Felicity, thanks for including my experience in your post. After your post last week and running across another comments discussion about a similar topic on Friday, this weekend for me was spent in much reflection regarding the choices I’ve made about being bi-vocational. Based on some comments I get pretty regularly from some people, I actually really started to doubt that road for myself; that I could be effective in ministry long term while “tent making” so to speak. I realize that I have a such wealth of training geared toward full time vocational ministry that even still I find myself occasionally without the imagination necessary to consider a different way forward. At the end of the weekend however, I really felt encouraged and prompted by the Holy Spirit that there is a way forward, that He would sustain me, and He would continue to provide the necessary imagination. I’m so convinced that Jesus is putting the church back into the hands of ordinary people; and I want to participate in that here in the trenches.

If you have started down the simple/organic church path or are considering it, particularly on the bi-vocational road, be encouraged! You are not alone! There are lots of us out here, and it’s a rewarding path! Jesus started his church with ordinary people, and you can trust him to continue building it with ordinary people, yourself included.

I remember a little girl, the E. Lawler I mentioned before, who came to The Good Shepherd when she was about seven years old. She was a slight, brown-haired, sad-looking, lonesone-looking girl whose clothes did not fit. She looked accidental or unexpected, and seemed to be without expectation, and resigned, and so quiet that even in my selfishness I wished I knew of a way to help her.

I watched her all the time. When her class went out to play, she did not take part but only stood back and watched the other girls. She always wore a dress that sagged and brown cotton stockings that were always wrinkled. She was waiting. I did not understand that she was waiting, but she was. And then one day as her classmates were joining hands to play some sort of game, one of the girls broke the circle. She held our her hand to the newcomer to beckon her in. And E. Lawler ran into the circle and joined hands with the others.

I wrote E. Lawler in my tablet so that I would not forget her.

Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, pg. 38-39

1. Work to see new disciples made and consolidated into our already existing community, in our living room. Max out at about 25 people, and try to do the same thing in another neighborhood down the road. This would be slow to start and slow indefinitely. Addition.

2. Identify our current community as a team of missionaries, with the explicit purpose of seeing new disciples made in each neighborhood we live in, and form new communities in the living rooms of those new disciples. We would eventually no longer have a church community gathering in our living room, in exchange for multiple church communities gathering in and serving multiple neighborhoods. This would be slow to start and speed up quickly as each new community takes this mindset. Multiplication.

Those of you who know me well know which road we’re taking. Number 2.

Last night I introduced this concept to our community. We identified Jesus as the first “sent” one, who then sends us. Over the next several weeks we will learn together what our identity as a missionary people looks like day to day, and begin to work together in each other’s neighborhoods to seek out those people that Jesus has already prepared to follow Him.

I’m both excited and scared. I’m certain this has legs, and yet I’ve never seen it happen first hand in a Western context.

Would you please pray with us? Pray that we would faithfully follow Jesus into where He’s leading us, and pray that Jesus would send more workers into the harvest, from the harvest, in Fremont and Seattle. And please pray for me, that I would boldly lead this community in the midst of uncertainty and fear.

Grace and Peace.

Why red?

A quick trip to the Moon provides the answer: Imagine yourself standing on a dusty lunar plain looking up at the sky. Overhead hangs Earth, nightside down, completely hiding the sun behind it. The eclipse is underway. You might expect Earth seen in this way to be utterly dark, but it’s not. The rim of the planet is on fire! As you scan your eye around Earth’s circumference, you’re seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once. This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth’s shadow, filling it with a coppery glow and transforming the Moon into a great red orb.

Back on Earth, the shadowed Moon paints newly fallen snow with unfamiliar colors–not much luster, but lots of beauty.

Enjoy the show.

Every sunrise and every sunset in the world; all at once! I want to live on the moon!

I’m currently reading Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. The main character, Jayber, is intimately formed by his town, Port William, and the people there, and he sums up that formation process in a beautiful paragraph in the opening of chapter two:

If you have lived in Port William a litle more than two years, you are still, by Port William standards, a stranger, liable to have your name mis-pronounced. Crow was not a familiar name in this part of the country, and so for a long time a lot of people here called me Cray, a name that was familiar. And though I was only twenty-two when I came to the town, many of the same ones would call me “Mr. Cray” to acknowledge that they did not know me well. My rightful name is Jonah, but I had not gone by that name since I was ten years old. I had been called simply J., and that was the way I signed myself. Once my customers took me to themselves, they called me Jaybird, and then Jayber. Thus I became, and have remained, a possesion of Port Wiliam.

May we see our place as important, even central. May it give us insight into who we are and what we were created for. May we put down deep roots in a place and work to recreate places and communities that are central and formational to us and to the lives of those around us. May we view this place as valuable, and restore and prepare it for the future and final restoration.

This last week, #snOMG hit Seattle, hitting us with 5+ inches of snow. In a city with so many elevated (read: frozen) roadways and not enough infrastructure to salt/sand/plow every road, it added up to 10 hour commutes for some lucky Seattleites. I wasn’t one of those lucky few, but found myself behind a 5 car pile up on my way to work Monday morning.

Seattle is a great food city, with access to fresh seafood that few other cities in the country have. These fish were found hanging out at Uwajimaya in Seattle’s International District, which carries every possible Asian food item you could ever dream of.

“Christianity has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not one single Jew who is a beggar, and that the godless Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.”

Roman Emperor Julian (First Century)

Our little family is made up of some who have been through church their whole lives, some who have always been attracted to Jesus but have never found a way to express that within a community, and others who are exploring Jesus for the first time in this community. One of the challenges I’ve observed so far is finding a common language that everybody in this family can understand regarding what the Gospel is and how it forms us communally and individually. When your church family is sitting around a table or in your living room, looking into each others eyes, you can’t talk over anybody with words about Jesus and the Gospel that have no meaning outside of professional circles.  There is the need to find new and ever increasing ways to express the Gospel in that context in ways that are concrete, and not abstract. As such, we are always aware of this need, and seeking ways to increase our Gospel fluency, so that each of us can communicate in real life what the Gospel is and how it has formed and is forming us.

This last Sunday evening, we tried something new with that goal in mind. I totally ripped it off from Soma Communities in Tacoma, and you should consider ripping it off as well!

In Communion, we practiced expressing our need for the Gospel and communicating how the Gospel can form one another. We simply had bread and wine ready to serve for communion, but gave some simple instructions about how we would each receive and give the elements this night.

As each person was ready to receive communion, they took a few moments to share a way in which they are finding it difficult to allow the Gospel to form them, or to believe that the Gospel is real for their lives. For example, someone might have talked about the busyness of their lives recently, and that they recognize that they have been working and striving for approval and meaning that just seems elusive; instead of trusting that they are approved and accepted by Jesus outside of their own efforts.

As a response to that, another person in the group might have spoken to the first person about how the Gospel can form them in that moment, and call them to a particular belief in the Gospel while they take the elements of communion. For example, the second person may have responded by reminding them that they are never going to measure up in their own works and efforts. Rather, we serve a God, in Jesus, who took all our misplaced efforts on Him and made a way, through his death, for us to be fully accepted. Now we don’t have to strive for approval or acceptance with our efforts, but we can offer our work to Jesus as worship because of what He has done. Then the second person simply offered the bread and wine to the first person to eat.

Now, the above examples are very clean cut and straightforward. Not so in real life. Learning how to speak about the Gospel in everyday life is very much learning a new language, and it takes time, practice, repetition and context. Our church family is just getting started in this process, and our ways of communicating our need for the Gospel and our encouraging each other in the Gospel will grow into maturity over time.

Overall, this simple experience provided a few things for our community:

Each person learns how to communicate their own need for the Gospel. As they talk out loud, they actually learn things about themselves and their own beliefs that are not obvious to them until they have to communicate it.

Each person learns how to listen to others stories for where Jesus is at work and where the Gospel can form them. This is a skill that will gradually increase this church families ability to disciple one another and to disciple their friends who are not yet following Jesus.

We all saw the Gospel demonstrated as people shared and received. We saw, through one another’s reactions to hearing from the group, the power of the Gospel to penetrate the human heart.

I was able to gauge our Gospel fluency. Through the evening, I was given insight into where we are as a church family; both where we understand the Gospel, and where the Gospel needs to form us. Valuable insight for any pastor and leader to have.

Give it a shot yourself! If you are a part of a smaller group of believers, take one of your evenings and share communion together in this way. You may be amazed at the power of the Gospel in such a simple, reproducible act.

What about you? What things has your church community done to Gospel one another and increase your Gospel fluency? Share with us!