”

“Hmmm,” Peter thought a moment. “I guess I can give you a point for that too.

The man was dumbfounded. How could he possibly get enough points at this rate? While he was thinking of enough ways to get points, a businessman that he knew while on earth walked by, waving at Peter. “Hi, Pete. How are you doing?”

Peter waved back with a smile. “I’m doing great. Enjoy yourself.” And with that the man just walked through the gates.

The cleric looked confused and turned to Peter. “You mean that guy has a hundred points?”

“That guy?” Peter asked pointing over his shoulder. “He’s not playing this game.”

The ride home was as scheduled, 10 hours from door to door! I love it when it works that way. When I got home the wildfires were out around Moorpark, though there’s some smoldering going on because we can smell the smoke in the air. Eight homes were lost in our town, some not too far from here.

I loved the comments on my last blog, especially from those who were part of our times there and wanted to share what they learned with others. Evan added some comments about the weekend on his blog and Brent shares some of the rewriting going on in his heart on his 12/04 blog.

And for those hoping for a trip to Nashville, you may get your prayers answered. I’ve just been invited to attend a small-group working session with the First Amendment Center, the ACLU and the Council on America’s First Freedoms to see how public schools are dealing with issues of religion and religious liberty, and what can be done to address the remaining issues. That happens the first week of March, so I may come in early and hang out with some Nashville folks…

I read this the other day in Colossians, and it just rang in my heart. For the past 12 years I have been part of an international dialog with people about what life in Christ and what life in the body can truly be in our day. Hundreds of books have been written. Thousands of web pages have been added to the dialog. I’m one who appreciates intellectual study and discussion, but it’s good to be reminded that such things are incredibly limited. The only way to learn to live this life is to (how do I say this?), live this life!

My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Jesus Christ, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do waht you’ve been taught. School’s out; quite studying the subject and start living it! Colossians 2, the Message

I love that. Of course, if you’re new to this dialog and don’t yet feel rooted in him, don’t take this the wrong way. There is a season to learn to live in him and get let him switch our priorities around. But for those who just keep reading and studying and discussing, hoping to find an answer ‘out there’ somewhere, don’t forget this is a life to be lived, not a life to talk about endlessly. The Way and the Truth and the Life already dwells in you. Follow him day by day, step by step.

Hi All! What a crazy weekend this has been…

It began with a 42 hour trip from my home in Moorpark to the folks I was going to hang out with over the weekend in Springfield, Missouri. In that amount of time I could have flown to Australia and back and to Australia again. But an ice and snow storm swept through Missouri and surrounding states as I arrived in Denver on my flight to St. Louis. I spent all day Thursday at the airport seeing if any flights were going to get in to St. Louis. None did that night.

Fortunately I remembered that a family had called me what I thought was a few months ago, saying they’d love to meet me, that they lived 10 minutes from Denver airport, and I could have a bed there any time if I got stranded in Denver. So I called them. It turns out that they had offered that a couple of years before, but they still remembered who I was and invited me over for the evening. They picked me up at the airport and returned me there the next morning. We had a great time sharing our lives together and discovering yet more splendor in this incredible family that is the church.

On Friday my 8:30 flight for St Louis didn’t get airborne until noon. I arrived at 2:o0 to a mess. They didn’t have people to get the baggage or help park the plane. What a mess. Fortunately my bag was already there from an earlier flight so I grabbed it and went out to meet my ride to Springfield. It’s normally about a three-hour drive and I was trying to get there for a 7:00 meeting.

If you have never seen the effects of an ice storm, you have truly missed one of the wonders of the world. It does make a mess for travel, but the beauty of ice-encased trees make it look like crystal forests, especially with the sun shinning through the backside of the trees. At one point in our travels the sun at its final moment of setting shot some orange rays through the trees we were driving near in the approaching twilight. The trees lit up like they had been decorated with orange lights at the tip of every branch. I had never seen anything like it. We just marveled at it for the 45 seconds or so that those circumstances converged. Truely, truely awesome!

Unfortunately I-44 to Springfield was a parking lot, due to the ice and snow conditions and a multiplicity of accidents. At 8:00 at night we got trapped behind an accident that closed the freeway for nearly 2 hours. Of course we didn’t know why it was closed, but we sat in our car in sub zero temperatures with an ever-lowering fuel gauge, thinking we might be spending the night on the freeway. It was hilarious discussing the possibilities. But the traffic finally got moving and we arrived in Springfield at 12:15 on Saturday morning, 42 hours after I left my home in Moorpark.

But the folks were gracious and we had a great time through the weeknd. If you want to read someone else’s take on our time togther and see pictures, you can check out a series of entries on Rob’s blog, one of my hosts for the weekend… Sunday afternoon we headed back north to St. Lous where we met with the group i was supposed to have met with on Thursday night when I was stranded in Denver.

I also got a call from Sara yesterday about the wildfires in my hometown of Moorpark, CA. I also got a number of emails from people check on us to see if we were in danger from the fire. There are three fires burning in and around Moorpark fanned by 75 mile per hour winds. Our home doesn’t seem to be in any immediate danger. The fires are all west of us at this point and the wind is blowing to the west. One fire, however, is less than half a mile from our home, but it is also west of us and not likely to move our direction. But it is a bit unnerving for Sara being home alone. I fly home tomorrow to see what’s going on. But as of now all is well, though Sara has gathered up our irreplaceable things and put them in her car, just in case…

One last thing. I had some kind of computer glitch here that erased all my inbound email from Sunday. So if you wrote me yesterday, I did read your emails, but I no longer have them and cannot respond. I am so sorry. If you will resend your email, I will get back to you…

Tomorrow I’m off to Illinois and Missouri for the weekend, meeting with some old friends, and connecting with some people I’ve only corresponded with on the Internet. It should be lots of fun, though the weather tomorrow doesn’t look like the best as I’m trying to get into St. Louis.

So before I go, I want to leave you with two things. The first is a special offer we’re running through the month of December at Lifestream. With the order of any two books or CD collections we will give you a FREE copy of Tales of the Vine. All you have to do is ask for it when you order. Please do NOT use the shopping cart button for that book, simply request it in the comment section of your PayPal or credit card order, or mention it in your email order to us.

And then I wanted to leave you with a quote. It is from an unpublished manuscript that a friend asked me to look over for him. The book hasn’t been published yet, and I’m not sure if or when it will. It’s called “Where the Rocks Are†by Fred Wechsel. I’m also not sure it is a book that most of you would want to read since it is written by a pastor to a more liturgical audience, but this paragraph is profound:

“Sister, Brother, you the Body of Christ, be of good courage: the church is alive and well and much of the time hidden. Let this be a clue, that the world does not, cannot, will not see it. It is to be sought. It is to be found. Do not be surprised at the distance away from Christ that others would lead you, fool you, use you, or destroy you. This God-business is for keeps. The Lord is faithful. Keep your sense alert to catch the sound, the sight, and the warmth of spiritual fellowship. Be sad for what we all encounter, yet rejoice that you are able to see it for what it is.“

Be encouraged! God’s work is unfolding in the earth. It may not be where we’ve been trained to see it, but it is nonetheless real and growing every day…

Recently I got email from Mary in Chicago about a conversation she had with a friend of hers. I loved the illustrations she provided. I know this can appear a bit condescending if it seems to exalt personal experience over community, but that’s not the context she’s writing in at all. She’s talking about a specific congregation they frequent that is missing a deeper reality of God breathing his life in us. Here’s what she wrote:

I (recently) had a discussion with a friend of mine about his frustration with our church home. I tried to encourage him not to get frustrated because he is desiring a “calculus” experience (that he is actually having during the week with God) and our church is singing the “2 + 2 = 4 song”. He got a chuckle out of that. I also told him to not be disappointed because he isn’t getting fed.

God has planted a new seed in his heart and the church we go to, which is a really nice place, is only used to “feeding and growing corn”…they have corn fertilizer, corn harvesting tools, and they know all about corn…but the seed that God planted in him is a unique hybrid that doesn’t have any resemblance to corn…so they don’t know how to cultivate, feed or tend it. And it is so strange a “plant”, that they are a little afraid of it, because it is so “different”.

I’ve often thought that many congregations treat people like they are in spiritual kindergarten. They tell you when to stand up, what emotions you ‘should’ be having at any moment, and what to ‘say to your neighbor’ during a moments of greeting. Hey, if you need kindergarten, that’s great. You can’t get to calculus if you don’t know 2+2=4. But if you’re still singing that song even 5 years later, it will grow extremely boring and ritualistic.

Now, certainly not all congregations are like this, but I’ve often compared sitting in a service on Sunday to watching golf on TV. It is far more exciting to go out and actually play golf. Yes, you can learn some things from watching it, but this is LIFE in Jesus we’re talking about. It is meant to be no less real Tuesday afternoon than it is on Sunday morning. Sometimes, as our friend is finding out above it can be more real. This is about following him, every moment of every day and growing to participate in his work in the world.

I’d rather live it than sit around and talk about it any day.

Here’s another look over my shoulder. What a way to wake up to this new day! I go this email today from some dear friends I met in New Zealand during my stay there. I love what God has been doing in them and don’t mind being called ‘Jim’ at all if it puts the focus where it belongs—on Jesus himself! And I love her story of the lamb and freedom, and sensing by the Spirit that it was first for her before it was for otherrs. I love the way God sets people free in him. He’s amazing!

I just wanted to say how much we have first of all, enjoyed your book So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore. I have lost count of how many I have ordered from your office. A friend lent it to us and we have found it fantastically freeing. I have given it away to numerous people who are all plodding along on this journey, and I would say that every one of them have also found it so freeing. Some of them, who have read it, have already been living in real freedom; others, like me, feel like it was a door into more freedom in Jesus. And then I ordered your 8 CDs on Relational Living and the Cross, and I personally would say, that the book is just the appetiser to the CDs. I saved them all to my computer, and have copied them numerous times onto CD for others to enjoy. Knowing that I have a Dad in heaven who loves me more than I can ever know—is that wow or what? I wake up most mornings asking the Lord to show me how much He loves me, and I ask Him to help me live loved. I realise that I haven’t had a clear concept of “Daddy” where I can sit on His lap and be just loved by Him. When I was young I remember envying another kid who was sitting on his dad’s lap, and wishing that my dad would do that to me, but he wouldn’t. So I’ve asked Him to heal that in me, and for Him to be my daddy, and I know He’s doing that in me.

Now we also have to confess Wayne, that we have renamed you ‘Jim!’. I gave the CDs to some very close friends of ours, and we have all listened to them so much, and are getting such a new revelation of the cross, and living in Him, and we often start saying, “What about when Wayne said this, or Wayne said that.” And we know it’s not about you! And I know that you know that too! So we came up with laughingly calling you Jim for a while. I hope you don’t mind!

As you know, we are on a sheep farm. We have just finished our lambing season, which is our busiest time of all on the farm. My job during this is to “mother-on the sheep.” This involves taking an orphaned lamb (either her mother has died, or the mother has twins or triplets and doesn’t have enough milk to feed all her lambs), and putting her with another mother and getting that mother to adopt the orphan lamb as if it were her own. Often the mother will accept her new lamb within 2 or 3 days, but sometimes I get a very “stroppy” ewe, and I could take up to a week working with her, for the mother to accept the lamb.

One of the ways that we get the mother to adopt her lamb, is by tying one of the front hoofs of the mother to a fence, and also tying the lamb up to the fence as well. The rope is about a metre in length, and the mother sheep can move along the fence about 4 feet, before she is stopped by another fence post. She can then eat the grass in this area that she is tied to. And hopefully the lamb is able to tuck under the mum and have a feed. Every morning and evening, I will go and make sure the lamb has a good feed of milk from the mother, and then after she has fed, I will move the mother and lamb on to the next block on the fence, so that she is continually getting new grass to eat, which keeps her milk supply up.

Anyhow, I had a particularly “stroppy” mother who DID NOT want to adopt her new lamb. As I would walk up to her, the mother would jump up and down, racing up and down her little patch of fence, and I would hold her tight so that the lamb could get a feed. I was beginning to wonder if she would ever accept the lamb, and then one morning, when I came to her, I found the lamb full, and the mother was bleating her (which is a very good sign of accepting the lamb as her own.) They were finally ready to let go! The ewe was sitting down, so I quietly untied her, and the lamb, and walked away so as not to disturb them. As I watched from a distance, I realised that the ewe did not know she was free, so I walked back to her to give her a gentle nudge. She leapt to her feet, and ran to the end of her fence post, and stopped sharp. She still thought she had the rope on her hoof! As I walked away, I thought, “She’s free and she doesn’t even know it.” And I also realised that although she didn’t know that she was free then, by the time I came back in the evening, she would’ve discovered her freedom, and nobody would’ve told her, she would’ve found it by herself.

And then I thought smugly (yes smugly!) to myself – “Well, that would make a good object lesson to share with others!”, and almost immediately came the thought, “so how does this apply to you?”, and I felt the Lord say to me, “You’re free, and you don’t even know it.” Well I blinked back a few tears at that, for it was the truth. And now I have to say, my Dad is now showing me what it is to begin to be free. And it’s awesome! And it’s incredibly relaxing, as I begin to learn to live in Him. Do I think I hear Him much? No, I don’t reckon I do very much. But that’s okay too. I’m free in that, realising that I’m puddling along, day by day. It’s really cool.

Anyhow, time is ticking by here. I have just had my 16 yr old son come in. He has really enjoyed your Jake book, and also listening to the CDs and he said to say, “Please feel free to come stay!†Seriously, if you ever feel to come back to NZ, we in Fairlie would be keen to catch you up. Our other son who’s just got engaged and is in Christchurch, would also want to hang out with you.

And I’d love to hang out with all of you again someday, should Jesus have it in his heart for me to return to New Zealand someday!

I guess this is get-out-in-the-community week. Yesterday I traveled to Pasadena to record a podcast and meet with the folks at The Plain Truth, the former publishing arm of the Worldwide Church of God. They are on an interesting journey of thinking outside the box and they wanted to do an interview with me as well as talk about some other things. (Sorry, the interview won’t air until April some time. These folks really plan ahead!)

Today I’m off to a one-day conference with Brian McLaren of the movement known as emergent, and you all know how I feel about movements. Nonetheless I like hearing from the horse’s mouth, so I’ll be hanging out with those folks today. I’m sure I’ll have more to report on it when I have some time.

Recently I finally got to see a copy of Religiously Transmitted Diseases by Ed Gungor at a home I stayed in New York. I had heard about this title years ago and though it was one of the best book titles I’d ever heard of. I wish I’d thought of it. Anyway, I didn’t get a chance to read through the book, so I’m really to recommending it at this point, but I did thumb through the chapter on the Prodigal son, entitled “Elder brother Disease: Who’s Your Daddy.â€

Many of you know that’s one of my favorite parables and I am deeply moved by the contrast between the Father’s joy at his brother’s return and the rage it provokes in the older brother. He, too, is hiding from his Father, isn’t he? But this one looks better because he’s hiding on the farm instead of in a pig pen in some far off country. Obviously religion makes as good a hiding place as rebelling in sin.

Here’s what Gungor says about the ‘older brothers and sisters’ among us…

There are millions of failed believers still in the pigpen because the elder brothers have positioned themselves at the doorposts of the church. These self-righteous boys and girls are keeping prodigals away. The protective, performance-based view of the elder brother is a spiritual disease and it is the biggest cause of the ‘de-churched of America—those who love God but hate church.

Let me leave you with a scary thought: the elder brother still runs most religious organizations and institutions. Perhaps that is why the most organized churches are losing their voice in our culture.

O.K, his use of ‘church’ and ‘de-churched’ really misses the point, but I wholeheartedly agree with his premise that most of our religious institutions are run by ‘older brother’ types who don’t know Father well enough to extend grace to those finding their way home from all the places they have wandered. When conformity is the goal, grace gets trampled underfoot, and we find ourselves warring with Father in the moments of his greatest joy.