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I love talking about two things:  What does it mean to live in the affection of the Father and what does the church look like if it was a community of people sharing the Father’s affection and not distorted by the institutional priorities that often mar her beauty.  Last week I got to do both. 

I was a guest on Brian Holmes podcast talking about HE LOVES ME.  In my opinion the material in this book is the most important issue I help people deal with.  While “God is love” is the most certain of our theological underpinnings, most people do not wake up every morning confident that God loves them more than anyone on this planet every has or ever will, that he will work in their life that day for their good, and that they can walk with him in a real and tangible way.  Brian and I get to process that together.  If you haven’t read the book you can order it here.  If you’re having trouble learning connecting to the way God makes himself known in your life, you might try our Engage videos, a free resource to help discover the relationship God is building with you. 

I also did an intervidw on Finding Church for iHeart Radio.  Unfortunately too many Christians think the only way to follow Jesus is by attending a local congregation that claims to be his church.  While his church can often make itself known there, there are so many other ways and places where God expresses his family as well.  Wayne talks about the growing trend of people from all walks of life who are no longer engaged in a traditional congregation and why they are finding that an institution is not the only place to celebrate the unity, encouragement and cammaradarie of the Body of Christ in the world.  

For those of you concerned that I’m not blogging enough here, I’m also blogging at FindingChurch.com.  If you liked our Facebook Page or subsribe to the blog, you’ll be notified when I post a new blog. And I’m posting a new poem on the Finding Church blog today that will invite you into some really enthralling space about God’s church in the world.  

Over the past couple of weeks Sara has been sending out donation receipts to those who have given so generously to Lifestream over the past year.  Of course, the vast majority of that went to help in Kenya where people were so impacted by drought and disease. In the past twenty years I have continually been amazed at how God has provided for all that we do here, from the books and travel, to the free website resources, and in the last few years to share with our brothers and sisters in Kenya who live in such incredible poverty.  

We are not a relief organization, or even a missional one in the sense that our objective is to raise money for overseas needs. But you wouldn’t know that from looking at our financial expenditures last year.  If you had shown me this chart last year and told me that’s what God was going to do in 2014, I would have thought you were crazy. We were simply touched by a need overseas. Dear friends from Kenya had come across a region north of them where over 100,000 peple were being decimated by extreme drought, destroying their food supply and ravaging them with disease. We simply offered to help and invited you to help too.  What began with sending a few thousand dollars worth of food and water sort of snowballed—both with the need there, and the generosity of people who read this blog or listen to my podcast at The God Journey.

Honestly this was not in our budget or plans for this year. Who would have thought that we would be able to channel over half a million dollars by simply letting people know about the need? We didn’t take out any fees for our expenses or administration in gathering and wiring this money and quickly generosity begat generosity. Well, we certainly look like a missions organization now at least as far as our spending in 2014.  Here’s what that looked like:

Someone wrote this week to get some more information on Lifestream and how we do what we do.  Lifestream is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit ministry.  For revenue last year we took in $344,000 in contributions and another $38,000 in book sales and other income.  We spent $673,000 last year, with $531,00 of that going to our work in Kenya and $25,000 of that in travel and website expenses.  We have two people on our payroll (myself and Sara) and we are free to do whatever God gives us to do to encourage people on this journey, connect them with others, and to share his resource among the corner of his family that we touch. As you can see our business model is unsustainable, spending more than we take in. It only works because of a past endowment we can access.  

Almost two-thirds of our spending last year went to our brothers and sisters in Kenya to help relieve the suffering in North Pokot and open a wide door for the Gospel among a people who did not know about Jesus or his life.  Over the next week or so our donation receipts will go out to those who helped make all of this possible.  You can’t imagine how grateful we are and overwhelmed with gratittude that God let us be part of something so incredible. A year ago we didn’t even know these people existed or that we could help meet a need more worthy of far larger missions groups.  But somehow God saw fit to use this little community in a corner of the web. So if you think this blog posting is bragging on Lifestream, you’re a bit confused. This was not about us!  This was about fellow human beings being ravaged by need and how a small group of people from all over the world responded. You can read more about that here as this journey continues into 2015.  

Love draws you into some pretty crazy space where God can do things beyond anything you would even ask for or imagine.  

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was an outstanding collegiate and professional basketball player many moons ago and well-known convert to Islam. In a Time article this week he wrote about his reaction to the Paris bombings as a Muslim: 

“Ironically, terrorism is an act against the very religion the perpetrators believe in.  It’s is an acknowledgement that the religion and its teachings aren’t enough to persuade people to follow it. Any religion that requires coercion is not about community but leaders who want power.” 

So true!    

And it is also true of evangelical pastors who berate followers of Jesus with fear and obligation.  If your faith is not engaging enough to invite others to embrace it on for its joy and reality, maybe you need to find a richer faith.    

Sara and I receive lots of Christmas cards and greetings from people all over the world and they overwhelm us with the joy of our connection to a vast and rich pool of friends who share many of our passions.  I’m deeply blessed by all the people I know and love in the world.  We havent sent out our own cards or family newsletter in years.  For one, most of my life is already public and two, it only adds to a to-do list that is already too long at year’s end. 

But I enjoy reading the ones that are sent to us as long as you remember that Christmas newsletters like Facebook postings only include the highlights, as perhaps they should.  But real life goes on beneath the milestones in our children’s lives, the birth and growth of grandchildren, and new opportunities at work.  I’ve read many a newsletter, celebrating the high moments, but knowing that life was much more difficult for them than any would think reading it.  Life is filled with challenge and pain for all of us.  While they may not be appropriate in a newsletter, I am concerned that as others read them they thing others’ lives are awesome, while theirs is difficult and painful.  Don’t forget, everyone knows pain, times of doubt, rear, and struggles that at times push them to their limits.  They are not going to put that in a newsletter so don’t think the newsletter defines their lives.  

In this last year Sara and I have known absolute bliss and times of searing pain.  We’ve known God’s wisdom, and we’ve stood amidst perplexing circumstances horribly uncertain of what’s next.  We’ve laughed hard with good friends and we’ve cried as people we love endure excruciating pain.  We got to go to Israel with forty people who became an expression of God’s family not just for those ten days, but in growing friendships since.  We came back to be with my parents through challenges to my mom’s health, then her passing, then to help Dad in his life now in the valley of the shadow of her death.  

I blew up Finding Church in February and had to rewrite it past summer.  And now Sara has been busy shipping them all over the world.  The response has been overwhelming, both with those who love it and those who consider it a grave threat to what they think is the “real church.”  

We’ve seen people we love find new dimensions of grace, we’ve watched others nearly give up in the struggle. We’ve enjoyed our children, grandchildren, extended family, and friends in the passages of life.  We’ve celebrated when new layers of revelation open up a wider vista for a friend, groaned in prayer as others go through deeper pain and challenge.  We’ve deepened old friendships and began new ones.  We have been with people in the pain of coming away from abusive religious systems, who struggle to believe their is a God who loves them, even at their most broken.  We’ve sat in dark moments with those overwhelmed by disappointment or fear.  

As a complete surprise to us we got involved with a 120,000 people straving to death in the upper reaches of Kenya and through your generosity were able to send over half a million dollars for relief,  provision, medical needs, education, and to drill four wells to provide life-giving water.  Half a million dollars!  I can’t even imagine how God was able to put that kind of resource in our hands just by making a few invitations on my blog or podcast! We sent it all to Kenya, even more thatn we took in and have listened to the stories as those we helped have been opening to Jesus because their gods had failed them. We’ve seen our Kenyan friends rush to their aid out of their own poverty and heard how blessed they were that we entrusted the money to them without sending a white guy over to administrate the funds because we didn’t trust them.  They don’t think that has ever been done before.  They have grown tremendously in their capacity to live beyond themselves and be a blessing to others when their needs are great as well.

But mostly this year has been like every other year, another opportunity for grace to unfold in our lives and the challenge to keep embracing his reality when life beckons you so many different directions.  We’ve grown in love and gratefulness for a Father who is with us through whatever comes our way and has the words that lead us to life.  Our prayer is that this season you will know the reality of “God with you!”  You are not alone, not matter what circumstances argue to the contrary and no matter how dark the night feels.  You are deeply loved by the creator of the universe, and in that increadle truth Sara and I pray that you will have a blessed Christmas season, and the fullest of joys in the year ahead.  Thank you for all the love and friendship you’ve extended towards us in large ways and small ones. Thanks for being on the journey of Life and by doing so give encouragement to ours. 

I get a lot of these kinds of email from people wanting to know God’s will for their life, and despite many prayers and hours contemplating what that might be, they don’t think they are gtting any closer to an answer.  Maybe we are asking God for information he can’t really give, or at least if he does we will misunderstand that.  In my younger years, I was in that situation a lot, looking for answers God didn’t seem to want to give.  It was frustrating and made me doubt whether I could listen to him at all.  Now as I look back on my life with the gift of age I see how impossible it would have been for God to answer a prayer like that.  What would he have said back then given the arc my life has taken.  I’ve done lots of things in lots of different seasons, and in the end I think it was far important important that I become a free person in his love than that I 

I got this from Jim just this morning:  

I have been reading and listening to many of your resource) at Life Stream for two years now.  My relationship is getting closer with Him on a daily basis but I still am seeking some answers to unknown questions. I have held the questions in front of Him for almost two years but no certain answer has fallen into my heart. Questions like, what is my next step Lord?

What do you want me to do as a career? Also, what do you have for me today Lord? I am totally open to Him and His direction. Am I missing something?

Here’s how I responded:  I’m glad some of our resources have been helpful to your journey and grateful you’d take the time to let me know.  As to your question, I’m not sure what you are looking for?  Are you looking for God to tell you to go be an airplane pilot, or university professor, or a carpenter?  Honestly, I don’t know that it works that way.  If he had something to tell you about any of that, I suspect he would in a way you’d understand.  Otherwise he wants to live your life with you?  His will is mostly about shaping you with is love and making you a better lover in the world, wherever you are doing whatever you do. 

What does your skill set, desires, or opportunities draw you toward?  Can you make a living at it?  When I ask God for these things, I don’t expect an answer out of the blue, but I anticipate that he will direct my paths as I go through my day, living inside my godly desires, with an eye on him if he has something to nudge me toward.  It’s a process, where we mostly stumble into the things God has for us, rather than he tells us what to do and we go about trying to make it happen.  If that makes sense…  In other word we don’t live our lives from a divine strategy he gives us, but by our growing ability to live inside his love as we navigate the life that is before us one day at a time.  That’s the adventure of it. We don’t have to know where he’s leading, only that we’re following him as best we see him.  . 

I don’t know what his next steps in me are, or what he wants me doing next month.  I simply follow his nudges each day. Some of the best things I’m involved in today, I didn’t set out to do.  One small decision, led to another door, and a decision there led to a different opportunity and his will just unfolded as I lived alongisde him.  Now I look back and see more clearly what he was doing in my life through all those things, but at those times I was mostly clueless, except to follow my passion and my conscience as I best understood them.  You, too, may be looking for something that he doesn’t give.  He doesn’t want to control every detail of your life, but to be include alongside you as you learn to live in his love…

A few months ago I was asked to contribute a chapter to a book being written by a number of authors about their passion for Jesus’ church. Unfortunately it was at a time when I was too busy to meet the deadlines.  As it came to publication, though, I was approached about writing the Foreword and was happy to do so.  The book just released this week. It is called Simple Church:  Unity Within Diversity. I’m not crazy about the title, but titles are never easy. I hope people don’t confuse it with a technique for “doing church” that some call “simple church” and see it instead as those who embrace a simpler way of seeing Jesus’ church in the world, becasue that’s what the book is about. This book was published by a friend of mine and brings together twenty-four different writers who are living, loving, and serving outside the institutional model. I enjoyed reading it and having some of these same passions rekindled in my own heart.  

I also love what it represents—people from diverse backgrounds coming together to share their piece of God’s gift in their lives. We need far more of this as Jesus brings the pieces of his church together to share life, not to create another overarching institution or movement. I wrote about this crowing connection and unity in Finding Church and I love it when people find more identity in Jesus than they do a particular theological point of view or way of “doing church.” We need more of this, and not just by writers, but by every member of his body learning to love people around them knowing they are only a piece of a greater revelation God is giving to the world. We don’t have to agree on all the details, when we hold Jesus in common.  I’m grateful this book is broadening the conversation in the world. 

I don’t know what more to say about it than I already wrote in the Foreword, so I’ll let you have a look at it here:  

You hold in your hands a unique compilation of the insights of twenty-four different individuals chosen from across the world sharing what makes them passionate about the church of Jesus in the world. While each of these articles is unique and fascinating in its own way they harmonize in a glorious symphony of the ways Jesus wants to make his multifaceted-wisdom known in the world. 

I love to read what makes someone’s heart beat faster when they contemplate the reality of the Father’s family taking shape in the world.  By focusing on the positive side of church life, instead of where its broken, many common themes emerge such as the supremacy of Christ, laying down our lives for others, handling Truth lightly so others can access him even in their brokenness, and each of us learning to follow him as we support and encourage each other. 

Each of these contributors was chosen because they practice something called simple church.  While definitions of that term may vary as does the way each of them lives it out, at its core simple church refers to people who are no longer engaged in institutional congregations that gather weekly.  Though many of them did so for multiple decades, each of them came to discover greater reality and freedom away from those structures and embrace the church as a family sharing his life together in homes, coffee shops, and anywhere else people naturally get together. 
But even if you see the church differently than they do, you will find their heartbeat transcends simple church itself and strikes to the core of what it means to be God’s children in the earth.   You will find many people in more institutional settings that long for these same priorities and seek a church that reflects God as an endearing presence in the universe, inviting people everywhere into the reality of his life and truth.
I hope these themes become the fodder for conversations among his church, however they happen to gather.  We need more conversation about these things, not less.   And we need it not just with those who are like-minded, but even those who see things differently than we do but have the same heart for God and his kingdom. 
This book is like a very long and very full buffet table as the contributors wrestle with the implications of doctrine, holiness, unity, giving and sharing.  You’ll want to devour it all, but you’ll soon realize that there isn’t enough time in the day or enough energy in the mind to live out all that’s here.  Just keep in mind that they are not talking about the church as an institution having to do all these things, or even as one individual doing them all. 
They consider the church as a communion of persons, each part responding joyfully to the Head. It is enough to embrace the part he’s given us as we encourage others around us to do the same.  How he uniquely he takes shape in each of us will make the glory of the whole far greater than the sum of its parts. We may not be able to do them all, but these don’t dwell in the world of obligation.  This is not how we have to live for him, but how we get to live in his unfolding glory.
So take care not to reduce the table of contents into a list of objectives we have to achieve by our own effort. We couldn’t even on our best day. What is described here is how Jesus takes shape in his church as each of us learns to live at his pleasure in this broken world.  There will be strength enough, grace enough, courage enough and wisdom enough for these priorities to shape the way we live.  It is in learning to live in his love that we will be free enough to revel in his priorities and demonstrate his glory in the world.
This is his church to build and he does it well, often in mostly unseen ways.    But she is taking shape in the world as he draws people together that share many of the passions outlined in these pages.  May this book encourage your own journey and stimulate your passion to experience his life and share it freely with others. 

We had a great time that Saturday as thirty-five people from all over the So. Cal area got together to meet each other and talk about their journeys learning to live loved, love others, and disentangle themselves from the kind of religious thinking that destroys our security in Father’s affection and limits our ability to love others in that freedom. We had people just starting out on this stage of the journey and those who have been on it for a bit. We met some great people, heard some incredible stories of courage and passion to find freedom in him and got a brighter vista of what God is doing in others that resonates so deeply with us.

It’s much like the gatherings I enjoy being a part of when I travel, except this time we hosted the day. And yes, the garden was a hit, as was Sara’s chocolate chip cookies! I wish you’d all be able to join us, but know that would be impossible for us and for many of you.  But it is in such gatherings that the seeds of community are sown. They begin with relationships and where people are free to talk about their journeys honestly and openly without being judged or criticized.  I love the look of wonder that often comes over people’s faces as they listen to others share the passions that are on their heart and they thought they were all alone in that desire.  I wish we could have had more than a day, but one of the people came back the next day to watch some football with my family and extend the conversation.  That’s how this church grows in the world, friends and friends of friends finding each other, exploring the new found relationship and seeing if it grows into a friendship that expresses God’s life.  

And it all begins simply by taking the risk to meet some others on the journey and opening a bit of your heart to them to see if they will treat it well.  Such fun!  

Two quick items.  I did a phone interview this morning with Chicago3Media if you want to listen to it.  And we have some new artwork to highlight postings others might make on Facebook from their reading of Finding Church: