Lost in Faith

While on a speaking tour I found myself politely and gently chastised for my use of the word “Holy Crap.”  What wasn’t known is that I had already “politened” my speech from “Holy Shit” to “Holy Crap.”  Mind you the chastisement was gentle and done in the most Christian of manner and as a guest in someone’s house I was easily persuaded not to repeat the transgression at the following 4 services.

But it did remind me of the post below and the burden my friends are under as they deal with the gnat straining culture that masquerades as Christianity.

http://isaiah543.wordpress.com/2006/08/24/on-cussing-and-cursing/

Monday-Luke 19:11-26

Tuesday-Matthew 26:6-16

Wednesday-Luke 22:7-34

Thursday-Matthew 27:1-2; 11-61

Friday-Matthew 27:62-66

Saturday-Matthew 28

Biblegateway.com is a great place on the Internet to read.

Staring Wednesday, April 7 Shoal Creek will experiment with a monthly midweek event called First Wednesday.

The purpose of this event, to provide a place for those who own the mission of Shoal Creek to:

* celebrate the ritual of the Lord’s Supper which is commonly called Communion
* participate in the public expression of Baptism
* be challenged personally and corporately thru the truth of the Bible
* enjoy songs, hymns and spiritual songs together
* be ignited for the strategic direction of Shoal Creek

This series of events is being developed within the “white space” at Shoal Creek. The analogy being that space on a piece of paper where no writing or graphic design exists. No attempt is being made to replicate the processes and systems that make Sundays work so well. We are putting together a different system to work in conjunction with our Weekend efforts. For instance we have created a band just for First Wednesdays. We certainly will welcome guest into the band for time to time but there is a leader and band members who are dedicated to bringing the kind of challenging musical experience to believers that we give to seekers on Sundays. We see both of these efforts as absolutely essential to our strategic values and want to foster a both/and not an either/or environment.

We are doing this within the white space for two reasons.

* to keep from putting multiple hats on people already wearing too many and
* to create more room at the table to serve.

Below is an incomplete list of teams that are forming around this mission and their leaders.

* Communion Experiences and Room Ambiance- Candy Moran, Erin Talley, Holly Shaw
* Music-Colin Moran, Brett Coursey, Caleb Unger
* Guest Relations-?????? Opening doors, turning on lights, greeting, facilitating any handouts
* Media-????? Camera operators, lyrics, webcasting, production assistants, etc
* House Management clear stage, close doors, check mics, basically play mother to the room, etc.
* Childcare-no child care scheduled at the moment but we will have a parents room in the Attic, event will be simulcast there.
* Station Host-each night Communion will be available as well as other areas from time to time, for example a confession area where people will be available to pray with you or an area to journal for those who don’t find music a way to engage with God or simply an area to come and pray.
* Lighting-Greg Rogers, Craig Farr
* Sound-Dan Schmidt

I need you to do two things:

* spread the word, encourage those who aren’t engaged to think about exploring what it would look like to serve in this new adventure.

Call 792-2992 between hours of 10 am to 3 PM Tues-Sat and tell Pat/Alice what you are interested in or leave a message if they aren’t there or email
info@shoalcreek.org with same info.

* encourage people in your relational context to give First Wednesday a try.

Thanks for your participation. As the prime vision caster I am banking on your ownership of this mission as the prime motivation to pass this information along, persuasively. Your help is not a luxury, it is a necessity to infect the whole of Shoal Creek.

Forwarding this is certainly encouraged but must not be the only thing you do. Mention it in your groups, teams, with friends, personal conversations are KING, then twitter, facebook, ning, text msg, whatever it takes to get the word out!

Thanks for joining me in this mission. It remains the most exciting thing I have ever done. It is privilege to serve alongside you.

Roy Moran

Michael Hyatt over at his blog which bears his name gave four questions to his daughters to help discover if what they were wearing was modest.  My daughters are out of the nest but I talk with many parents who struggle to keep their daughter’s clothed!  Hold the line, parents!

Here they are: “Four Guidelines for Modesty”:

1. If you have trouble getting into it or out of it, it is probably not modest.
2. If you have to be careful when you sit down or bend over, it is probably not modest.
3. If people look at any part of your body before looking at your face, it is probably not modest.
4. If you can see your most private body parts or an outline of those parts under the fabric, it is probably not modest.

I am looking for an opportunity to do a face to face, page to page review of the Journeys with those who lead a group thru it but am having trouble finding a slot for that to happen.

In the meantime:

We have an opportunity via Google Docs that some of you have signed up for.  Please take the opportunity to give us your feedback.  If you’d like to give feedback via Google Groups and haven’t signed up please send Sean an email and he will get you an invite.

Here is the plan for the Journeys and the Study Guides
Revise the current Guides by June
Create a Fast Trac Guide for each Journey of about 4 pages by Sept
Write a book addressing the 7 Journeys by Dec
Regularly offer 7 Journeys  as many different formats as possible

It is amazing how this past 7 weeks has energized our community.  I am stunned at the effect.  I knew we needed to go the the last full measure on the Journeys.  Meaning that we needed to put them center stage and commit to this language to share our journeys.  Now that we have sustaining that effort is only good stewardship of the strides that we have made.

I am sure the is learning taking place all over our movement.  It needs to be shared.  Here’s one: How do you stimulate people to read the Bible, give them a reading plan with only one chapter listed. Yes, the one chapter a day reading plan energized many people to start.  The old reading plan with 2 or 3 chapters from Old and New Testaments was daunting to the newbie.

What else is out there!  What did you learn?

Steve Furtick from Elevation Church gives a shout out to J5 Living

A high school teammate, Jay Lorenzen blogs at www.onmovements.com.

He works with a faculty/student organization so that explains his terminology.  What if you read faculty and students as friends, relatives and co-workers?

“The imagination is how things get done. You have to cultivate creativity.”-Russell Simmons

How do we lead faculty and students to engage mission as a way of life? As movement leaders, we’re always in the process of directing our movement’s imagination toward new possibilities and applications. Henry Ward Beecher once described faith as “spiritualized imagination.” David Fitch, Jonathan Dobson and others suggested the following ways to cultivate missional habits of imagination. I rewrote them for our situation of building movements on the college campus, helping faculty and students to live with more missional intentionality.

1.) Direct imagination towards ways of connecting with people where they are. Have faculty and students see ways to connect with people in their everyday situations, for example, by going to the same place at the same time every week. Help them see the way ordinary life is a stage on which God wants to work. Instead of hopping all over the city for gas, groceries, haircuts, eating out, and coffee, go to the same places at the same times. Get to know the staff. Smile. Ask questions. Be a regular. Build relationships. If we visit the same places at the same time every week, connecting with others regularly we can revolutionized our missional lives with not a single ounce of extra-expended energy spent.

2.) See mission in other life rhythms as well. Kindle imagination toward seeing mission as part of regular daily, weekly and monthly life rhythms. What do you do regularly? Jog? Work-out? As we live out those rhythms, we need to help people be ready to minister out of their everyday life, assuming God is already working ahead of us to bring people to Christ. Rather than going to a church gym, inhabit the gyms already in our neighborhoods or campus locations. We should avoid creating our own third places and become regular part of the ones already there.

3.) Encourage faculty and students, if they live in a walkable area, to make a practice of getting out and walking around your neighborhood, apartment complex, or campus. Instead of driving to class, the mailbox or convenience store, walk. Be deliberate in your walk. Say hello to people you don’t know. Strike up conversations. Attract attention by walking the dog, carrying along a 6-pack to share, bringing the kids. Make friends. Save some gas, the planet and some people.

4.) Try to direct imagination for inhabiting those community or campus places in two’s or three’s or more. Two or three Christ-followers together become an undeniable force for the kingdom under the Lordship of Christ.

5.) Stoke the imagination of your people for seeking “one person of peace” (Luke 10) among the lost of dorms, apartments, athletic teams, Greek houses, or their neighborhoods. Look for that one who, though never having heard the gospel, is dispositionally ready (been readied by God) to receive. Allow that one person of “reputation and influence” to be the door to the rest of their community.

6.) Direct the imagination towards the way Christ always enters the human situation in humility. Encourage faculty and students to not being the “one with the answer,” but “one searching for the answers that always point you towards Christ.” Help them approach others humbly and in need. Instead of offering them a meal, find ways to participate in a meal with them. If you’re in need, ask others for help.

7.) Direct the imagination of faculty and students toward exegeting their departments, dorms, neighborhoods. Exegeting a place requires inhabiting that place, seeing it as a place for redemption, discovering where the hurting are and the unjust structures are. See the possibilities for ministering the gospel to those who are in need of Christ and through the gospel (over time) seeing that very culture transformed.

8.) In this regard, fire up the imagination toward “appreciative inquiry.” We often approach our “places” negatively. What’s wrong? What needs are there? etc. etc. We can be both more missional and more winsome by directing our community’s imagination to noticing where God is working among us and around us, to recognize it, praise God for it and participate in it through the gifts we have been given. Serve.

9.) Help faculty and students to see the Spirit birthing his kingdom among us as we respond faithfully day by day. Help them keep their eyes on Jesus. Leslie Newbigin warned us that, “the significant advances of the church have not been the result of our own decision about the mobilizing and allocating of “resources” [rather] the significant advances have come through happenings of which the story of Peter and Cornelius is a paradigm, in ways of which we have no advance knowledge.”

10.) Eat with pre-Christian friends. We all eat three meals a day. Why not make a habit of sharing one of those meals with a non-Christian or with a family of non-Christians? Go to lunch with a co-worker, not by yourself. Invite the neighbors over for family dinner. If it’s too much work to cook a big dinner, just order pizza and put the focus on conversation. When you go out for a meal, invite a non-Christian friend. Or take your family to family-style restaurants where you can sit at the table with strangers and strike up conversations. Have cookouts and invite Christians and pre-Christians. Flee the Christian subculture.

11.) Kindle the imagination for servant paradigms of leadership. Help faculty and students reject the heroic paradigms of leadership, in favor of teams in which members live out their giftedness and seek first to serve. In the Scriptures, such apostolic teams seem to be the norm. Missional thinkers like Alan Hirsch have demonstrated that certain leadership types (Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist) are conspicuously absent in our communities (where Shepherd, Teacher are the norm). We can help fire imaginations by revisiting these models in Ephesians 4.

12.) Kindle the imagination around hobbies. Help faculty and students pick a hobby that they can share. Help them get out and do something they can enjoy with others. I love to fly-fish and often have the opportunity to invite seeking friends. Try city league sports or local rowing and cycling teams. We can share hobby by teaching lessons. Help faculty and student be prayerful. Be intentional. Be winsome. Have fun. Be themselves.

13.) Kindle a missional intentionality by encouraging faculty and students to volunteer for non-profits. We recently spent the morning with Habitat for Humanity, meeting and working with others from our community, as well as helping a family of seven from Sudan. There are lots of ways to engage the surrounding community….look for ways to kindle the campus’ imagination for bringing the resources of the university to the surrounding area. Take the lead in such efforts.

14.) Help faculty and students imagine how they can better “love the city.” Help them participate in city events–by going to fundraisers, festivals, cleanups, summer shows, and concerts. As they participate missionally, the converse with others, study their city and its make-up. Help them reflect on what they see and hear. Pray together for the city. Love the city. Participate with the city.

This is the Superbowl Dodge Charger ad which probably cost millions to produce and broadcast

This is the rebuttal which costs nothing to produce and broadcast.

Read Alan Hirsch’s Forgotten Ways in less than 5 minutes