There have been just a couple of times in my life when I knew that I knew that something needed to change. The first time was when I was 19 and was living like someone whose fantasy of life was better than the Father's. I remember, as I lay recovering from a rather serious illness, that something needed to change. That particular change resulted in my first steps in the Way of Jesus.
The second time was just a few weeks later when I was back at school for my sophomore year. I had spent an entire year pursuing a degree in music education and doing it quite successfully. I remember classes resuming and not retaining anything of the previous year's education. What I was supposed to recollect was gone--as though I had never learned it. Something needed to change. That particular change resulted in a complete reorientation of my course of study.
The third time was after four years of working at a large church in Minnesota. While there, I experienced what "church" ministry was like. It was one of the most formational experiences of my short life as I began to discover how God had wired me. It was there that I realized that I am not a maintainer, but instead am most alive when I am out on the fringe somewhere, pushing the boundaries of what is possible. It was there that I realized that I was built to empower leaders, am fascinated with organizational and organic systems, and prefer to be with people who are flipping God and the church off. Something needed to change. That particular change resulted in my wife and I selling everything that we owned and heading across the country to a new world--literally.
The fourth time was after a life-altering experience in the tribal villages of northern Pakistan. I came home and began living in a world that I had set up for myself pre-Pakistan. It didn't fit anymore--something needed to change. That particular change resulted in my resigning a safe position for a dangerous one.
Last week was the most outstanding educational experience of my life. It is still hard to put into words what I experienced, other than to say that reformation of some sort is dawning. There was a clarity--an affirmation. It was as though God were saying, "It's time!" I wonder if this past week, for me, was the stuff of Destiny...
Want to come along?
7 comments:
I want to come along more passionately than i could have ever imagined. Bro, you are describing a change that correlates to moving forward rather than masking something to make us feel different. We can unpack life and repack it in a different way to convince ourselves that change was made and therefore feel we took care of that mysterious unrest in us, but is that what we are taking comfort in? Or are we stepping out and pursuing change because we are sick of repacking something that will never satisfy? We are a people who can convince ourselves beyond a reasonable doubt of what we think we need rather than own up to a reality bigger than ourselves. Change doesn’t always have to mark a revolution but at least contrast that which is conventional in your life. What standards are we holding ourselves up to? are we acting how we think we should act/ how we are convinced we should act or are we establishing and listening the new truths that are stirring within us? This, to me, is the most important contrast and marking in our journey into spiritual, emotional and life changing maturity. Are we willing to accept the change that we have felt for years and is now staring us in the face? Using new clarity, can we now appropriately put words to these emotions and appreciate the rumblings in our hearts as essential internal processing? Let us throw off everything that hinders us and so easy entangles our emotional compass and set course for the true life God has called us to live and let us do that with an eternal passion. I WANT IN! IT IS TIME!
You bet!
In addition to posts and comments on this blog, I've been trying to get a sense of what Unconventional's educational experience was like. For anyone interested, here are a couple of things to look at:
The course description:
http://www.fuller.edu/swm/ecds/073/MC549_Hirsch.html
The course instructor, Alan Hirsch's Blog:
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog
Here is a good summary of Alan Hirsch's book, The Forgotten Ways. These are blog entries, so the beginning of the book is represented by the oldest entry:
http://outofthecocoon.squarespace.com/display/ShowJournal?moduleId=878954&categoryId=92933
Unconventional,
After spending some time reading material in Alan Hirsch's blog, I can see why you believe that God's intention for the church is so different from the way church is normally done. My understanding of God's call on Open Door has changed as well. In terms of ends and means for Open Door --- the end is to be agents of God's mission to the world, the means is to be passionately faithful followers of Jesus Christ and therefore incarnate models of God's message of love and redemption to the world.
In brief, I believe that God is calling us to:
Surrender all that we are and all that we have to God. Go into the world, sent and accompanied by the Holy Spirit to draw unbelievers to fall deeply in love with God. Build working communities of followers passionately faithful to Jesus Christ and each other.
Here are some specific posts on Alan Hirsch's blog that I found particularly helpful:
Surrender all that we are and all that we have to God:
"Yahweh's claim is absolute - it claims all. 'When God invades man's consciousness, man's reliance on "peace and security" vanishes from every nook of his existence. His life as a single whole becomes vulnerable. Broken down are the bulkheads between the chambers which confine explosions to one compartment. When God chooses man, He invests him with full responsibility for total obedience to an absolute demand.' Yahweh's lordship is at once complete and graceful salvation as well as total unqualified demand, In Biblical faith; salvation and lordship are inextricably linked."
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/index.php/2007/06/20/christocentric-monotheism-part-two-ohh/#more-212
Go into the world, sent and accompanied by the Holy Spirit to draw unbelievers to fall deeply in love with God:
"So a working definition of missional church is that it is a community of God's people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God's mission to the world. In other words, the Church's true and authentic organizing principle is mission. When the church is in mission, it is the true Church. The Church itself is not only a product of that mission, but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God�s purposes in and through his people."
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/index.php/2007/07/11/a-working-definition-of-missional-church/
"Surely there is no missionary who goes forth to preach the Gospel to others who does not know that it is only by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit that his words can accomplish anything. And surely there is no pastor who does not acknowledge that it is only by the work of the Holy Spirit in his congregation that holy lives can be produced. It may seem that in stressing the role of the Holy Spirit in the mission of the Church I am simply repeating what everyone knows. And yet I have become convinced that, even when this belief is present and vivid, there are factors in the structures and traditions of our work which can prevent the belief from becoming effective." -- Lesslie Newbigin, The Mission Of The Triune God, 29.
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/index.php/2007/07/14/mission-and-the-triune-god/#more-240
Build working communities of followers passionately faithful to Jesus Christ and each other:
"Communitas not Community: The most vigorous forms of community are those that come together in the context of a shared ordeal or, communities who define themselves as a group with a mission that lies beyond themselves -- thus initiating a risky journey. Over-concern with safety and security, combined with comfort and convenience, have lulled us out of our true calling and purpose. Everyone loves an adventure. Or do we? The chapter on communitas aims at putting the adventure back into the venture."
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/index.php/2006/12/10/the-six-elements-of-apostlic-genius/
"The spontaneous expansion of the Church reduced to its element is a very simple thing. It asks for no elaborate organization, no large finances, no great numbers of paid missionaries. In its beginning it may be the work of one man and that of a man neither learned in the things of this world, nor rich in the wealth of this world. What is necessary is faith. What is needed is the kind of faith which uniting a man to Christ, sets him on fire" -- Rolland Allen The Compulsion of the Spirit, 47-48.
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/index.php/2007/06/02/just-to-make-a-point/#more-213
Unconventional,
The following blog topic is also relevant to -
Go into the world, sent and accompanied by the Holy Spirit to draw unbelievers to fall deeply in love with God:
"The power of Christianity lay not in its promise of otherworldly compensations for suffering in this life, as has so often been proposed. No, the crucial change that took place in the third century was the rapidly spreading awareness of a faith that delivered potent antidotes to life’s miseries here and now! The truly revolutionary aspect of Christianity lay in moral imperatives such as "Love one’s neighbor as oneself," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," "It is more blessed to give than to receive," and "When you did it to the least of my brethren, you did it unto me." These were not just slogans. Members did nurse the sick, even during epidemics; they did support orphans, widows, the elderly, and the poor; they did concern themselves with the lot of slaves. In short, Christians created "a miniature welfare state in an empire which for the most part lacked social services." It was these responses to the long-standing misery of life in antiquity, not the onset of worse conditions, that were the '‘material' changes that inspired Christian growth." (From "The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome," by Rodney Stark)
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/index.php/2006/11/22/69/
Unconventional,
Sorry to be so piecemeal about these comments. I think this is my last addition. Here's one more of Alan's blog topics related to --
Go into the world, sent and accompanied by the Holy Spirit to draw unbelievers to fall deeply in love with God:
"We can only live changes: we cannot think our way to humanity. Every one of us, every group, must become the model of that which we desire to create." -- Leo Tolstoy
"The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief." -- T. S. Eliot
"There can be no way around the fact that our actions, as manifestations of our total being, do actually speak much louder than our words. There is a clear non-verbal message being emitted by our lives all the time. We are faced with the sobering fact that we actually are our messages.
Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, called this “existence-communication” and by that term he meant that our lives—our very existence—is our communication. Our existence as an authentic human being communicates more than what we say or even what we think."
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/index.php/2007/07/16/existence-communication/
Well I definitely want to watch from a distance.
And maybe read a bit about your thoughts in coming weeks. :-)
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