Lessons from 2009...

So I was on my blog today seeing if it was still alive and I saw a post I never published from over a year ago.  A lot of these lessons have proved true and played out in amazing ways.  So here it is...

As 2009 ends and 2010 begins, I realized that I'm coming on five years in Richmond, five years married, ten years as a Christ follower. This past year is the culmination of all these longer term milestones...

A lot of this year for me has been about finding my own cause and helping others find theirs:

• How to acheive real balance (keeping sabbath, spreading out vacation days, stepping out of some responsbilitie, etc)
• Good or bad, everybody has plans/agendas for you, not just God...
• You have to care what people think (but only a little bit)
• If you're doing God's work, some people WILL hate you for it
• New beginnings and challenges are worth the effort (Carver MC)

Helping others find theirs boils down to this... my cause doesn't have to be your cause but what is your cause? And no cause is not a cause.

The question I'm left with is not the traditional one - whether the choices you make hurt anyone, but a new one, who benefits from the choices you make?

2010 was the culmination of almost five years in Richmond.  I believed that God was daring me to be great and He continues to press me in that direction for His glory.  What about you?

Mission: School Supply Drive

One of the greatest issues in Richmond right now are the challenges many of the children in the city face growing up. Education really becomes one of the keys to breaking cycles of neglect and poverty, giving our children a real chance at a future. Our Missional Community, located in Carver Community, recently undertook a school supply drive at Carver Elementary School. Carver is a school with an excellent principal, dedicated staff, and great kids. But with 96.5% of students participating in free and reduced lunch, its evident that many of the children are coming to school dealing with very difficult circumstances even before they step foot in the building.

Our rhythm of mission always begins with listening before acting. If our mission is uninformed by the actual issues and relevant remedies it will be ineffective. Principal Brickhouse has been gracious enough to catch up with me several times and provide me with the information I needed. Among other things, two basic data points were important: exactly what supplies were needed and how big was the school, population-wise. Principal Brickhouse was able to provide me with the list of supplies parents get for their kids. He was also to tell me that there approximately 500 students at the school, and about 40 teachers. With this information, we would knew what to get and some order of magnitude for quantity of supplies (i.e. we didn't want to get 10 scissors for 500 students).

Also crucial, we timed it so we could start buying supplies during the Back-to-School tax holiday. Not only were we able to save on taxes but the sales are also really good that weekend. The challenge was finding stores that didn't have limits on how many you could buy. Target was great for that. I presented this idea and some of the basic information to the Missional Community during one of our gatherings and everyone was immediately excited. People used it as an opportunity to get together and socialize while they shopped. In addition to the funds Commonwealth Chapel provided our community, everyone contributed their own money as well.

We collected the supplies at where we met for Missional Community (which happened to be my house) and people brought more and more each week. All the way up to the day that we dropped the supplies off, people were still bringing bags of supplies! All told we collected approximately 1800 pencils, 250 boxes of crayons, 500 notebooks, 200 bottles of glue, 100 glue sticks, 100 pens, 250 scissors, 100 rulers - I don't have exact numbers because we honestly lost count!

In addition to this, Rob Rhoden (our lead pastor who's wife is a teacher) suggested that we make goodie bags for the teachers, so we made 40 of them as well! We filled them with candy, munchies, sticky notes, hand sanitizer, and pens and enclosed them with a note expressing our appreciate for them and pledging to

pray for them this year. We took the extra candy and made a basket for the office staff (which somehow made it to the

principal's desk before we left ;-)

The week before we delivered the supplies, we gathered as a Missional

Community and prayed over the supplies. Our prayer was (and is) that these supplies and gifts would bless the students and the staff and allow them to focus more on learning. We prayed that the teachers would be encouraged, knowing that there were people out there that appreciated them, loved them, and were praying for them. Most of all, we prayed that Jesus would be glorified since He was our inspiration for doing this.

On the Friday before school started, a bunch of us from the Missional Community took our lunch hour to go by and drop everything off. Principal Brickhouse and the rest of the faculty and staff were extremely gracious and appreciative. The entire experience was made even more tangible when all of us saw some of the students that would get to use the supplies this year.

Please continue to be in prayer for Carver Elementary, that they would have a great year and that they would know that God loves them and is providing for them. I hope this story encourages other communities out there to "adopt" a school next year. My prayer is that the entire community of Christ followers next year would be able to "adopt" 30 schools, the next year - all of them. I hope that the details I provided in the post are helpful in planning your school supply drive. If you need any other help, or have ideas you'd like to share, feel free to email me.

Catch Me if you can...

Our Missional Community ended our fast together over dinner a couple nights ago. It was a beautiful time of fellowship capped off with a time of reflection on fasting. For half the room, this was the first time they had ever tried fasting and the reflections were rich. Many people commented on how it wasn't as bad as they thought it would be - a fair enough apprehension. Others commented that the day went by so fast that they didn't have the time they wanted to spend in prayer and meditation (myself included).

Still others blessed us by being honest enough to say that they tried to pray and meditate and didn't hear anything back. This left a mixture of disappointment, defeat, and a general feeling of silliness about seemingly talking to thin air. Then one of the women in our group shared a verse she had reflected on that day from Isaiah 58:

For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them.

'Why have we fasted,' they say, 'and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?'

The truth is, if we were honest with ourselves and each other that night, after fasting for the last 20 hours or so we felt like God owed us something. Perhaps there was a false expectation that we were going to bow our head after a day of fasting and God was going to give us all the secrets of the universe. But this transactional view of our relationship with God is not something exclusive to our group. Many people are looking for the right combination, incantation, or sequence of actions that will unlock the silence and allow God's voice to pour through.

As our community continued to reflect, our experiences blended together like a recipe producing a rich collective insight - our time fasting that day had increased our appetite for God. For the people that were afraid fasting would be horrible and it wasn't, they wanted to do it again. For the people that didn't get much time to pray or meditate that day, they wanted to make more time for it going forward. For those that prayed and heard nothing back, it made them want to pray more and seek out God's voice in their life.

It seemed that our fasting had served its purpose that day. In the absence of food, we were hungering for God more. Rather than seeing God as a vending machine, our piety as currency, we were experiencing God the Romantic. Was God being coy or elusive if he was asking us to chase after him a bit? Or is that the entire point of a good romance? The point is this: God has asked us to chase after him, but he's made himself profoundly catchable.

The same woman that shared the first verse also shared the following to close our time. It's God's promise to us that we do not desire in vain when we seek him, I hope it encourages you to start the pursuit as well.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. - Jeremiah 29:13

Fasting...on purpose...

Our Missional Community is currently about three weeks into a study of Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster (which I reviewed in an earlier posting). Today we're fasting as a community and then gathering together tonight to share our experiences over dinner. Here are the questions I've asked our community to meditate on today:

• What is God doing in your life or trying to tell you right now?
• What are the biggest things happening in your life right now?
• Is there something weighing heavily on your thoughts or heart lately?
• In response to the above questions, how does this situation make you feel? What emotions does it inspire? Why does this situation make you feel this way?
• Is there anything you need to confess to God? Is there anything you need to give to God? Where do you need God's guidance? Where do you need God to save you?

Feel free to leave comments on your experience(s) with fasting, either today or previously.

I'll be with you...

After ten years of following God, I've come to realize that many times His call is as elusive as the nose on my face. We oftentimes speak of God as a vapor, as One that takes some divine amusement in His elusiveness. And while God does desire us to pursue him, the matter of his Will typically comes down our desire to receive it. It's our sinful, selfish nature set against his divine love; at some carnal level we will chaff against his directives because our motivations are profoundly different (at least on this side of reality). Being able to say that we desire God's will is an admirable first step but then a Christ-follower must ask the crucial question - "Am I ready to receive what He tells me?"

And then, if we can get past our selfishness as a first obstacle to recieving God's call, fear is there waiting for us. Fear tells us that our benevolence will be rewarded with failure...or worse. Fear tells us we don't have what it takes anyways, so why bother. Recently, I've been chased by some fresh directives from God for my life that, frankly, challenge my ideals of how fearless I really am. I hear God, loud and clear, but what he wants me to do... I'm not sure if it's is fully possible and I'm not sure if I have what it takes (I'm being this transparent in the hopes that someone reading this can identify and take benefit).

And so, I return to Scripture to read the stories of other ordinary people that were asked by God to do impossibly fantastic things. Gideon, Joshua, Moses, Esther, Jeremiah, Mary...the list goes on and on. People that, when confronted by God's calling, asked Him how it was even possible. His answer has (and will) always be the same, "I'll be with you."

God makes no affirmation of our amazing speaking abilities, our wisdom, or our strength. The first chapter of 1 Corinthians, goes so far as to say that God chooses the lowly on purpose. In calling us to purposes beyond our ability, He has obligated Himself to pick up the proverbial slack. To receive God's call, I must get past my own selfishness and fear; to answer His call, I must depend on Him with absolutely totality.

This will be no stoic step, God's calling on my life. With sweat like bullets and my heart pounding out of my chest, I will take the steps God is calling me to take. I pray for the cadence of Christ's followers, that we will walk in spite of ourselves in the direction of His will.

What is the call God has on your life that you need to finally receive?