It’s always a wonderful reminder for me to spend some time among some people who meet in a conventional setting and yet live the life of the kingdom. I’ve been with my dad and mom over the last week helping them through my Dad’s open-heart surgery and some of his recovery. (He is doing incredibly well, by the way and it was a real blessing to see him get back his sense of humor and a lot of his strength before Sara and I had to head home.)

They are part of a more traditional congregation at least in the forms they use. That group of believers is almost a fourth of the population of the mountain community in which they reside. Though they do a lot of things in conventional ways, including Sunday services and vacation Bible schools, I love most the relational life they share together. During their Sunday gatherings they provide plenty of open time for people to share what they are learning, where they need prayer and how God has moved in their lives.

What I like most is how much they care for each other all week long. When my dad had surgery there must have been 25 people in the waiting room with my mom. Throughout the week they continued to show up at the hospital and at their home offering whatever assistance we needed. These weren’t people assigned to ‘hospital visitation’, but those with whom my parents have become good friends since moving to the area 12 years ago. Watching my parents brighten up whenever someone came through the door was demonstration enough of the relationships they share.

The congregation has a heart that goes far beyond their own program or needs. When a local child needed a special restroom the local school district had no funds to provide, instead of suing the district they got together and built the restroom for them. The man they call their pastor is unconventional to say the least. He was a construction contractor among that fellowship before he agreed to take his present task. He’s not on any kind of power trip, except to see God’s power change lives. He doesn’t lord over people, but serves them with all God has given him. Little of his time goes to maintaining the institutional machine. During the week you’re more likely to find him serving the community by intervening in the practical needs of others, most of which don’t attend the congregation and aren’t even believers yet. He’ll crawl into just about any situation with anyone and see what God will do to touch people. And he is a blessing to the wider body of Christ. Over the past few months he has helped crisis pregnancy centers throughout California get fitted with MRI equipment.

Whether they are walking together through a medical crisis, intervening with an alcoholic, sending people and money to help build up the church in an impoverished city in Mexico or serving each other or their community in some other practical way, they continually demonstrate the heart of Jesus by serving those in need and loving the people God puts in their path. For those of us who enjoy more relational forms of church life, it is good to remember that God shows up in all kinds of places. He is far less concerned with the form we use than whether or not we reflect his heart for others. I know many home groups that could learn a lot from their outward focus and willingness to serve others, as God would give them away without thinking what’s in it for them. Now that’s body life! And whether you find it in a group like this or with two or three over a cup of coffee, it’s worth celebrating. Unfortunately, it’s all too rare these days!

What a difference a few weeks can make. Here’s a bit of an exchange I had with a brother from back east. God had been doing a work in his heart that was drawing him closer to his Father, but at the same time he found himself increasingly isolated from the friends he used to share congregational life with. He was feeling lonely and desperate for fellowship.

In April he wrote me sharing how lonely he felt:

At the time I wrote him back:

It’s amazing what has happened sense. Over the last few days I’ve watched with joy as more of the story has unfolded. God has connected him with some wonderful people in his region of the country and is now bringing those connections closer:

Four months later and so much has changed. From the despair of loneliness to overwhelming gratefulness at that which God has provided. Sometimes it can really help for us to remember that on any given day we’re in the middle of a story. The last chapter has yet been written. The story will still unfold and God will have incredible things ahead that we can’t quite see today. In this process you’ll find yourself dying to your own agenda so that you can embrace God’s way of doing things. That’s where the life and joy of this kingdom reside, not in getting our wants fulfilled our way.

So, keep leaning into Jesus. Let him be enough for you and watch what he will unfold in his time.

In unrelated developments, we were able to bring my dad, home from the hospital today. He is continuing to heal in textbook fashion and for that we are grateful to God and those who have held him in your prayers. His story is still unfolding as well.

I received this email the other day, which the writer wanted me to pass along to you as an encouragement. It’s amazing what God does in lives as they turn toward him:

Look for Someone to Encourage Today Read More »

I’m spending this week in the hospital with my Dad through his open-heart surgery to replace a valve and do a double bypass and his recovery. I appreciate deeply those of you who have held my family in prayer during this time. His recovery is progressing well. As I’ve sat with my father I’ve been reading an out-of-print book by John Beaumont, entitled God in my Dreams. In it he tells a story of God telling him to lead out in singing in the Spirit among a congregation of people of which he was a co-pastor. He didn’t do it, concerned that they had never done it before and that the elders wouldn’t approve.

The next day he told his co-pastor and his wife what he’d been through that night. His co-pastor responded:

I hesitate to retell the story because we all know people who are so self-focused that they would use such encouragement to be over their pet theologies and agendas, and swear God had told them to do so. But that danger notwithstanding, I am convinced that it is more important to encourage people who do listen to Jesus to follow him, even if the consequences might be painful for them. It also points out that our religious systems have created environments where obeying God is far less important than having the approval of others by fitting into their expectations. How quickly we blame the person whose actions expose our division than deal honestly and compassionately with the division among us. We love the security of fitting in more than we do following the Lamb wherever he goes. I think that’s why our systems continue to harden over time and why people caught in them end up spiritually stagnant even though they are hungry for him.

We experience the life of God, however, by following him wherever he might lead us. John continues his comments in the book:

Amen! Follow him wherever he leads you and don’t talk yourself out of it just because other brothers and sisters won’t understand. A few hours after reading this story, one of the people who came to visit my dad in the hospital surprised me by telling me she had left a congregation three years ago that she had been a part of over 25 years. She loved it and had always been one of the most committed people there. But God told her that her allegiance to the group was becoming a substitute for her life in him. Few folks in that congregation have understood or affirmed her choice, and she hasn’t tried to explain it to them beyond, “This is something God asked me to do.” She also said she has never found such freedom in God’s life and such incredible connections with her family and friends. And she would be just as ready to go back or go anywhere else God would ask her to do.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that we are called to live by “every word that comes from God,” not by pleasing even well-meaning brothers and sisters.

Last weekend Sara and I spent four days with a wonderful group of believers around Youngstown, Ohio. That’s them above at or Saturday night barbeque. They are two years on a journey of discovering relational life together. They gather weekly in various homes to share God’s life and also have a Wednesday night Bible study for those interested. We hung around a retreat center together for the weekend and were joined at various times from some folks further north near Lake Erie and some from the Pittsburgh area. What a weekend!

We talked through something you’ll be reading more about on this website in coming months. There is a block on my website reserved for The Journey and The Story, . I’ve just begun to post some things there to help people see God’s working in their own life to move them closer to him and prepare them more effective participation in the life of his body and in living out their mission in the earth. In my own life and in others I’ve connected with in recent years I am recognizing a progression of God’s work in growing us up and setting us free. They are not steps but simply things we need to ‘get’ to learn to live relationally with God, other believers and the world.

By growing daily in the reality and depth of Father’s affection for you you will find yourself growing to trust him and his purpose sorting out in the experiences of your life. As you grow to trust him you’ll find yourself embracing true freedom and knowing what it is to live free of guilt and condemnation, free of other people’s expectations, and free of your own agenda for your life. This growing freedom will allow you to discover how the Body of Christ can share God’s life together, freely without trying to make others provide for you what you’re not finding in him. Body life can now be a place for people to grow in Christ and encourage each other without manipulating or judging each other. As we learn to share life among the body we’ll also find our hearts spilling over with God’s love for the word and we’ll find ourselves incarnating that love quite naturally as we live simply in God’s reality in events around us.

This is an amazing process and there is progression here that is quite helpful. In other words people who aren’t growing confident in Father’s affection will never know what real trust or freedom is. People who aren’t growing in God’s freedom will only see the body as a place to manipulate others with their own need, ‘theology’ or agenda. But these are not steps of achievement. I see them more as an ascending spiral. We’ll continue to discover more of each of these areas as we grow up in him and will not complete any one of them before moving on to the next. In that sense, we’ll grow in them together.

For each of these five areas I will be providing some of the lessons God’s taught me in sorting out each of these areas in my own life. I’ll also include resources from Lifestream that will help you work through these specific areas to greater life him.

Also, let me add an unrelated postscript here. If you would like to see the incredible beauty of New Zealand, I’ve posted some of our favorite New Zealand Pictures, . It really is a magnificent country as you will see!

I have been reading Richard John Neuhaus’ Death on a Friday Afternoon about the seven statements Jesus made on the cross. I was so encouraged by his perspective on what is to live in the real world. Here he tells us how easily we mistake the real world where God dwells for the false world that occupies so much of our attention.

It is so easy to mistake the distractions of this world for reality itself, when it is only an illusion. The real world is in Father’s heart, where we’ve been invited to be at home in him in everything we do and in every circumstance that confronts us. There is no greater reality than our life in him, and his life in us. We do well to keep that in focus every day, or else the distractions and chores of living in this world will define or reality and diminish our awareness of him in all of life.

Toward the end of the book he reminds us again that when we live in God’s reality it permeates all that we do. It is just as spiritual to work on your car or decorate your house as it is to pray, gather with other believers or share his life with someone who is lost. When we live as his, his glory shines through our lives no matter what we might be doing at any given moment.

I’m convinced we best demonstrate God’s life when we are least aware of it. When we are trying too hard we are only acting and the world sees it instantly even if we don’t. They are not looking for actors on a stage, but people who live God’s reality in the simplicity of their lives. When we live deeply in him throughout each day he makes himself known in ways that will even surprise us. And it won’t be fake or artificial because it comes from reality not pretense.

This was too good to pass up! Shortly after I posted the latest blog, a friend from New Zealand sent me this quote from one of John’s books:

Funny. Very funny. I’ve been there, how about you?:

Over the last few days I keep thinking of one more tidbit from our conversation with John and Mary Beaumont in Christchurch, New Zealand. This has really been an encouragement to me as I’m freshly evaluating some of the things I feel like God is doing in my own life right now.

John said that once you’ve said ‘Yes’ to Jesus, it needs to count for the whole of our lives. We need not ever wrestle again with whether or not we’ll do what he wants. Once that is decided the only question that remains in everything we consider is simply this, "Is this what he wants?" And if he does, why would we want anything else?

I clutter my journey in Christ with way too many questions. Does this make sense to me? What would be the ramifcations? What will other people think? Does it make financial sense? What principle should guide me here? Answering all of those questions can be cumbersome indeed and many of them will lead me opposite of the way he would want.

We are loved by a Father whose ways are so much higher than ours and whose thoughts go way beyond anything we could ask or ever imagine. Why would we ever think that we could reason out his ways? All we’re really doing is reasoning out an excuse to do what we think is best.

Now when I find myself caught up in an internal argument, I’m pretty certain that’s because one of Jesus’ thoughts is rolling around in there. How do I know? Because I rarely argue with me. I like my thoughts. It’s his thoughts that are so different from the way I would naturally think.

I am finding great rest in recent days simply asking, "Is this what you’re saying?" Or, "Is this what you want?" If I am certain of that, then the other questions that offer such a wearying wrestling match become moot.

I don’t know about you, but I find one question much easier to deal with than an entire checklist of them!

[As an aside, I’ve just added an article of John’ Beaumont’s that comes from a previous book of his that is now out of print. It is entitled the Jetty and the Raft.]

I attended a local consultation over the last two days regarding community transformation. The promotional material said it was “a roundtable gathering of Christian leaders looking at church outside the walls.” I didn’t really expect them to mean it. But one of the questions we sorted through on the first day was, “What is the problem with church as we know it?”

We were given some interesting statistics to ponder. This from a book By Reggie McNeal titled The Present Future

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

This kind of information is coming from all over. I received this quote in a letter from an institutional bunch:

So what are we to make of all of this? At least a number of people are seeing the irrelevance of institutional Christianity as it as evolved into this century. Of course most of these studies hope to encourage Christian institutions to reform the box so that those who’ve left will come back in.

In the end, that’s where our discussion ended after two days. People trapped in the box just cannot see outside it long enough to know that there are some incredible ways to live out this Christian experience without wasting so much time, energy and resources on the machinery our culture has come to equate with Christianity?

For the most part, I am convinced the box is a deterrent not only to growing in intimacy with Christ but also in engaging the culture with the reality of who Christ is rather than the baggage of Christianity. But I was also reminded that there are a lot of people who really love Jesus and are seeking to follow him who are still in that box. They are trying to make the most of it, not realizing, that it is getting the best of them.

At the same time, I know some who would quote the statistics above as proof of a world-wide movement of people seeing through the frailties of the box and are abandoning it for a greater relationship with God and with other believers. They point to this information as proof that they are right and others caught up in the system are wrong. That would be a mistake. People coming to be part of a movement will only create another box in time and still miss the relationship Jesus wants most with them.

Wouldn’t it be better if we got our eyes off of systems and hope about movements and fix them squarely on Jesus? Do what he tells you to do. Follow where he tells you to go and encourage others to do the same. Then we’ll simply be the church in our day, with a variety of expressions as God shows us how to share his life together and how to make his love known in the world.

Except for the stupid spam proliferating on the Internet like rats, nothing more fun than opening my email every day. Here are two back-to-back emails that I opened this afternoon. I get many emails like the first one. There is great angst out there about how organized religion thwarts people’s attempts to know the living God. I understand it. It used to make me so angry and I wanted to do something to show it up.

But in the end that is God’s job, not ours. In the second email you’ll notice the freedom that comes from getting our eyes off the failures of others and onto the life of Jesus flowing through us. The man who wrote the second, wrote me one much like the first a few weeks before.:

What do we do when organized religion gets us down? Get our eyes back on Jesus and the life he’s asked us to live. There’s nothing better we can do, even for those captured in religion, than to sort out in our own life what it means to live free. Then they might see in us something worth seeking. They are like kangaroos born in the zoo. They think they’re free, because they just don’t know better. They have no idea what life in Jesus is really all about. You can scream at them until you’re blue in the face, but the security of the status quo will win over the uncertainty of the unknown.

But what would happen if a mob of free kangaroos came bounding by in the open fields, chasing up the hill in the glory for which God made kangaroos. Then it just might do what all the words in the world won’t do…