tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66730269110248765572024-02-02T16:12:15.143-08:00Pastor John's ThoughtsRamblings about God, the church and the Church and everything.Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.comBlogger145125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-2684052337887537392015-06-06T15:08:00.003-07:002015-06-06T15:08:55.254-07:00Back to Douglas Terrace <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Friday, June 5, we went back to Douglas Terrace Apartments and had an outreach. We had beef hotdogs (so people who don’t eat pork could have them), watermelon, cucumbers (the kids love them), homemade deserts and chips. We had crafts and balls for games and this time we managed to get three bounce houses up and running. We brought the mobile clothes closet and had boxes full of children’s books to give away. Almost nothing came back to the church. Best of all, there was lots of time to sit and talk with kids and adults. </div>
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This visit celebrated five years nearly to the day since our first trip to Douglas Terrace, and that trip began a relationship with the people of the complex that essentially changed who we are as Zion Church. Let me share with you how we have been changed.</div>
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It all begin with a parable of Jesus in Luke 14 called “The Parable of the Great Banquet.” The parable was told to illustrate a point Jesus had just made while sitting at a banquet. He said, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, or your rich neighbors, if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”</div>
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What changed for us begins with our motivation. In the past we had done events in order to attract people to the church. In other words, we did what we did so that they would come to the church, like us, and agree to join us so that we would have more people and resources to do more events and attract more people so that we could grow even larger. The difficulty with our thinking about this was that everything we did was then predicated on how many people would join us. In the end we have come to realize that for us this was a self serving philosophy that benefited us and not necessarily the world we were trying to reach or the people we hoped to attract. We see now that what we did we did so that people might “pay us back” by making Zion larger. I suppose you could say that we did loving things in the hopes that people would love us back. But that isn’t what Jesus is asking us to do. </div>
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Instead, we have come to understand that Jesus is asking us to go and bless people for his sake and for the sake of loving people never even considering whether they will love us back. So each time we go out to bless people we do so simply to be a blessing and not with any thought of making Zion bigger or better. Our motivation has changed from wanting people to bless us back to simply wanting to bless Jesus, our Master, by blessing those most in need and least likely to be able to repay in any way. </div>
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This change in our motivation absolutely squares with another teaching of Jesus where he says, “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?” Jesus commands us to especially love those who are different from us. I think he does this because it is in his nature to reconcile the things that divide us as people in order that he might make us one new people united in him. </div>
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So, five years into this new motivation, we have seen Jesus time and again put us into relationships with people who are different than ourselves. Over these five years, beginning with that first outreach, we have become one church that worships in four languages and prays in more than a dozen. This isn’t without it’s challenges. In fact, it’s very hard to keep on reconciling all the people groups and maintaining unity in Christ. But we understand that this is why Jesus created the church: to be a place where differences are reconciled through the cross and we emerge a new people able to serve him. </div>
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What’s new at Zion as a result of that first outreach? Clothes closet, furniture to give away, meals for hundreds, field trips for schools, vans, buses, programs, ESL, summer Bible camps for lots and lots of kids, essential changes in every aspect of everything we do and why. </div>
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I simply lack the words to explain the extent of the changes that the first trip to Douglas Terrace brought about. But that change in motivation has created a place where there are daily miracles. In fact, I would posit that another change we’ve experienced is that we are now a church that expects the miraculous. We expect God to show up and do wonders. We expect him to provide. And we expect him to call us to do what we thought was impossible before. </div>
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Is there a cost to this kind of change? Of course. It’s high. But it’s totally worth it. It means living a messy life, the life of following Jesus which leads you into the lives of other people. It’s living as a missionary every day. It’s messy and complicated but also glorious and marvelous. And we can’t wait to see what’s next. Will you join us in praying for the next thing God is calling us to do? Thanks for reading. PJ</div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-31785396689316121202014-12-05T12:39:00.001-08:002014-12-05T12:39:09.386-08:00Jesus, Beds and Serving Our Neighbors <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Two thousand years ago Jesus and his parents had no place to sleep. There was no bed for them. </div>
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Two thousand years later, the number one request we get for help at Zion is for beds. People arriving in our city may have a roof to sleep under but they don’t have a bed to sleep on. There are entire apartment complexes we visit where almost every apartment has no beds. </div>
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We believe we’re called to change that. If Jesus disguises himself as the very least of these, perhaps we can at least serve him by giving him a bed to sleep on. So Zion has partnered with Midwest Sleep in order to provide beds for people in need in our community. Thanks to a generous donation, we’re able to provide 60 single beds to people who don’t have any. Thanks to Midwest Sleep we are able to purchase the beds at cost. We’ve been taking names for weeks and done our best to verify the need. Verification has been easy as we know many of these families already and can attest to their need. </div>
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Here’s the plan: </div>
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<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;">the beds will be delivered to the Johnston Public Schools dock the week of December 15. (Thank you, Johnston Schools for the use of your dock!) </li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;">From the dock we’ll move the beds to Zion and store them in the cafeteria sometime after the STARS Christmas party on December 17. </li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;">Then, on December 21, we’ll dismiss early from our worship services and ask the congregation to help us pray for, load, and deliver the beds and also about 150 Christmas food baskets to people in our community. </li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;">In addition, many of the beds and box springs will be wrapped in bed bug protective wraps in order to extend their usefulness and provide safe and comfortable rest for many years to come. </li>
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Everyone is welcome to come and join us on Sunday, December 21, for the big bed lift. In addition, if you’re in need of a bed, please contact Zion’s Parish Nurse, Sherilyn Rittgers at 515.270.8142. </div>
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It’s the season of Advent when we focus on getting ready for the coming of King Jesus. What better way for him to find us than doing good for those he came to save. </div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-57733174672379046582014-07-30T09:37:00.000-07:002014-07-30T09:37:03.724-07:00Our Story <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This story began over five years ago with a question: “If our church closed, would anyone miss us?” We asked our board members to consider the question. The answer they reached was, “no.” After all, they concluded, our members would simply go to other churches. It seemed a shame that we were so unconnected with our neighborhood that no one would miss us if we weren’t here. It seemed that maybe Jesus Himself would want his church to have a better relationship with those around us. </span></div>
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So we embarked on a project. Our lead pastor would visit every neighbor who lived around the church. He would try to meet them, ask them how Zion Church could bless them, find out if we were being a good neighbor, and give them information about the church and a $25 gift card to a new local restaurant. He visited 30 some houses. People were polite, impressed with the gift, but really didn’t have much to say about how the church could bless them. </span></div>
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We broadened the project to include local businesses and institutions. The pastor went to the local mall which is only a few blocks away. “How can the church bless you?”, he asked the general manager. Short of being willing to work together, there wasn’t anything we could do. Then the pastor went to the VA Hospital down the street. “How can the church bless you?,” he asked. They wanted volunteers. Of course, since they are a federal institution, the application process is very involved. We advertised the need but we are still waiting for our first volunteer from the church.</span></div>
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A prayer changed everything. One evening, sitting in the backyard and reading the Bible, our pastor cried out to the Lord in frustration. “What kind of a church do you want us to be?” “ A banquet,” came the clear reply. “What kind of banquet?” “Like Luke 14,” he heard. And then his mind was filled with images of a local apartment complex. </span></div>
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Turning to Luke 14 we find the parable of the great banquet. There were three things that leapt out at us immediately when we read this chapter. 1.) Jesus says, “When you give a banquet, don’t invite those who can invite you back. Invite those who can never repay you.” So we determined that Jesus wanted us to focus first and foremost on the very least, those who couldn’t repay us in any way for serving them. 2.) The guests who were invited, the intended recipients of God’s favor, didn’t come and sent their excuses. We believe that many in the Church today don’t realize that they are saved for a purpose. That purpose is to serve the Lord who saved us by serving others. 3.) God instructs his servants to go to the alleyways and the country roads and compel the poor and the lame and the lost to come to the banquet. We understand this to mean that the church is to go out and seek, not stay home and wait for people to come to us. Zion’s mission statement became, “Jesus says, ‘Go!’”</span></div>
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So we packed up a luncheon feast for 150 people, some games and crafts for the kids and went to the Douglas Terrace Apartments. We met a lot of kids and found out that most of the people living in this complex were recent refugees. Mostly from Burma. We came back monthly for four months, bringing food, games, bounce houses, whatever we could think of, and we began learning names and building relationships.</span></div>
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By the fall it began to occur to us that perhaps we could invite these kids to our Wednesday night tutoring program. That program had 4 kids in it. Overnight it multiplied to 40. Then we needed to find more innovative ways to transport kids, feed kids, and provide the tutoring they needed in a fun atmosphere. Today 300 kids participate.</span></div>
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Next stop for us was the local elementary school. “How can the church bless you?” Naturally, we expected a polite “no thank you.” But we were surprised. The school was having trouble getting children in the English Language Learner (ELL) program come to school in the cold and snowy weather. The kids lived just beyond the edge of the busing zone and didn’t qualify to ride the bus. Could the church help? We asked the congregation and ten people volunteered to drive vans borrowed from local churches and ministries. Each school day we began transporting 14 children to school and back. The congregation stepped forward and we bought our first van. The local school asked the local church for help and, praise God, we worked together to meet the need and the get the kids to school. Turns out that the kids who needed rides lived in the apartment complexes at which we were doing outreaches. Today we transport over 40 kids every school day.</span></div>
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Next, we went to some local restaurants. “How can the church bless you?” The Muslim owner of restaurant was well connected with his Iraqi refugee community. “We need furniture,” he replied. The call went out to the church and furniture started to fill the lobby. Just as quickly it went out to families from Iraq, Burma, and other places. Friendships were made. Jesus was honored. The church became the go to place for help with everything from job applications to utilities to translation and even help for resolving disputes. Furniture now comes from all over the city as word about the need gets out.</span></div>
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The interest in Jesus by some of our new friends has caused us to start an Arabic language service on Sundays. Today that service is led by a lay pastor from Iraq and our Muslim friends feel welcome and comfortable coming to the church with questions and needs and some are choosing to follow Jesus and being baptized. As an outgrowth of this ministry, we’ve help charter a new 501(C)3 organization called the Iraqi Community in Iowa in order to help meet the needs of this community.</span></div>
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Our visits took us to the local mosque. “How can the Church bless you?” Now our pastor and the imam regularly meet for coffee and conversation and we are committed to working together to make our community a better place for all. The imam and some of his congregation join us each year at church for Christmas Eve dinner. We in turn are invited to dinner during Ramadan. We work together yearly on a food drive for needy veterans and also work together to help refugees in Syria and Jordan. </span></div>
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Each Christmas, people in the church want to bless our new friends in the community with Christmas presents and food baskets. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There was a growing need for clothes among the children and parents that were coming to the church for help. So a clothes closet was started. Today, that clothes closet goes “mobile” several times a year with a borrowed trailer that takes the clothes to places in our community where people are in need. Our lobby is full of bins for collecting clothes and household items for anyone in our community that needs help. <br />
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Because of our work in the community, Zion was approached by the Mizo, an ethnic group from Burma who wanted a church and a pastor to help them. Zion obliged and today the 1:00 Sunday Mizo service is vibrant and growing and our Mizo brothers and sisters work side by side with us on projects and cleaning the church, exchanging preachers and choirs, sharing meals and going through life together as one church. Today, after about a year of paperwork, we have a Mizo speaking pastor from Burma on staff. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Recently, a group of Swahili and Kinyamulenge speaking Congolese joined Zion together with their pastor. That gave birth to the 10:30 a.m. Swahili service. We are working on being one church together and frequently worship and serve together.</span></div>
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Sunday School is now an integrated experience, with Mizo kids and kids from the neighborhood joining us weekly to learn about Jesus. A whole team of people joined together to provide transportation and to receive the kids when they arrive and depart.<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our congregation caught the spirit of what God was doing and things like our Street Outreach, which delivers meals to the city’s homeless and prays with them began to grown. Showers that were built at Zion to host retreats are now used by the homeless so that they can refresh themselves before worship. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We had a long tradition of Wednesday night meals at our church. Now those meals feed hundreds of people and have provided an avenue for people from our community to come and eat and be known. We are exploring how to become a food pantry specializing in Asian items because of the requests we receive. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our building has become a center for our community. Zion is part of our city’s emergency management plans and serves as a shelter during times of disaster or extreme heat or cold. We host many community organizations, events, and summer camps.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In the last three years, a well regarded local preschool, lost their space and Zion was able to welcome them into our facility without cost. Today, Westside Early Education helps the church by providing room for non-English speaking preschoolers to begin learning English and relating to the classroom environment. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A few years ago we began offering ESL classes taught by volunteers. The classes became so large we needed help to run them and today we partner with the Iowa International Center to provided trained ESL teachers. </span></div>
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We’ve learned so much over the last years. We’ve learned that the church can become essential to the neighborhood simply by going out into the community and finding a way to serve people who can’t ever pay you back. Simply put, Jesus told us to “go.” When we are obedient and go, the way the world looks at the church changes. <br />
We’ve also learned that we are a part of something bigger than ourselves. Some of the things we’ve been led to do would never have happened without the help of other churches and ministries and even secular organizations. What we learned was that when we work with others, Jesus gets the glory and miraculous things are done in his name. </span></div>
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We’ve learned that we don’t have to be afraid to simply ask, “How can the church bless you?” Sure, some will send us away, but others are dying for our help. They are looking for Christ but how will he come to them if we, his body, don’t bring him? We never thought the local school would consider partnering with us. But there are wonderful partnerships to be made out there if we are willing to humble ourselves and serve on terms other than our own. </span></div>
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We also want everyone to understand a few things. We believe that Jesus has called us to minister everywhere, wherever we are, not just in this neighborhood. But you have to start somewhere. And we encourage all our members to be open to the ministry that Jesus is calling you to right where you are. We believe that our ministry is to everyone, not just immigrants, but that’s how it started for us and that’s what Jesus has put in front of us in these days. A few years from now, as our immigrant friends become part of the church and our neighborhood, our ministry focus will undoubtedly change as Jesus calls us forward into new adventures and journeys. We believe that our ministry is not just local. In other words, we still care about the rest of the world. We still seek to support the people and things that God is doing globally. We are actively involved in ministry in Tanzania, South Sudan, Cambodia, Myanmar and Jordan and for praying for the Church in persecution throughout the world. <br />
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Four years after beginning our project, the results, to us, are nothing short of miraculous. We believe that we have found the ministry Jesus wants for us in this place at this time. And, amazingly, new opportunities keep on presenting themselves. The local middle school and high school are now asking for help in transporting students. We could easily double our student transportation. We were able to provide over 500 books to the elementary school, one for every student, just before Christmas. The parents of the children, regardless of their ability to pay for books themselves, have expressed gratitude that the local church cares about their children. The school has also asked us to provide weekend meals for students that the school is concerned have no food when they are not at school. We are currently providing 30+ students with food each weekend. </span></div>
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Zion has turned extra land on our campus into community gardens, especially for immigrants who miss being on the land and working the soil. Today there are 60 plots for gardeners. The idea came about at a neighborhood meeting and will involve a partnership between the city, the church and Lutheran Services, a social service organization.</span></div>
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We continue to offer “life skills” classes including things like “how to manage money,” “how to go to the pharmacy and what medicines to buy when your children are sick,” “how to buy a house,” and others These classes are an opportunity for partnership between the church and other members of our community. We understand that the church should play a role for good in the transition of our neighborhood as the original residents from the post war era move out and first time home buyers from other places move in. </span></div>
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Zion hosts an Iowa Career Access Point computer. This means that the church can help people find available jobs. We provide volunteers from the congregation to help people use it. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Today, Zion is a church that worships in four languages and prays in over a dozen. Together we hope to be one church that loves and serves the Lord Jesus together. </span></div>
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What’s next? Only God knows. We continue to pray we will be faithful in responding to his call. What’s next for you? Will you find your story in our story? We invite you to come along and be part of the adventure. </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-6063200473114653722014-03-03T09:58:00.003-08:002014-03-03T09:58:18.321-08:00Are We Crazy?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i> Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” Mark 3:20</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How important is it to you that you be seen by others as normal?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Are you willing to cross the line of other people’s perceptions from normal to crazy?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">People thought Jesus was crazy. His own family thought he had completely lost it. Which is really odd when you consider that they knew something about the miraculous circumstances of his birth and the expectations of his life’s work. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sometimes we give a pass to slightly crazy, successful, creative, innovative people like Jesus because we think that maybe craziness is the cost of being truly unique. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But Jesus calls us to follow him. He calls us to be seen as crazy too. He calls us to become like him. He calls us to let him be the pattern for who we are and how we live our lives and relate to others. He calls us to be crazy in the eyes of the world. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to invite a bunch of people you don’t know and who aren’t even like you into your space and offer to go through life with them. But that’s what Jesus does. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to gather more people together for an evening’s conversation than you can possibly feed with the food you have on hand. But that’s what Jesus does. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to wash the feet of the people who betray you with a kiss. But that’s what Jesus does. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. But that’s what Jesus does. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to think that people from different classes, ethnicities, abilities and generations could praise God together and go through life together. But that’s what Jesus believes. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to give away things you could use to help yourself and the people you want to impress and thereby improve your own position. But that’s what Jesus teaches. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to keep coming up with new ways to help people and minister to them when you aren’t even sure you can survive another month. But that’s what Jesus teaches us to do. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I hope people think our congregation is crazy. Crazy like Jesus. Our constant temptation is the temptation to be normal in the eyes of the world. But keeping things normal won’t change the world and show it Jesus. The true ambition of everyone who follows Jesus is to be crazy like he is. </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-74646531383669087032014-03-03T09:58:00.001-08:002014-03-03T09:58:10.001-08:00Are We Crazy?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i> Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” Mark 3:20</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How important is it to you that you be seen by others as normal?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Are you willing to cross the line of other people’s perceptions from normal to crazy?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">People thought Jesus was crazy. His own family thought he had completely lost it. Which is really odd when you consider that they knew something about the miraculous circumstances of his birth and the expectations of his life’s work. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sometimes we give a pass to slightly crazy, successful, creative, innovative people like Jesus because we think that maybe craziness is the cost of being truly unique. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But Jesus calls us to follow him. He calls us to be seen as crazy too. He calls us to become like him. He calls us to let him be the pattern for who we are and how we live our lives and relate to others. He calls us to be crazy in the eyes of the world. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to invite a bunch of people you don’t know and who aren’t even like you into your space and offer to go through life with them. But that’s what Jesus does. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to gather more people together for an evening’s conversation than you can possibly feed with the food you have on hand. But that’s what Jesus does. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to wash the feet of the people who betray you with a kiss. But that’s what Jesus does. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. But that’s what Jesus does. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to think that people from different classes, ethnicities, abilities and generations could praise God together and go through life together. But that’s what Jesus believes. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to give away things you could use to help yourself and the people you want to impress and thereby improve your own position. But that’s what Jesus teaches. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s crazy to keep coming up with new ways to help people and minister to them when you aren’t even sure you can survive another month. But that’s what Jesus teaches us to do. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I hope people think our congregation is crazy. Crazy like Jesus. Our constant temptation is the temptation to be normal in the eyes of the world. But keeping things normal won’t change the world and show it Jesus. The true ambition of everyone who follows Jesus is to be crazy like he is. </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-4736413766364581882014-02-01T06:10:00.001-08:002014-02-01T06:10:40.066-08:00Prayer for Zion Church<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Jesus, Lord of the Church, give to the preacher grace to preach your word in truth despite my brokenness. We pray that in everything, you would increase and we would decrease. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As a church we ask for your forgiveness and your healing for our past and present sins. Especially for forgiveness where we have not embodied you, the Lord of the Church, and have been a scandal or a stumbling block for those who seek to believe. Forgive us for not giving to others the same grace and mercy you have shown to us, even to the point of death on a cross for us. Forgive us that at times, we are apt to make our worship more about what we like than about giving you the praise and glory and honor and unity that are rightly do to you, our Lord, God and King. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Restore us, we pray and equip us to better serve you in everything we do and in every situation into which you send us daily. Move us to forgive as we have been forgiven and to be merciful as you have shown us mercy. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Give us a passion to glorify you, Lord, in every aspect of what we do together and independently. Teach us to be</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXC34cA8bGVvy-Onn7RjnZW7_xYWQqxNC547FzmAwVXAsf341IeTgW2nfMI6H1IJXNq8mg-cELY95S2mKDGkG7h8T5Z4h7V5N-cvBLew2WK3j0p9T4FZtCcmgU-zF4u6zMLyj74liZJQ8/s1600/IMG_1348.MOV" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXC34cA8bGVvy-Onn7RjnZW7_xYWQqxNC547FzmAwVXAsf341IeTgW2nfMI6H1IJXNq8mg-cELY95S2mKDGkG7h8T5Z4h7V5N-cvBLew2WK3j0p9T4FZtCcmgU-zF4u6zMLyj74liZJQ8/s1600/IMG_1348.MOV" /></a></div>
a people focused on you and to desire you above everything else. Help us to do what you want, to love what you love, to desire what you desire. Make us to grow in love for you and for others. Teach us to be patient, make us wise through your word, and strengthen us to be dauntless and courageous in doing what is right and pleases you. <br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">May Zion Church be the catalyst for an epidemic of righteousness in this city. May your word move us mightily into action in such a way that hearts and lives and eternities in this city are changed. We pray especially that the special relationships with the Muslim community you have given us would lead many to follow you. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">May we be a church together where the lonely find community, the outcasts find acceptance and understanding, the sick find healing, the addicted and the prisoners find true and lasting freedom, where the hungry are fed, the needy are clothed, the homeless find a home, and the thirsty find satisfying drink. Let us be a place where streams of living waters flow forth and water a dry and thirsty land. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We are a Church of many people: People from Iowa and elsewhere in America, from Burma and Iraq, Congo and Liberia, South Sudan and other places. We are people of every generation, station, and ability. We pray in many languages and many ways but we seek our unity in you, Jesus. Grant us grace to overcome all that divides us and make out of many, one holy people, a church of priests to serve our God.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We ask for the unity of all the congregations in our city that the unbelieving world would see that there is only one church in Des Moines and that that church belongs to Jesus and is truly the enfleshment of his body. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Bless and keep our elected leaders and those who have authority over us in our nation, state, county and city. Inform and guide their decisions by your mighty hand and may the laws they pass be for the good of all. May justice and mercy be our goal and may righteousness and peace be the result. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We pray that you meet all our needs. Please give us neither too much nor too little so that we can pay our bills and help the poor. Move us to give with kind and generous hearts so that people might see you as kind and generous. Raise up leaders and helpers among us to do the work you have set before us. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">May our children grow up to love and serve you. May parents lead their children to godliness and holiness. Be pleased to fill all of us with your Holy Spirit and may signs and wonders be seen every day among us.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">May we embody, you, Jesus, may we truly be your body. May the people of Zion truly embody your grace and forgiveness and redemption. May we be bold proclaimers of your word, your will, your way. May we be doers as well as hearers of your word. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">All these things we pray in the matchless and mighty name of Jesus of Nazareth, Christ, Messiah, Lord of all. Amen. </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-73613598941904098532014-01-01T09:17:00.001-08:002014-01-01T09:17:08.184-08:00Welcome to 2014 at Zion Church<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Welcome 2014! Welcome to 2014 at Zion Church!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This promises to be one of the most exciting years in the history of our church. God is on the move and many miraculous and wonderful things are happening right before our eyes.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The most obvious is the fulfillment of Psalm 99:2, which says, “Great is the Lord in Zion<br />
he is exalted over all the nations.” This year Zion truly becomes the place “where nations worship” as we become a church that worships weekly in four languages and prays in over ten. Beginning February 2, Zion will add a Swahili service concurrent with our English 10:30 a.m. service on Sunday mornings. The new Swahili service will be led by Pastor Gakunzi Ntwieri with whom we’ve been sharing fellowship and worship for over a year. Every third Sunday the Swahili and English services will worship together. We believe that after a year or two of keeping this schedule, the two services will merge into one. And that is really exciting. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One of the things that makes Zion different is our commitment to be one church together and not four separate groups sharing space and expenses. The vision we have been given by God is that our future is not in separate services by language, but in united services where people from every imaginable background and generation and ability can worship the Lord as a single body together. We believe this brings joy to our Mutual Master, Jesus Christ, and is a fulfillment of his prayer that we “should be one” as he and the Father are one. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our biggest challenge as a church is to find ways to share life and worship together as a united body. We know it is not an easy task to bring so many different ethnicities together but we believe that He whom we love and all have in common is greater than any of the multitude of things that divide us. We believe that our diversity makes us stronger, not weaker, and that it is “for such a time as this” that God placed us all here, to be a witness to the unifying power of the gospel. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Greater than any challenge we face are the many opportunities that we’ve been given as a church to share Christ our Savior with the nations in our neighborhood and with the poor and the homeless and those in need. We never run out of opportunities to share the love of Jesus with world around us. Almost every day we have a new door open to us into the lives of families and individuals and even entire communities. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One of the greatest blessings about being a part of the Zion Church community is that our families are all on a mission together. Every day at Zion is like a mission trip and you don’t even have to leave your zip code. Our children are taught about Christ in the same room as children who have never heard of him and this leads to interesting and exciting conversations. All our events occur in the context of a Christian faith that is global. You can’t be at Zion long before you realize that you’re part of world-wide Christianity. When a bomb goes off in Baghdad, we feel it. When a rebellion happens in South Sudan, we know people affected. We believe that this perception of the church as more than the local congregation causes our faith to grow and gives us a perspective on what God is doing in the whole world. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Zion has been uniquely positioned in our community to bring people and tribes and nations together. We are virtually across the street from Hoover High School, the most diverse school in our state, with some 30 languages spoken. We straddle the Lower Beaver and Meredith Drive neighborhoods, both of which are home to an increasing number of first time home buyers who were not born in the USA. Lower Beaver is also home to a number of apartment complexes favored by resettled refugees. This positioning has caused us to respond to the needs in our neighborhoods with a clothes closet, food pantry, furniture ministry and fueled educational, transportation and tutoring ministries. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">2014 promises to continue to call us to other parts of the world, as well. Looks like we’re being called to help Syrian refugees in Jordan, build an orphan school in Rwanda, continue support and aid to communities in Tanzania and go to a number of other spots that our community members feel led by the Spirit of God to go on short term mission trips. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We believe that these extraordinary opportunities come about because of the Word of God which calls us relentlessly to follow Jesus into the lives of other people. We believe that the essence of discipleship is living daily with Jesus and letting him lead you into what he desires to accomplish in you and through you. By serving others we are serving him. By serving we grow spiritually and are brought back to the Word of God for nourishment and support and then through that same Word, sent back out to serve the least for the sake of the Greatest Name. We believe that such a way of life, lived out together in a very diverse church community, will help our young find their own relationship with Christ and choose to follow him. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Finally, 2014 provides an amazing opportunity for us to pray. We didn’t choose this mission that God has us on, he sent it to us through prayer. As we continue to seek out the Lord and his will for us together at Zion through prayer, we know that he who is faithful will continue to change and transform us to be more like him. Through prayer we also express our gratitude to him who makes all things new, including us, for sharing his ministry with us. It is the most exciting thing in the whole world to be a part of God’s plan. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thanks for reading. God bless you. May the life and love and peace and joy of knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection, bless you and give you daily grace to share. PJ </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-88115982453918578952013-11-21T12:39:00.003-08:002013-11-21T12:39:28.909-08:00Will This Be Our Finest Hour?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Greatness is determined not by one’s successes, but by how one deals with one’s challenges. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At Zion we are facing a great challenge. This week we announced to the Zion community that we must cut our budget by another 12% and that these cuts necessitate the elimination of all our paid musical staff positions. We’re losing both our director of worship and music and our organist/choir director. Both men have served this congregation long and well and we are so appreciative of their efforts. We simply can’t afford to pay for their services. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How did we wind up having to cut the budget? In 2008, Zion was hit hard by the Great Recession. Our people cut back on their giving. At that time we had to cut our budget but we tried to do so in a way that what we did wouldn’t be affected. We held on for dear life and believed that when the recession was over, giving would rebound and we could add back what we had cut. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then in 2011, we saw an exodus of long time members to another church’s satellite in a neighboring suburb. We again lost giving. We again had to cut our budget but we didn’t cut it enough. We held on for dear life and believed that things would change for the better and giving would rebound and we could add back what we had cut. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We managed to just barely maintain a “break-even” scenario until August of 2013. During the height of the summer travel season, we had several weeks of bad offerings in a row which put us into the red. We were only able to get back on track through a miraculous and unexpected gift. At that time, the leaders of the church realized we that had to make some cuts for the sake of the mission of the church.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We looked at everything we could cut. Truth be told, we could cut every outreach and ministry program we have and still not come up with enough savings to make it worthwhile. We’ve cut so much from the budget over the years that there simply isn’t anything left to cut. That meant we had to cut bone and muscle. We had to cut our staff expenses because the only other expenses we have of any size are building and mortgage and we’ve already cut everything we can there.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For some of our church community these cuts will be very, very difficult to make. Some may feel that we’re making the wrong choice and sacrificing the wrong things. That somehow, we have not properly discerned what is important to God. We are definitely challenging what many people believe the church was created to do. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Other churches may choose to define themselves on the very things that we are cutting: the strength of their choir or worship music. But we were called to define ourselves based only upon our obedience to Jesus. Jesus could choose to send us remarkable amounts of money. But he hasn’t. Jesus has instead brought us more and more of those in need. So we feel that obedience to Christ requires us to make these painful cuts.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Please know that we prayed and prayed and deliberated for months on this. We are simply responding to a situation in the way we believe Jesus, our Master, would have us respond. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Zion has been given a truly amazing ministry in our community. It’s completely a God thing and very exciting. But there is no doubt that God has called us to hard things. Some people ask, “If you’re doing what God wants, why isn’t he blessing you?” Truth is, He is blessing us. A lot. We get to see people come to Christ and be saved. We get to see literally hundreds of neighborhood children come rushing through the doors of the church every week. We get to minister to the needs of our Muslim neighbors and talk to them about Jesus the Messiah. We are so blessed by God! </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ve prayed for years that God would “bless us financially.” After all, selfishly, it doesn’t reflect well on my reputation that I’m pastor of a church that struggles all the time to pay it’s bills. I want to be blessed financially. I want people to give us more and more money. But God has a plan. Whenever I’ve prayed about it, God has always answered: “I have already provided.” At first I thought He meant that we had money in the Trust Fund and we should use that. But I now understand Him to mean that He has provided us enough to do what we’re supposed to do, and perhaps, the reason we’re struggling so much is because we’re doing things we no longer need to do. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Watching my friends lose their jobs makes me feel ill. At the same time, it opens up for Zion an opportunity to pull together. We must rely on our volunteers now for music to praise the Lord each week as we gather together. It forces us to change the way we do our services and makes working together with the various cultures we minister to more appealing. In this current crisis, God has given us an occasion to make His name great by coming together and being His people in a new and exciting way. Change is hard and frankly, this church has seen unprecedented changes in the last few years. But change is also a gift from God to allow us to better serve Him in our neighborhood and to grow by hanging together and learning to trust Him in new ways. A church without serious challenges, where everything is easy, is a church always in danger of losing it’s faith. A church in constant need and facing constant change, must hold on for dear life to Jesus himself, because no one else but the Lord can save us and deliver us. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So I ask you to come together with me and our entire church family and cling to Jesus. Let’s keep on meeting together and worshipping Him and serving Him by serving others and keep on loving each other. Let’s show the devil and the watching world that we followers of Jesus don’t measure our worth by the size of our staff or programming or by the greatness of our buildings or organs, but rather, our worth comes through holding on for dear life to Him who is worthy, Jesus Christ our Lord. This could be our finest hour.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If you have questions or concerns about our transition in worship, please feel free to contact me or any of our staff or board members. Thanks for reading. God bless you. PJ</span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-10318108130336111942013-11-09T10:55:00.002-08:002013-11-09T10:55:34.950-08:00Our Greatest Challenge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Our greatest challenge at Zion isn’t money; though you’d think so by how often we talk about it. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our greatest challenge at Zion isn’t having enough volunteers; though you’d think so by how often we talk about it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our greatest challenge at Zion is to make disciples of Jesus Christ who make disciples and so on. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We have amazing ability in our community to serve people. Our serving has made us a hub of activity throughout the week. But what good is it if we aren’t making disciples of Jesus who make disciples? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">You should never measure the success of a church by how big the crowd is. Or by how much money it gives away. The big question must always be: does the church make disciples who make disciples?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What is a disciple of Jesus who makes disciples? It is someone who lives their life with Jesus. When Jesus says, “Follow me,” he’s actually saying, “Walk with me.” In other words, he’s inviting us to share his life and make him a part of everything we do. A disciple walks with Jesus every day and submits to Jesus’ instruction and guidance in his/her every move. Spiritual growth is found in making Jesus a part of everyday life. Disciples are made when they see Jesus in you. When others can tell that you’ve spent time with Jesus and are drawn to you so you can introduce them to Him. And then they go on to walk with him and eventually invite others to come and walk with Him as well. It requires time and relationship. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How does this happen? It’s more than inviting someone to church. It’s inviting someone to share your life with Jesus so that they, too, can learn from him and become obedient to him. Discipleship happens best outside of programming. It happens best in the sharing of life. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Are we willing to share our lives with others? To open our homes, our families, our everything to others so that they can see how a disciple lives? When we are, then I believe that the Holy Spirit will work through us to draw others to Jesus so that through us, he can teach them how to live. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Jesus has to do the heavy lifting in disciple making. Our chief concern is that we are walking with him and mindful of the others who are waiting for us to invite them along for the journey. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In over 200 years of Christianity in the US I’m not convinced we’ve actually made many disciples who makes disciples of Jesus. I think we’ve focused on getting people to go to church and go along with what we want to do. Now we are reaching the end of our supply of recycled Christians who were born into faith. Now we have no choice, for our own survival, let alone the command of Jesus, to go and make disciples. This is our learning edge. This is where we must concentrate our efforts. Thanks for reading. God bless you. PJ </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-42015942497001551342013-10-12T08:45:00.001-07:002013-10-12T08:46:08.210-07:00How We Make Disciples and What Zion United Means<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>The Zion Way: </b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>How we make disciples of Jesus.</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The way we attempt to introduce people to Jesus is called STAR, an acronym for Serve, Teach, Advocate, and Reach.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Serve: Jesus told us in John 13 that the world would know that we are his disciples by the way we love. He gave us an example for the kind of love we were supposed to have; he washed his disciples feet. We understand that Jesus washing feet is metaphorical for those who have been given much to humble themselves and serve those with less. When we’re talking about being given much we’re not talking about income or property or the things of this life. We’re speaking about the fact that Christ has already given us all things and now we are so blessed by knowing him humbling ourselves in order that those who don’t know him might come to know him through us. We understand that Jesus came not to be served, but to seek and serve the lost. We also understand that the point of our service isn’t only evangelism, it’s also worship. We serve others because by doing so we believe we are serving our Lord himself (Mt 25). </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Teach: Teaching is really a form of serving but our society makes a distinction. Our goal is to teach people how to live a better life. The content of the teaching might be practical, like “How to Stock a Medicine Cabinet” or “How to Buy a House.” Or the content might be instructive like an ESL class or English tutoring or homework help. The content might also be spiritual and have to do with knowing Christ and his teachings. We have many, many things to teach.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Advocate: Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines an advocate as, “one that supports or promotes the interests of another.” Many people in our community have no one to support them or promote their interests. They are lost in the system and falling through the cracks. In many cases this is because they don’t understand our society, our systems, or our language. In other cases it’s because they are discriminated against because they are a different race or color or creed. Sometimes it’s because they are not physically or mentally able to represent themselves. So we find ways to promote the cause of others. Like going with them to the doctor’s office to be certain treatment is obtained and understood. Sometimes we work within a political or organizational system to promote change. We might go to schools or banks or realtors or immigration offices to support and encourage and promote the cause of others. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Reach: We want to reach people where they are. It all begins with a relationship. Many people are on the fringes of our community. We believe that they are the ones to whom Jesus would go first. We want to follow him to the edges of our society and reach the ones who live there. We want to befriend them, know them, and love them. And then, when we know them, we believe that the Holy Spirit will create an opportunity for us to share Christ with them. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How we believe our own discipleship is lived out. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Likewise, that we all learn how to:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Receive grace. We must all learn how to receive grace from God and from each other. We believe it impossible to truly give grace or love without a full knowledge and experience of receiving the grace and love of God through Jesus Christ (salvation/forgiveness) and from others (love and forgiveness). </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Learn. We are all students of Jesus and will be so until the sanctifying and edifying work of the Holy Spirit is completed in us in the kingdom yet to come. So we all need to be learners. We need to be in the Word of God, the Bible, every day, so that we come to know everything we can about the Word of God Made Flesh, Jesus Christ. We need to be in prayer every day, both talking to our Lord and also listening to him. We believe that in prayer God teaches us through the Holy Spirit to understand and desire his good and gracious will. We also need to be learning from our leaders and teachers and each other as well. We believe that the best way to learn from Jesus is to live out his teachings, especially the parables. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Reconcile. As surely as we advocate for others, we ourselves need to be in a constant state of reconciling our relationships. We need to be actively encouraging one another, forgiving one another, speaking the truth in love with one another. Romans 12.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We ourselves need to be reached by the love and compassion of God through daily prayer and conversation and listening to God. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Invite. Jesus invited us to follow him. We accepted his challenge. So, too, we must invite others on his behalf. “Come and see. We have found the Lord.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Give. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son....” We understand that when Jesus calls us to follow him, he calls us to give ourselves to him fully and completely. We understand that our life is not our own, it is his, because he paid the price for us and redeemed us from sin, death and the devil. How can we not, in turn, practice generosity of property and spirit with others? We believe that all we have is God’s, he gave it to us. And since it belongs to him, he has claim on it to use it for the benefit of others. We also understand that beyond the giving of property or money, we are also called to give of our time and also that we must give grace to all because we have been shown such amazing grace by our Lord. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Zion United: The Concept.</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We understand that Jesus has called his people to be in unity with each other and with him and then when his diverse people are seen as one in him by the world, the world will come to know that Jesus is the Messiah (John 17). So we seek unity for the sake of the glory of Christ with fellow Christ followers. The world seeks to make unity as difficult as possible. Churches in the USA must be registered as corporations, non-living entities. Except that the church is very much alive. The Bible understands a church as a living thing, an organism, a body made up of living parts. Corporately, (in a legal understanding), to achieve unity we would need to reconcile our boards, our bylaws, our constitutions and our bank accounts. Followers of Jesus also come from all kinds of different cultures, languages, traditions and theological distinctives. So when you take two bodies of Christians, it is very hard to achieve unity in all things. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We are in unique situations as a church:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Several years ago, a small group of Burmese refugees who self identified as “Des Moines Mizo Christian Fellowship (DMCF),” approached us for help. They needed both pastoral leadership and a place to meet. We suggested that they join our church and become a part of us. So our Mizo members identify as both Zion and DMCF. We have also never merged bank accounts, although all accounts are in the Zion name. We decided not to do this because the Mizo’s understanding of what the money is for is different than ours. We might use the money to patch the parking lot. They use the money to help their people. This unique relationship of being one thing and another together is Zion United. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We host a pre-school, WEE, in our building. As such, they are identified in the community with us. This preschool is a first class operation and has an excellent reputation in our community. They came to us in desperate need of a site. They were homeless. We felt led by the Spirit to offer them a place. It’s a beautiful relationship. They contribute a few thousand dollars a year that doesn’t actually cover the expenses of their being here. But they bring kids into our building and find other ways to improve the property. We don’t want to be in a landlord tenant relationship with them. We want to be able to bless them and support them and prosper them as they serve our community. We don’t want a corporate merger, (we don’t want to take them over), but we seek other ways of being one together. They are a part of Zion United and we must consider them and their needs in all our planning. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We are seeking merger with another immigrant church from the Congo. We will go through the same process that we wen through with the MIzo. For a while, two types of identity will exist, but one day, we will all simply consider ourselves brothers and sisters. This is Zion United.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We have many, many volunteers that come from other churches to help us with the ministry God has given us. We understand that they may give money and time to us and still attend another church on Sunday morning. But we are still in a relationship with them and them with us. They haven’t found a church that worships as they want to but also serves as they desire. So they really attend two churches. This is Zion United. We don’t need to be the only church in town. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We serve many, many children. Some of them attend our church exclusively. Of these, many of their parents don’t attend any church. We have to understand that these children are a part of who we are as a church. There are also many children who attend an immigrant church on Sunday that can’t offer the rest of the programming we do so they attend one place on Sunday and they attend Zion during the week. That’s OK with us. That’s the concept of Zion United. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Zion United seeks the unity of Jesus followers in our community so that they might worship, serve, witness and grow together for the glory of God. the property. We don’t want to be in a landlord tenant relationship with them. We want to be able to bless them and support them and prosper them as they serve our community. We don’t want a corporate merger, (we don’t want to take them over), but we seek other ways of being one together. They are a part of Zion United and we must consider them and their needs in all our planning. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We are seeking merger with another immigrant church from the Congo. We will go through the same process that we wen through with the MIzo. For a while, two types of identity will exist, but one day, we will all simply consider ourselves brothers and sisters. This is Zion United.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We have many, many volunteers that come from other churches to help us with the ministry God has given us. We understand that they may give money and time to us and still attend another church on Sunday morning. But we are still in a relationship with them and them with us. They haven’t found a church that worships as they want to but also serves as they desire. So they really attend two churches. This is Zion United. We don’t need to be the only church in town. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We serve many, many children. Some of them attend our church exclusively. Of these, many of their parents don’t attend any church. We have to understand that these children are a part of who we are as a church. There are also many children who attend an immigrant church on Sunday that can’t offer the rest of the programming we do so they attend one place on Sunday and they attend Zion during the week. That’s OK with us. That’s the concept of Zion United. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Zion United seeks the unity of Jesus followers in our community so that they might worship, serve, witness and grow together for the glory of God. </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-1704619322196039762013-09-28T06:50:00.000-07:002013-09-28T06:50:29.911-07:00Our Values: Numbers 3 and 4<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Our Values: The Principals that Inform Our Decision Making</b></div>
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<b>We “get” globalization. #3</b></div>
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We are very much a local church with a global perspective. We currently worship together in four languages and pray together in over 10 languages and that number is increasing. We understand together that the world is coming to our city and to our very neighborhood and that means that everything must change as we seek to find ways to connect with our community and our world in order to serve people as if we were serving Christ himself. We believe in reaching out to those both next to us and across the world. We understand that God’s Plans are bigger than our ideas and we seek ways to glorify Him in the midst of a rapidly changing world. </div>
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<b>We are a part of something bigger than ourselves. #4</b></div>
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Jesus taught us to pray that God’s kingdom would come and that things here would be the way they are in heaven. We believe that God’s kingdom is comprised of all his children and so we seek ways to work with others for the sake of making that kingdom real to the world around us. We seek unity with other believers and churches and partnerships with others who are engaged in doing good things in the world. We do not believe that we have to own every idea or ministry. In fact, we believe that our Master taught us how to die to ourselves and to our egos and so we hope that we can find ways to bring people and groups together without having to “own it” or take credit for it. We believe that this attitude will bring many good things into being without our egos getting in the way. In all things we seek a kingdom orientation. </div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-74557789858261150362013-09-23T14:50:00.001-07:002013-09-23T14:50:57.780-07:00Our Values: Number 1 and 2 <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Our Values: Numbers 1 and 2</h2>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Our Values: The Principals that Inform Our Decision Making </span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Values determine how you make decisions. If your value is that you never go into debt, you might decide not to charge that trip to Disney World. If your value is that you will live for the day, you very well might decide to charge that trip to Disney World. As a church, we have determined the things that we value, the things that determine our decision making. We're preaching about them in order to introduce them to the congregation. I hope you enjoy this synopsis. We'll be introducing two at a time. Thanks for reading. PJ </span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Aren’t they all our children? </b> </span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Jesus was particularly fond of children and he used them in many examples of what the kingdom of God is like. Our neighborhood is blessed with many, many children. Many come from disadvantaged families or broken homes. We seek to find ways of incorporating them into our church, our families, and our shared life together. They are the first thing we think about when we’re making any plans. Even if their parents never attend our church we seek to find ways to show them the love of Jesus Christ and include them. </span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Let’s do something beautiful for Jesus.</b></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In Matthew 26, Jesus is anointed with a lavish amount of perfume by a woman who saw in him her Savior and Redeemer. In verse 10, Jesus says, “She has done a beautiful thing to me.” Those with Jesus complained that such extravagance was a waste of money and could be better spent. But we understand that when Jesus is present, extravagance is called for. We should pour out our lives and all we possess upon Jesus and His great work. Mother Teresa once said that Jesus travels the world in distressing disguises. We seek to find ways to intentionally welcome him and poor ourselves out for him in every disguise he can wear, especially when he visits us as the poor or the “least of these.” This attitude leads us to “see the need and meet the need” because by serving others we are serving our Master. “What so ever you did to the least of these you did so to me.” Our constant question to others must be, “How can we bless you?”</span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-46769251024822880782013-08-26T09:47:00.002-07:002013-08-26T09:48:48.042-07:00The Changing Face of the Local Church<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Recently, I visited some friends in a major midwestern city. They attend a large Lutheran Church which is part of our association, LCMC. It's a nice big church. Plenty of people to volunteer and help do good things for Jesus and also pay the bills. They have mission projects, local ministries, and contemporary worship. They are in a fast growing suburb. But my friends are unhappy and have started attending the local (Baptist) multi-site mega church. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The conversation was fascinating to me and epitomizes the quandary that the Church in North America is in these days. My friends like the Lutheran church because it does good work in the world and the community and is mission minded. They also like that it's grounded in what they consider to be a good theological tradition. They like that the church offers Bible Studies and opportunities to grow spiritually. Sounds like a great church, right?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So why are they unhappy? Well, the pastor changed preaching styles and they no longer feel fed by his messages. He's kind of gone off on a bummer reflection tour, looking back over his life and tying up loose ends. He's also leading the worship which has changed styles and they don't really like the new genre. They also realized that despite attending this church for more than a year, they have no strong relationships there. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What's the pull of the "new" mega-church satellite? They love the worship. My friend says it's like going to a performance. They even have a smoke machine. It is so incredibly tight and professional and it's all songs that you like and are on the radio, week after week. Worship never, ever, let's them down and never leaves them feeling empty. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then, there' s the fact that most of their friends are leaving their churches, too, and hanging out at the same mega church. So they now have friends at this huge church that they know from other places in their life. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And, here's the pinnacle of it all for me: the new church doesn't ask them to do anything except give money and they don't really feel they have to do that much, either. Sure, the weekly bulletin handout asks people for a deeper level of commitment but since the church is so big, no one can guilt you personally into service and no one will guilt you from the front to serve because that would turn people away. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The conversation steered into the topic of time commitment. My friend travels all week long for his work. He's tired on the weekends. My friend's wife fills her life with children's sports activities and the local school. She feels she's committed enough with what's on her plate and isn't looking for a church to get involved in. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So I told them that they were choosing a new church based on their own preferences and conveniences and they agreed. “We’re being religious consumers,” they agreed. And it doesn’t matter to them. I think my friend desires a relationship with his church, I think he'd make a great leader. But he doesn't have time to pursue it. So he feels a bit guilty. But for most people, guilt is dead. They've moved on. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The question these days is very much, "What can the local church do to serve me?" And I'm not talking about a question that's being asked by unchurched people, I'm saying this is the question that committed Christians who grew up in the Church are now asking. In order to "maintain" our members we must provide convenient service times (which for decades have included Saturday or Sunday nights or both). We must not ask them to serve too much (maybe a couple times a year and in such a way that it is incredibly well managed and an easy in, easy out situation). We must provide a consistent worship experience that meets their tastes and their needs. Sermons have to be applicable to what is happening in that moment and they have to be memorable. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I believe this attitude is the prevailing attitude about church in our culture these days. Church needs to be a place to greet your friends, have a great sing along, and get moved by a message and be out in 60 minutes or less every week on a day of the week that suits your activity schedule. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Church, done well, has now become an "event." It's more like going to a movie or sporting event than ever before. We want to see people we know so we can feel part of something and not alone, but we're so tired from the rest of our week that we really don't want to meet anyone new. Unless it's easy and they're introduced to us by someone we already know. We don't want to serve at the church, like usher or greet or whatever because we're so busy with the rest of our life doing great things for our family that we just don't have anything left. We like it that whatever we put in the offering is part of something greater and it's always going to be enough to keep the church thriving and growing because there are other people we'll never meet who are giving a lot. We imagine what it would be like to have a relationship with the preacher, we even think we really know him through the sermons, but the truth is he doesn't know us and he never really will on a personal basis. But he understands our life and lifestyle choices completely. He's one of us. Besides, most of us listen to one or two other preacher's pod casts anyway. If we ever need pastoral care, the church will send someone we've never met whose either a retired person or on the staff. This is, after all, part of what we pay for. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now I understand that some will say I'm being crass. I don't mean to be. I'm not mad about it, I helped to create it. I was good at it. <b>Here's my concern: is it sustainable?</b> I'm sure I'm not smart enough to tell you how history will view what's happening in the church right now. I think it's probably something like the death of the established church that just couldn't change with the times. But it's also the death of some other things, too. It's the death of a church culture that was more than an hour a week. It's the death of relationship with a pastor who knew you as well as your doctor or barber. (Few of us have those relationships anymore either). It's the end of church like we've known it for the last 100+ years. And that's not all a bad thing. It's just going to be different, that's all. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There are a couple of real challenges the mega churches will have to meet and overcome in order to survive the coming changes. One of the them is so much of the mega's energy has been in raising money for themselves. Big building projects and then satellite locations. At some point, we'll run out of people who are unhappy with their established churches, (people upset with the pastor, with the music or the programming). Then what? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Succession. Most mega church pastors I read about don't have a succession plan and they are mostly closer to 65 than 50. When they ultimately retire (hopefully before they go off on the self reflective sermon tour that helped to drive my friends out of their church), there will be a huge stylistic change. The next generation sounds different and won't worship or preach like us at all. It's going to be a rickety bridge to get across. If megas start to loose members because of bad succession plans, you have a scenario like that of the Crystal Cathedral. They went broke. You have to have a mega congregation to pay for a mega building (similar to what a lot of big urban churches struggle with as people move to the suburbs). </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Serving. I think one of the most appealing things about going to a big beautiful church is that they don't need me for much. I can go and consume and go home. Believe me, I understand the appeal. But I think that big, beautiful churches could be doing more to push their people into mobilizing for kingdom work in the neighborhood or city. And that work is dirty, it has to be on-going and it can’t all be done twice a year in well organized, time sensitive events. Without that essential element of serving, why will anyone be drawn to a church in the future when we run out of recycled Christians? Serving answers that all important question these days, "What do you guys <i>do?"</i></span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-29026242137601534812013-07-29T09:05:00.002-07:002013-07-29T09:05:11.179-07:00Thinking about the body<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Paul understood the whole church of Jesus Christ to be a body.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In 1 Corinthians 12 he writes, “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.... The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now I understand Paul to be talking about more than the local congregation. I understand Paul to be talking about the entire church of Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus did in John 17 when he prayed that all his followers, and those who came to believe in him through them, might be one with him and with the Father. The Church is one body, wherever it is, however big or small, whether persecuted or free. We are one body. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I think we work really hard on being one as a congregation, but we must never forget that the body of Christ is bigger than just our own church. It includes Christians across eternity, across the world, and across town. We all need each other and we should all honor each other and we should strive, as our Master commands us, “to be one.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Human sin and egotism makes it harder than you would think to live this out. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Consequently, we have a core value at Zion (part of our values which we’ll roll out and explain in the fall) that says this:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>We are a part of something bigger than ourselves. </i></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Jesus taught us to pray that God’s kingdom would come and that things here would be the way they are in heaven. We believe that God’s kingdom is comprised of all his children and so we seek ways to work with others for the sake of making that kingdom real to the world around us. We seek unity with other believers and churches and partnerships with other people and organizations and ministries who are engaged in doing good things in the world. We do not believe that we have to own every idea or ministry. In fact, we believe that our Master taught us how to die to ourselves and to our egos, and so we hope that we can find ways to bring people and groups together without having to “own it” or take credit for it. We believe that this attitude will bring many good things into being without our egos getting in the way. In all things we seek a kingdom orientation.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We try to show that we are a part of the greater body of Christ. We have done this in the following ways:</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By supporting local congregations in Des Moines and other cities in Iowa that ask for our help. We have sent worship teams, preachers and teachers to different locations in order to help cover empty pulpits or organs or classrooms. We have especially tried to be of service to new immigrant churches which are trying hard to get established in this new land. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By reaching out in our community and “being church” for those who have no church or who have been forgotten. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By supporting missionaries and churches and evangelists and catechists in Tanzania, Vietnam, Burma (Myanmar), and elsewhere. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By sending mission teams to help do good things all over the world and to be the presence of Christ. Our people have gone all over the world and all over the nation as part of this effort. Whether it’s a youth service trip to Colorado or a three week trip to Africa, it’s the same concept.</span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I think we are called to do more at Zion to show our city that we are, in fact, part of something bigger than ourselves. Can you imagine the witness that churches working and worshipping together would have? I have a dream for Zion, that we would lose our dependence on the weekly offering. That’s why we’ve been making such a push for electronic giving lately. It’s also why we don’t pass the plate at services any more. We want people to give regardless if they can make it to church services or not. Ultimately, this will free us up to truly be a church on the move, and allow us to move out into our community and bless other churches on a Sunday morning by showing up and encouraging them. In other words, we could have our service together with them at their church and they could keep the offering because we wouldn’t need it. We could worship in parks and other public places. Worship would become an outreach. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">All this talking about how we try to live out this value might sound egotistical but it isn’t. The truth is, that for all the support we give to the body, we also receive a tremendous amount of support from the body for our ministry. Here’s what I mean:</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This summer, three different Christian camps worked with us so we could send nearly 50 kids to camp. They shared the financial burden and kingdom work was accomplished.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We have volunteers from many different churches every Wednesday night for our STAR Kids program.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We have volunteers from other churches staffing our clothes closet and helping in our furniture ministry. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We receive regular gifts of money from people in other churches to help support our ministry and outreach.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Art Camp and our soccer team, Zion United, are all helped enormously by volunteers from various other churches. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We just received an invitation from other churches to band together and help a local man who was car jacked and is having a slow recovery and whose family is in desperate need of help. </span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We have been so blessed by the body of Christ in our city. Recently, a church in the suburbs called to ask if they could partner with us in our furniture ministry. They are willing to make this ministry a part of their church as well, helping us with donations and with people and trucks to move things. It’s amazing to see what can happen when we work together. The fun part for me is that I have never met the pastor or any staff members from this church. They simply checked us out on the web, found out that we love Jesus like they do and they offered a union of sorts to help. That’s kingdom of God stuff to be sure. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But everything isn’t always that easy. Another church in town sent a high ranking staff member to tell us that they wouldn’t help us. They even expressed dismay that some of their members were helping us in various ministries as volunteers. They expressed concern that they might lose members to us. This was really hard to hear, as this is a very large and very wealthy church and the people we serve have such incredible need. But they expressed their belief that they couldn’t participate in someone else’s ministry in our city without owning it. The irony is that they can freely participate with churches in other parts of the world but not here. I suppose we’re all called to different ministries, but I’m not sure that nullifies the desire of Jesus that we be one. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I give this example not to shame or embarrass anyone, but rather to show that working together as a body is harder than it seems. For the most part, churches are in competition for members and money and fame. To work together requires a real effort to die to yourself and trust Jesus to keep you in “business.” But I believe that our Founder and Master showed us how to die and that he bids come and follow him. Which, if we’re faithful followers, ultimately leads to the cross. But it’s through that spiritual dying that we are reborn to eternal life and can really be useful to our Master, Christ Jesus. One of the greatest witnesses we can give to the world, which is used to churches being in competition and divided, is to put our self interest aside, overcome our egos, and strive to truly be one body for the sake of our one Lord. </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-28145748108357294792013-06-12T14:54:00.001-07:002013-06-12T14:54:35.628-07:00More Than Just Another Non-Profit<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Some people have approached us about the idea of spinning off some of our more successful ministries as separate 501C3s. They argue that it would be easier for us to raise money for these ministries if they weren’t associated directly with a church. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I understand the point. It’s just that we believe our call to ministry in this city is supposed to be associated with the church. Our church, your church, and all the other churches that make up the Body of Christ in our community. Our ministry, the Spirit has told us, is a witness that gives glory to Jesus Christ. We don’t want to diminish that glory by forming a non-church corporation, even if doing so would make it easier to raise money and our lives that much less complicated.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Personally, I struggle with the idea that any aspect of our ministry is somehow diminished because it is funded by, housed in, or inspired by Zion Lutheran Church. But the conversations keep happening. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The foundational objections to supporting ministries that are identified with individual congregations seem to fall into the following categories:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">1.) “If I’m going to give to a church, I’m going to give to my own church.” Christians don’t want to support a church’s ministry that isn’t their own church. Pick your denomination, Baptist, Catholic, Free, it doesn’t seem to matter. Christians, from what I’m told, don’t want to support the ministry of our congregation because we don’t belong to their particular denomination or congregation. Really? Seriously? I makes me sad. Are we really that competitive? Do Christians subscribe to a some zero-sum idea about ministry and money that says, “If you have a successful ministry, it must somehow diminish the ministry of my group”? Or, worse, “If I give to the good you’re doing, it means I have less to give to the good my own church is doing.” Ouch! Does our Lord not have cattle on a thousand hills and are we not One Body? Apparently not. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There must be other reasons, too. Perhaps other theological traditions think we’re not really Christians because we bear the name Lutheran. Ouch! But that has historically been the case. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I think that other churches worry that if they support ministry in other churches, somehow they might loose people to those churches. At Zion we have a lot of volunteers who come from other churches. They help us, some of them decide to worship with us regularly, but not many. In fact, very, very few. We are a peculiar church. But it makes me sad that we can’t work together because of fear. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There is a great deal of irony in this situation. As congregations we’re happy to partner with congregations on the other side of the globe but we’re hesitant to do so on the other side of town. This is a bizarre and inconsistent behavior. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So I ask myself the question: what ministries through other churches do we support? The answer turns out to be very, very few. So perhaps before I critique others, I better get my house in order. We need to find a way to support others in what they’re doing. We need to find a way to bless what God is doing in other congregations. We have very few ideas about how to do this, but it will take some doing to implement them. Why? Because we’re guilty of the same mindset as everybody else. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">2.) “I can’t give to the good ministry your church is doing because you might ask them to become Christians.” This excuse isn’t limited to just non-believers. Even some Christians are nervous about the idea of sharing the faith. We are not shy to present the gospel to people we serve when we believe the Holy Spirit presents the opportunity. We are not ashamed of the gospel.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our primary mission is that we serve people who can’t serve us back and thereby serve our Master, Jesus Christ. We serve to honor him first and foremost. If people want to become his followers because of that service, that’s an act of God and His work through His Holy Spirit. We don’t do what we do for people so that we can grow our church. That would mean we were serving people who could give us something, their membership, in return. We serve according to the paradigm of Luke 14: when you give a banquet, don’t invite your friends and rich neighbors because they can pay you back. Rather, invite the poor, the lame, the blind, the widows, the orphans, the forgotten. Those who cannot pay you back.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The irony with this excuse is extreme. Consider this: You support the good we are doing, which we are doing because we are Christians. But you don’t want to make any more Christians who might, in turn, help us do even more good things? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It reminds me of a family that left our church more than a year ago. They left because they wanted a church that was less structured around service and more structured around youth. So I simply asked, “You plan to leave this church, which you admit is doing beautiful things for Jesus, in order to go to a church which will focus more on your child in the hopes that he will grow up to be the kind of man who does the things we’re doing here?” Yes. I got it right. Amazing. Why wouldn’t you want to support an organization that does good things and has the potential to teach more people to do good things? Ultimately, wouldn’t the world be a better place? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, I’m still trying to figure out how people think we must present the gospel. “Convert or die?” Simply at a loss as to why you wouldn’t want to create more followers of a global movement that has self sacrifice and service and love and justice and charity at it’s core. We must really have a bad reputation out there.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">3.) “I am willing to support any ministry you do, but I will not support the church itself or help to pay it’s bills.” We call this, “designated giving.” I think I understand the point here. It must be that people separate what we do for others, the service part, from what we do for ourselves, which must be the worship part. I suppose people think that church services are for insiders. But not in this church. The church service itself is supposed to be a service of proclamation. The gospel is supposed to be presented. This is the place you invite your unchurched, de-churched, unbelieving friends to come and hear the Good News. Worship is also mission. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The whole point of the gospel is that those who were outsiders are now insiders with God through Jesus Christ. Sunday School is a mission field. It’s where you bring all the kids in your neighborhood on Sunday morning who aren’t going someplace else. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I know that some folks believe it is more righteous to buy us the text books we need to teach English than to give money to “the church.” But where are the English classes held? In the church. Who organizes the volunteers who teach and help and work and serve? Church staff. I’m not sure you can separate what is “church” from what is “ministry.” Especially in our case, where the building is leveraged for mission as much as humanly possible. There isn’t much idle time here, we’re truly a community church. And we don’t charge for that normally. So if people want us to be able to do the things we’re doing, they need to support “the church,” because “the church” is essential to what’s happening. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I suppose there is no glamour in paying the mortgage. But there is glamour in supporting the program that get’s people jobs. But without the building, that program has nowhere to meet, no a/c or heat, no electric lights, no bathrooms, no kitchen for coffee, no internet access, no computers for applying for work. Supporting the church for the sake of the work of the church isn’t glamorous, but it’s essential.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We could not do any of the mission we do without our staff, building, etc. Our church has become a home for many people. A place to sit and have dinner, to worship, to fellowship, to work and to play. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Recently, we spent three weeks as a church studying about giving. The main point was simply this: The New Testament is emphatic that “the church” is the body of Christ. When you persecute “the church” you are persecuting Jesus Himself. When you bless “the church” you are blessing Jesus himself. Giving shouldn’t be about what makes you feel good or about what’s hip or glamorous. Giving should be about you giving abundantly and blissfully to the person of Jesus Himself. I’ve come to the conclusion that if we can’t do that, we probably shouldn’t give at all.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One final thought: people love to see fruit on the trees of the church. They love to see success. I’ve seen people only want to give to that success. But this is the funny thing about fruit: it doesn’t just appear. It has to grow. If a nice big juicy fruit is what success is, let’s not forget that it begins with fertilizing the tree, watering the tree, pruning the tree, etc. All these tedious things the gardeners have to do if we expect to see fruit. When you give only to the fruit, you forget what it really takes to have fruit, gardeners, trees, orchards, etc. It’s all part of the big picture that gives the fruit. So we need to give to the “whole” process. Not just to the end. Or there will be no fruit. And, let’s not forget that even with all the giving in the world, there is no fruit and no tree without the God who created seeds, sunshine, water, and all the other things that make the fruit grow.</span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-42422172684808721682013-05-10T06:49:00.000-07:002013-05-10T06:49:25.443-07:00Five Years Hence: A guess about what we'll look like at Zion five years from now<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>INTRODUCTION: </b>This is a simple attempt to paint a picture of where I think we’ll be as a church in five years. God is in absolute control of everything and so this painting may look nothing at all like what our reality will be. I felt moved to write it because without vision, we die. What I’ve tried to do is simply take what we’re already doing and just draw out where that takes us in five years. I offer this as a way of showing the church where I think all the wonderful things that God is doing here are going and where I think we’re heading. It is offered to His glory. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">STAR Kids</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">STAR Kids has been the driving force behind much of our mission activity as a church. It is because of STAR Kids that we have a clothes closet, a furniture ministry, a relationship with the local schools, distribute food to 100 families a month and do many other things. We are now beginning to experience the graduations of our first STAR kids. There is a lot of celebrating. Those who understand the intent of STAR kids and the amazing opportunities we’ve been given as a church to minister to these kids are profoundly moved. These graduating kids make it clear to the entire church that together, we did something beautiful for Jesus. Together we were able to keep kids away from drugs, gangs, and what is more, to help them have a future and a hope. These first ones to graduate are the most difficult cases because they came to America as older kids and have been struggling to catch up with reading and English ever since. We have done everything we can think of to love them, help them, and give them a reason to hope and keep going. As they prepare to move to vocational school or college or into the workforce, we see why the decisions we’ve made have been the right ones and why, for the sake of the these kids, we inconvenienced ourselves and asked the entire congregation to die to itself. Seeing these kids graduate and become productive members of society and good neighbors goes a long way in healing any wounds we’ve suffered along the way. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Volunteers still come from all over the city to help us support, teach, advocate and reach the kids. This strong presence of people from all over the city makes Zion feels more and more like the community church we are trying to be. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We are just starting to intentionally help other churches in the city begin STAR Kids programs. We could do more if we had more staff, but we do what we can and offer our experiences as a testimony to what God can do. The most difficult concept for the churches who want to do what we’re doing to grasp is grace. It is so hard for people to love unconditionally without trying to control everything. We are seen as an innovative leader among churches and a place that is unafraid to take risks and even fail.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This strong, community focused ministry leads us into amazing partnerships with various organizations and agencies. Just as in the past God led us into partnerships with Hidden Hills Ranch, Meals from the Heartland and others, He continues to bring new relationships to us. Because our Master taught us how to die to ourselves and because we don’t need to take credit for everything, Zion continues to influence policies and procedures affecting our kids and their families. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Because of the intentional discipleship program we put in place as a part of STAR Kids, there are regular baptisms as a part of our time together. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Five years hence, a lot of the perceived differences between regular WOW programming and STARS kids has been overcome. God has provided us with the people and vision to move many of the STARS kids into WOW and they love it. WOW attendance is now 300 and many details have had to change. We’ve revamped the entire WOW program and have an intentional discipleship plan in place for every age group. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The youth classes and groups are among the most popular activities on Wednesday nights. Young people are trained to be Christian leaders in a multi-ethnic context and do fascinating and engaging service projects together. Youth are being developed to be leaders and our special relationship with the Bible camps is making it possible for many of our best students to be counselors. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In five years, Wednesday night meals are still going strong. Nearly 100% of our funding for this venture comes from outside of the church. Two additional dining rooms have been opened and we are regularly feeding 500-600 meals. In addition, two other preparation teams have been deployed. Having three teams to prepare meals makes everything easier for everyone and has freed up Dave Schaeffer to focus his culinary skills on other events. The new preparation teams are also ethnically diverse and offer a wide ranging variety of menus. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Yes, in five years we’ve added “another Wednesday night.” While smaller in attendance, kids from all over come for homework help, activities, food and teaching about Jesus. Thursday night feels just like summer camp. Sports are a major emphasis and our new part time youth ministry intern has his hands full running Thursday night programming.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">Every Kid has an advocate and a life plan</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In one of the most innovative and thoughtful plans unveiled at Zion, we have mobilized the congregation to provide every child who comes through our doors on any day of the week to be connected to an advocate - an adult who is in their corner and meets regularly with them to develop and implement a life plan. The program begins around sixth grade and continues through high school. The kids are encouraged to consider who they are, what they were made to do, and how to go about doing it. Prayer is a major part of the program and every child in the program is prayed for every day by someone.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We’ve come to the understanding together that telling children they “can do anything” isn’t productive. But understanding who they are and who God made them to be and helping them become that person is very helpful. As each child begins to understand the course of his or her life, mentors, internships and experiences are brought to bear on their life so that they will be supported and prepared for the future.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sunday School looks more and more like Wednesday nights - big, fun and joyous. We struggle to find room for the openings and the small group times. Vans go out into the neighborhoods and bring in kids. Way more van trips than ever before. This integration causes us to grow in new ways intellectually and spiritually, forcing us to think more and more out of the box and to exemplify more of the fruit of the Spirit, especially, love, peace, joy, patience and self control. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We now have a summer session of Sunday School as well. We learned that not all the kids we minister to go away for the summer. So we were blessed with a group of people who agreed to form a JV team to make sure Sunday School kept on through out the year. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Mizo speaking pastor has arrived! Pastor Ringa’s coming in the spring on 2014 has really helped us overcome much of what divides us from the Mizo. Pastor Ringa regularly preaches at the other services and music groups journey back and forth between the various services. While we continue to have a Mizo language service and Sunday School, more and more we’re seeing participation from this group in the English language Sunday School and the “late service.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Pastor Ringa’s presence has allowed us to go to family camp together as a church with our Mizo families and we have also grown in working together and completing mission projects together. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Zion began contributing to missionaries the 1:00 service already supports back home in Burma. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A new Karenni micro church has started at Zion. It is made up of the families of the kids who regularly come to Sunday School and their parents who have been attending ESL classes regularly at Zion. Working with Pastor Ringa and internet resources, we do our best to meet the spiritual needs of this growing group within the congregation.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We continue to host Iraqi community events and welcome this group to our community. Thanks to Majed Bahidh joining our staff, we are sometimes known as the “Iraqi Church.” Some Iraqi families have converted and now follow Jesus. But because these conversions have taken place in an attitude of absolute humility and grace, the Iraqi community continues to look to us to help them and they continue to feel quite at home in our building. Arabic language adult Bible Study is a Sunday morning favorite. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s taken a long time and we’ve moved slowly, but Gakunzi’s group is now incorporated into greater Zion. Gakunzi has joined our staff and ministers to the congregation as a whole. Boaz is an integral part of our worship team. There is a Swahili language service each Sunday and we continue to seek ways to integrate 45 new children into Sunday School. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">John Dovinh’s arrival at Zion five years ago and the subsequent beginning of the Lutheran Asian Mission Society really tied together a number of things for people at Zion. People were stirred up for mission by this dear, grandfatherly man with a passion for Jesus and evangelism. They also began to see how strange and wonderful the world is. They began to appreciate more and more the plight of their persecuted brothers and sisters around the world and saw how they themselves could help to establish churches in a far away land. They also began to understand how “micro-polity” is a global phenomenon: that there could be Vietnamese speaking people who needed to be evangelized in Khmer speaking Cambodia was a real eye opener and helped us all understand the plight of other ethnic and language minorities in our own neighborhood. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">The New Picture Directory that Changed Everything</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After Pastor Ringa arrived and got settled, we were able to finally get all the information from all the families at church and pictures as well. The new picture directory shows the world what we have become - people who are red, yellow, black and white, young and old. We are a beautiful mosaic for Jesus. The publication of this directory has an incredibly powerful effect on the entire membership and helps to create a new feeling of unity and excitement. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">Preaching</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To keep pace with the sense of “fusion” we have at Zion where it seems everything is being mixed together all the time, preaching styles have changed a bit too. While we still have a traditional sermon or message many weeks, more frequently gospel messages may be delivered in the context of a team of preachers, taking into account each one’s own identity as a particular generation or ethnicity or gender. Sermons are thus more challenging, more interactive, and really seem to be hitting home. There are also weeks where members of our community might be interviewed about how they are living out their faith and some weekends when the message might rely heavily on videos. The most important thing for us is to get the point (the Word) across. Some weeks there are segments of the service geared to keep the congregation current with things happening in the city or the world that concern Christ and his church. Segments such as, “What in the World is God Up to?”, “Bullfighting,” and “Global Church Report.” We are also certain to include at least two Sundays a year where the message is very specific to who we are and where we are in the vision God has given us. These sermons are followed by Q and A sessions to be sure that everyone has the opportunity to get the information they want. The one thing you can count on is that you won’t be bored. We try and make our members the most globally aware and locally active church members in town. We also try to instill in our attenders something we call a “biblical imagination.” In other words, we try to help them see Jesus and his teachings in the things that are going on in their world and in their own lives and relationships. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">A path of intentional discipleship for the whole church</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We don’t want to formalize or programmatize the Gospel. We do believe that there are certain things every follower of Jesus should know and understand. We want to make certain that those things are being taught in an age appropriate way to all age levels within the church. The list is still being developed and implementation will be a huge undertaking. But they are essential, we believe, to understanding the nature of God’s kingdom. We want everyone at Zion to have a knowledge of Scripture and we want to teach it to them with a focused approach. We believe that the job of the spiritual leadership of Zion is to present everyone at Zion as fully mature in Christ by proclaiming, admonishing and teaching all wisdom about Jesus. (Col 1:28). </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">We’re mastering videos</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Better late than never, we’re figuring out how to effectively use videos in church. We have interested volunteers who don’t mind coming early and staying late. They don’t mind spending hours in production to get just the right effect. So, at many services the announcements are done by video. We’re also able to show video highlights of things that happened in the life of Zion that week. Videos now enhance the Zion website. Videos also aid us in our fundraising, making it easy to show what kinds of ministry we do and to what effect. And, Pastor John finally has a video blog. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">Evangelism and Outreaches</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We’re really well known for our outreaches. Once people see our “beautiful garden” of unity, they want to know how it came to be. Then they want to know how to do a Luke 14 outreach. We keep doing them. Every year we pick a new complex to add to our list. We’ve got the method down so well that we can do two on the same day. It helps to have some trailers and pre-packed equipment at the ready. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In our neighborhood we’ve put together some materials and a small campaign called, <b><i>“We want to be your church”</i></b> where we invite the community to utilize our facilities and services. People are encouraged to have their gatherings, funerals, weddings, family events at Zion. A crew of building hosts and hostesses make this possible.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The wifi works everywhere in the building and the various networks are secure. It didn’t take much money, just a consult with an expert and now we have a solid connection everywhere in the building and our ability to share information just got so much easier. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The basement is finally finished. We bit the bullet and did a fund raiser and finished off the flooring, got the classrooms equipped and the coffee station put in. Mission accomplished! It only took 15 years to get it done! </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The “younging” of the congregation highlights the need for a new playground. WEE preschool needs a separate play area for kids under 5. Through an outreach to the entire community, we are able to raise $100,000 for two new playgrounds, one for 2-5 year olds, one large one for 5-12 year olds. Between the two play areas is a basketball court which serves as a driveway for a new barn near the bell tower which houses the 3 Zion vans with their new, very distinctive logos, lawn care equipment, our furniture ministry, and clothes closet storage and sorting and industrial driers. The barn also has plenty of room for sports equipment for WEE and Zion. In the winter, you can pull the vans out into the parking lot and play basketball inside. Many seasonal items now stored in the church building can be moved out to the barn.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The necessity of building the barn and new playground area forced us to develop a “campus plan” for the rest of the property. We now understand how our future ministry will impact our property. We know where we can build and how much we can build, we see how it relates to the gardens and our future parking needs.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The number of kids and activities we have pushes us to be in internal conversations about how much we really need a gym. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As we gain confidence in our ability as a church to succeed by the grace of God, we begin to explore ways to save money. Thermal energy seemed the right way to go and we’ll shortly begin a campaign to raise money to install a thermal system in the front yard. The expected savings are staggering. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">People want to intern at Zion. Because of the uniqueness of our ministry and because we’re way out in front of most churches in turning toward intentional integration and mission, we have a good crop of available interns to help us with different projects. The benefit to us is amazing and helps us keep our staffing levels down. The benefit to the interns is equally as amazing and helps to build up the kingdom of God. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Zion is known throughout the community for it’s seminars and classes. We feature an amazing line up of speakers and teachers and people want to come and be taught. We have very basic seminars to help teach the community how to parent, be married, and take care of the many responsibilities of life. We have Bible classes that are challenging and life changing. We offer a variety of seminars and classes in various languages as well. The arrival of Dr. Richard Newkirk some years ago helped us focus on meeting the needs of the church and community by bringing great classes on parenting and marriage and other important skills. He is helping us think through a strategy of what the neighborhood really needs. His ability to counsel also helped us really strengthen marriages within our church and community.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Prayer groups continue to sprout up everywhere. Prayer is one of the things we do best. After years of struggling with how to have a prayer ministry, the answer we’ve been given is that every person at Zion is to be a prayer warrior and is to pray at all times and in all places. Our first response as a congregation to any task or opportunity is to pray. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We have a very close relationship with our sister congregation, Redeemer, on University Avenue. Redeemer became the first church to ask us to import our unique ministry philosophy to their location. We have been helping fill their pulpit and provide them with other help on a regular basis. We’ve now taken the bold step of sending them pastoral leadership and a bunch of people to help them restart their ministry with better demographics. Redeemer is now beginning to thrive and is our close partner in ministry. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">A strong emphasis on Bible Camps</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As a church we’ve learned that some of the best times are had at camp together. The kids regularly head off to camp each summer and we are now chartering buses to bring Zion kids to Riverside and Okoboji. Likewise, families from many different ethnicities are encouraged to attend Zion weeks at the camps. Such weeks are always led by a Zion pastor who facilitates the fellowship and mixing of the groups together. In such a way, we’ve built community within the church offsite at camp and it has become the backbone of our new, integrated church. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Realizing that the world is an increasingly unsafe place for children and that the “traditional family” is hard pressed, a beautiful ministry develops at Zion to support and encourage adoption and foster parenting. Many couples come to together to support each other in making a decision to foster or adopt and those couples encourage others to live out their faith by considering to foster or adopt. Some churches have building drives, Zion is known for having adoption drives, and raising tens of thousands every year to help couples adopt locally and internationally. As a church we understand that God values life and so should we, and that there are many, many children waiting for a home in which they can grow up loved and cherished. We also understand that adoption and fostering are beautiful acts of love to Jesus, who loved the little children and it is also a beautiful act of evangelism and faith sharing as a child is received into a home where Jesus is Lord. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a.) We marked the 15th year of our sister church relationship with the Mhezi Lutheran Parish in Tanzania by sponsoring a delegation from Mhezi to come to Zion. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">b.) This year marked Zion’s first mission trip to Burma. Led by eight Mizo members, another 10 Zion members made the trek to Burma and the Chin Hills to minister to people there.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">c.) Plans are under way for the first mission trip to Iraq. It will be an interesting trip. But the plan is to help various groups who are not receiving any help from anyone else. We plan on going as soon as a few more security questions are answered. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">d.) Thanks to John Dovinh’s presence in Cambodia, we are able to send a yearly mission trip there as well. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">e.) Shorter, cheaper trips have taken over the longer, larger trips as families in the church struggle with finances and time. </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-55841490662507687162013-03-22T09:38:00.003-07:002013-03-22T09:38:43.908-07:00Clerical Collar: Zion and the FBI<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I’ve started a list of things that I never thought I’d see or do as a pastor.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Having the FBI come and visit is definitely on the list.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Last week I was working in my office and a young man came and stood in the door and asked to see Pastor Kline. Since most of my flock call me Pastor John, I figured he was a salesman. (Believe it or not, pastors get a lot of sales calls. It drives us crazy and it’s so disruptive). He asked if he could see me and I was a bit short with him, telling him I only had a few minutes. He introduced himself and gave me his card. He’s from the FBI. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I offered him coffee. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He asked me if I’d spit in it. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That struck me as odd. Obviously he was joking. But only sort of. As he talked about why he was here, his initial defensiveness became understandable. He was here because as he reached out to people who work with immigrants and refugees, Zion kept coming up. Everywhere. So he wanted to offer the FBI’s help with any civil right’s issues we might encounter. Then I understood why he was defensive. There’s a lot of tension around immigration issues in our country. I think he thought that our level of involvement with immigrants might mean that we were radicalized politically. Such a place would not be pleased to have the Feds around. I explained we were just serving Jesus, our Master, who was a refugee himself. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then he asked what we did to help refugees. I told him. He asked to come back with his boss. I assured him that the FBI was welcome. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This week the man returned with his boss. I was struck again by what I felt was a defensiveness from my guests. Turns out, a lot of people, apparently, refer to these civil servants as “Jack Booted Thugs.” I asked if the FBI would come and speak to the various immigrant communities we work with at Zion. Yes, they would. But... We had to be polite. They were pretty clear that while the FBI respected everybody, they also expected to be respected. Oh. Well, of course. We’re a church. We love everybody. I guess that some of these meetings get out of hand. Sad. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, we’re setting up an opportunity for the FBI to meet the community. They will talk about civil rights, hate crimes and terrorism. Sounds like a fine agenda. So far, the community is responding very positively. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What I’m hoping for is that God will use this coming together to build our community stronger and healthier. It’s my prayer that this meeting will lead to peace and love and joy further breaking out in our city. The various communities will hear how the FBI is here to serve them and the FBI will hear the fears and concerns and questions of the community. And I’ll be in the back row, praying. Praying that our city will be a bright light, a shining city on a hill. I’d ask you to join me in this prayer.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The words of an Iraqi diplomat who visited our church last month still ring in my ears. “If a church had reached out to our community in Detroit like yours has here, things would be so much better for us than they are today.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We’re called to be salt and light. We’re called to be reconcilers. Pray we stay the course and this newest opportunity to serve brings glory to God and peace to our city. Thanks for reading. God bless. PJ </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-65766761302072377922013-02-25T15:13:00.001-08:002013-02-25T15:13:11.660-08:00Reflections from Pastor John<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Reflections from Pastor John</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Not preaching this weekend gave me a great opportunity to wander around Zion and observe what’s going on. I have to tell you that I am so thankful to God for Zion Church and for those who choose to be a part of this ministry. I’ve only been a pastor at Zion for seven years but I’m continually amazed by our ability to manage change and adapt. In those seven years, for instance, we’ve implemented a new leadership structure which is radically different from what we had before; we’ve hired a pastor from a different denomination; joined a new denomination; left a previous denomination; welcomed many new members, many of whom speak a different language; we’ve seen some long time members say “goodbye” and go to support other churches; we’ve launched a plethora of new ministries and been positioned by God to serve our community in a very unique way. And I could go on and on. I can’t think of a single area of our church that hasn’t been affected by major changes in the last seven years.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, wandering around the church this weekend gave me an opportunity to reflect and I want to share some of those reflections with you:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Hurray for Sunday School! </b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’m so proud of our Sunday School and the great work that Denise Nahnsen and her team are doing. It was really a balm to my soul to see all the little kids singing and jumping and praising the Lord. My word, there are a lot of young kids at Zion! There were way more kids than I ever imagined in Sunday School. And then to wander down the halls and look in the classrooms of the older kids - again, wow. So pleased to see so many junior and senior high school students with open Bibles. I’m especially proud of the racial integration we’ve witnessed in the last couple of years. Changing dynamics significantly can lead to trouble and I’m so proud of how Zion has pulled together to welcome new faces. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This year, I believe, is also going to be the year that Sunday School goes year ‘round. Last year we experimented with Karenni Sunday School and it worked. This year, I really believe that we’ll be able to offer English language Sunday School for everyone. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am by this prospect. It seems odd to me that in the past we’ve just “stopped” our programming for kids in the summer except for Bible School and Art Camp. I think we thought that our volunteers needed a break, and perhaps they do, but others need to step up and help out. Our kids need Jesus year ‘round, not just in the school year. I’m pleased that so far, everyone I’ve talked to about helping out has agreed to help. It will be a big effort, but I think it will yield amazing fruit. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>What language do you speak at home?</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our new data base, which we’re still learning to use, coupled with our growth in numbers lately and especially our numerical growth in people whose first language is not English, has left us scrambling to produce meaningful statistics. But just in conversations during the 10:30 service I can share this with you: we are a church that prays in 9 different languages. Those languages are: English, Mizo, Arabic, Karenni, Nuer, Vietnamese, Kunama, Bandi and Grebo. Some of the language groups are quite small, perhaps one family. Others are quite large, the Mizo, for instance, number close to 300. Arabic speakers are growing in number, too. We are now past 20 Arabic speakers who consider Zion to be their church. I have to tell you that I’m really blown away by this. Why? Because, except for Arabic and Mizo, there are other immigrant churches in our city that worship in some of these languages. Yet the families continue to regularly attend Zion and give and when I ask them, “What brought you to Zion?,” they continue to answer, “Because God said to come here.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">مرحبا بكم في كنيسة صهيون</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This means, “Welcome to Zion Church” in Arabic. I’m very excited about the growing number of Arabic speakers coming to our church. At a recent home visit with one of the families, an emphatic family patriarch grabbed my arm and said, “Zion is our Church, we belong to you!” These are Christians who have endured terrible persecution since the war in Iraq. They’ve lost their homes, businesses, and extended families. Many of them do not have an evangelical understanding of our faith. We’ve been trying to meet the needs of this community for the last two years. Now God has brought us a wonderful man named </span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Majed Bahidh and his family to help us. Majed and his wife, Abeer, and their three children arrived in Ames in September. We’ve been trying since January to get them to come to Zion and we’ve finally worked out the transportation issues and the weather has, at last, cooperated! They are a family that is ready to serve the Lord at Zion by ministering to our Iraqi Christians and Muslims as well. The entire circumstances of their coming to Zion brings tears to my eyes. Majed and Abeer have been Christians since 2004. Majed has served as a lay pastor in both Iraq and Syria. We welcome him with open arms and he has graciously agreed to take over our Arabic language Sunday School class and to work tirelessly in the community that Zion has been reaching out to for the last two years. Thank you, Jesus! Majed gave his testimony recently at the 10:30 service and I’m sure that the other services will hear it soon.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’m so proud to say that, as of today, we’ve been able to acquire another church van. It’s a Chevy, 2007, and runs great. We thank all our contributors for this special project, especially 100 Men in Mission and Stew Hanson Dealerships for their help in securing this new ride. I expect it to be in service in time for Sunday’s Sunday School run. We now have the ability to transport even more people to worship and education at Zion. Now we just need more drivers! Talk to me if you’re ready to volunteer! We have a beautiful problem: more people want to attend Zion on a Sunday than we can bring. I’m so thankful to God for this and grateful to the congregation for making people feel welcome. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Mizo members at Zion are a part of the Chin people from Burma. They come from Chin State in Myanmar. Sunday I attended the 65th Annual Chin National Day Celebration, which was the third for Des Moines and I’m proud to say that Zion was represented at all three. It was a celebration of song and dance and fashion and food. A hearty congratulations to our Mizo dance team that performed three of four traditional dances in a “non-stop” format that wove music and dance together seamlessly. The dance was a big hit with the packed house and I have to say it was, in my opinion, the best performance of the afternoon. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>The power of partnerships</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’m thankful to belong to a church that realizes it is a part of something greater than itself, that is, specifically, the body of Christ. I’m grateful to the many partnerships we’ve enjoyed throughout these last years. Freedom for Youth gave us our start in Whiz Kidz which this year became our very own STAR Kids program. I’m thankful for the support of Meredith Drive Reformed Church which continues to loan us their van for taking kids to and from school and on field trips. I’m thankful for our partnerships with others who are trying to serve the least of these with us. I’m thankful for Stew Hanson Dealerships and their support of our new van and STAR Kids. I’m grateful also to EMBARC, Ethnic Minorities of Burma Advocacy and Resource Center, for partnering with us on numerous projects, most recently, summer programming for the kids and summer camps as well. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We live in a world of constant and unavoidable change. But I’m so grateful that Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow. Thank you for your partnership with us at Zion Church in the Gospel. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thanks for reading. God bless. PJ </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-30890203586685169502013-02-11T14:59:00.002-08:002013-02-11T14:59:13.722-08:00Sunday We Crossed A Line<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sunday, February 10, is a day that will stick out in my mind for the rest of my life. I think it’s a date that I’ll remember as having cemented a change in who we are as a congregation. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sunday, February 10, is the day we crossed the line.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What line? The line between talking about being a multi-ethnic congregation to showing the world that we actually are a multi-ethnic congregation.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sure, we’ve worshipped with Kakunzi’s group before and prayed and worshipped in Swahili and English. But this time, this particular Sunday, it was different. A beautiful little girl named Jordyn Rose was baptized. She was prayed for in English by me, in Swahili by Kakunzi, in Nuer by Jordan Long, and in Arabic by Majid. Not only were the languages the pastors prayed in diverse, but so was the theological background of the pastors. There were traditional Lutherans and low church Lutherans and Anglicans and Pentecostals. It was amazing. It was symbolic of the many becoming one people in Christ. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We worshipped in English and Swahili. That was also amazing. Especially when you looked around the room and realized that this isn’t just a cross cultural experience for the white participants, but also for the Sudanese and Iraqi and Vietnamese participants as well. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We then had a presentation by Pastor Jordan Long, president of the Lutheran Church of South Sudan, about ministry in that new nation. It helped to remind us that we followers of Jesus are everywhere and find ourselves in a variety of situations. And it helped us to remember that we are a part of a kingdom that is greater than any other here on earth. We are part of the kingdom of God which knows no boundaries. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The message that day was from Matthew 14, about Jesus walking on the water and Peter wanting Jesus to call him to come out and walk on the waves with him. Each day at Zion we endeavor to get out of the boat and walk on the waves with our Savior. We believe that he has called us out of the boat and to come to him and be a church where many nations are reconciled and welcomed, and where all the children grow up in Christ to understand that the Church is the place where the many become one people, united in him who is the head. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’m so excited to continue along this path of becoming a congregation that worships the Lord in a diversity of languages and music and styles. I’m so excited that one day, when this fully becomes a part of who we are as a congregation, that people from within and outside the church, might experience something of what heaven must be like as we worship the Lamb as people from every race and tribe and tongue and nation. </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-25039064449008336852013-01-06T12:21:00.000-08:002013-01-06T12:21:00.715-08:00South Sudan, Same Sex and the Future of the Church<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">South Sudan, Same Sex and the Future of the Church</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">On June 3, we had a special guest at Zion. He is the Rev. Jordan Long, president of the Lutheran Church of south Sudan. he was in the U.S. for three months to consider an affiliation with our association, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, and to raise funds for the work of building churches and leaders in South Sudan.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">South Sudan is the world’s newest country. The Lutheran Church of South Sudan may be the world’s newest church. It has about 5,000 members, about 32 congregations, 18 pastors and 32 evangelists. And one president. Pastor Long came to the U.S. about 20 years ago as a refugee. He eventually finished college and seminary and became pastor of a special outreach to African immigrants called the Nile Lutheran Mission. In August of 2009, when the ELCA, of which Pastor Long was a part, approved same sex marriage and the ordination of practicing gay and lesbian clergy, Pastor Long and his congregation exited the ELCA. Along with us. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Pastor Long wept over the ELCA’s decision. So did we. Feeling a call to mission, he returned to Sudan and began preaching. His family history is an interesting one. He grew up in a Christian family. The only Christian family in their village. His mother started a church. It quickly grew to over 100 people. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Eventually, there was a refurendom on independence. Pastor Long joined the happy throngs welcoming a new and independant South Sudan. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">It was an interesting visit. We opened it up for questions after the sermon and at the 8:00 a.m. service we nearly used up all our time with questions and answers and had to go into “extra innings” for communion. At the 9:30 service people lined up to ask him questions. I’m not sure what happened at 10:30 because I wasn’t able to be there. Even people who couldn’t understand him thought he was brilliant and wanted to support his work. We had the second largest exit offering we’ve ever had. Nearly $1500 went to aid the church in South Sudan. And Pastor Long never asked for dime.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I had several observations about the visit and Pastor Long’s testimony which I’ll share with you now.</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I think Pastor Long exemplifies what God is doing in the Church and among the Church’s leaders today. Here is a man who knew terrible suffering. Who had to flee his home country and suffer terrible things in order to survive. A man who lived for years in a refugee camp, surrounded by barbed wire, with barely enough food to live. Here is a man who was given a new life in the U.S. and who willingly, gave it all up and went back in order to serve those who need the gospel of Christ. I’m awed by what Pastor Long has given up: retirement accounts, a regular pay check, internet access, reliable transportation, air conditioning, running water. Yet I see the Lord calling his servants to abandon their former ways of life, their creature comforts and most of all, their certainty, and follow him into ventures unknown. And I see leaders following Pastor Long’s example and I see God providing. I see God doing amazing and wonderful things through them and producing much fruit. It’s like we’ve been called to go back to New Testament times. Like Jesus has called us to “go,” and not take an extra tunic or walking stick or wallet or extra sandals. Instead, as leaders, we are to rely more and more upon him and him only. And he is glorified in the “sacrifice.” We are learning this way to be a church in mission. His mission. And he will take care of his own. Not with worldly comforts, but with fruits of repentance and salvation. I’m awed and amazed. I have to admit, I see lesser but no less keen suffering in most of my colleagues. I begin to wonder if you’re not suffering now as a servant of Christ, are you really doing his work?</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Pastor Long talked about the relationships that other African churches have with the ELCA. One thing that has always worked in the ELCA’s favor was that it had money to give away. This led other Lutheran churches throughout the world to affiliate with them. One of the biggest affiliations with with the EECMY, the Evangelical Ethiopian Church Mekene Yesus, a celebrated church in Africa which does amazing mission work and which is now training the evangelists and pastors of the Lutheran Church of South Sudan. Pastor Long says that they are reconsidering their association with the ELCA over the same sex marriage and clergy issue. If the EECMY un-affiliates from the ELCA, I expect the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania will do the same. Money, for the churches of the developing world, is no longer as important as sound, biblical doctrine. This means that the churches of the Third World may well be last defense of historic, apostolic Christianity. You see this not only in the Lutheran Church but also in the Anglican Communion, where African and Asian Churches are in open opposition to the Church in the West. We may very well be on the verge of another historic split: Not East and West, like in .... But this time, North and South, which we can also call developed versus developing. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Which leads me very nicely to my third point. Churches like Zion, which hold to historic, apostolic Christianity despite enormous societal pressure to amend our faith, may begin to look more toward Africa for fellowship and theological grounding than Europe. For the entire history of the U.S., we have looked for theological grounding to Europe, especially Germany and Scotland. I do not think it unlikely, nor does Pastor Long, that soon, American Lutheran pastors who love the Bible and who are missional in their theology will attend schools and conferences in places like Addis Abba, Ethiopia, Dodoma or Arusha, Tanzania and perhaps even Juba, South Sudan. Next month, Pastor Gakunzi will leave for a month in Burundi and Rwanda for a theologocial conference. Why? Because who can trust what the American Church is teaching. And I agree. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I know that some of my dear readers will consider this the rantings of a crazy man. But remember, I’ve lived and worked in Europe. I know what’s happening in the great and historic centers of Christianity. And it isn’t good for mission. And what is the Christian Church without mission? What good is a church that doesn’t do what Jesus tells it to do? Frankly, if I had the money, I’d ask that Zion pay for an evangelist from the EECMY to come here to Des Moines, Iowa. Why? Because as a Church in North America, so many of us don’t know how to make converts, let along disciples. And they do. And, don’t forget, that because of globalization, we have a growing population of Eritrean (formerly Ethiopian) people. And Sudanese. Even at Zion we have members from Sudan and Liberia. Soon to be Eritrea and Iraq. Why? Because we preach the historic Christian faith and because we’re ready to receive them. It’s so very odd, I admit, to consider that our future might be South and East instead of North and West. But there you have it.</span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Please pray for our ministry at Zion. Please pray that we might be faithful. The times are confusing and may not look much like the past at all. Please pray that we might follow Jesus into the glorious future he has prepare for us. God bless you.</span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-3579312990243082662012-12-30T12:23:00.003-08:002012-12-30T12:23:59.081-08:00Looking Back, Looking Forward<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Looking Back, Looking Forward</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Two teachings of Jesus that are extremely relevant to the Church today:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Mt 5:43-48</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Luke 14:12-14</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">12 Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Are we to destroy our enemies? No. Rather we are to love them. It is counter cultural and counter intuitive. This is part of Jesus’ Kingdom Jujitsu, you keep evil off balance by not “resisting” but by loving. The answer to violence isn’t violence, it’s love. The answer to hate isn’t more hate, it’s love. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When you’re persecuted or beat up - pray. When they strike you on one cheek, offer them the other. When they rob you for your coat, give them your shirt as well. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Jesus’ instruction to love our enemies isn’t abstract, it is concrete. For Jesus love isn’t ever abstract. We might think that loving our enemies can be done in the abstract. “Let’s think nice thoughts about them.” But it can’t. Jesus’ kind of love is physical and concrete and requires us to actually touch our enemies. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">John 13: On the night he was betrayed, Jesus washed Judas’s feet, knowing full well what was to happen. But he did it anyway and then Jesus said that he had set an example and that his followers should follow his example. He told us that he gave us a new commandment, “love one another as I have loved you.” That is, wash feet. Don’t love abstractly, love concretely. People will know you are my followers, he said, when you love this way. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The love of Jesus requires us to go beyond the normal. Normal is loving those who love you. Friends and family. Or to love people who can do something in return for you, like a rich neighbor or even simply make you feel good about yourself. Jesus says that we are to intentionally love people who don’t love us. Intentionally means on purpose. We are to greet or welcome those whom we wouldn’t normally greet or welcome. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When we hold a banquet, we don’t invite friends and families and rich neighbors. Why? They can pay us back. Instead, we are told to invite those who can never pay us back. It’s counter cultural. It’s counter intuitive. It’s Jesus. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have a very great concern. There is a lot of circling the wagons around our family going on these days. People are staying home more than ever and in the face of great darkness and uncertainty in our world, they are clinging to their own families. Families are good. We understand them to be the building blocks of society. But when your family is more important than all the other families and your family’s welfare is more important than all other families, we call that Mafia. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now apply it to the Church. In North America we’ve been taking care of our own. We’ve been having banquets for ourselves and our “church family.” We’ve welcomed and greeted those who could benefit us by joining our church and paying our bills. We’ve forgotten to go out to the highways and byways and alleyways and country roads and invite the poor, the lame, the crippled, the widowed, the orphaned, the hopeless. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As a nation I worry that we’ve made family into a kind of idol. Please don’t misunderstand me, family is good. It’s the fundamental building block of society according to the Bible. But when family becomes the first and only priority in our lives something terrible happens. We start to see the success of our family in opposition to other families. Our family must triumph, even at the expense of other families. This is what the Mafia is. A type of family that exults itself at the expense of other families. That is not what God had in mind. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Community is groups of families working together. They work together to overcome shared obstacles and obtain shared success. In community, what happens to your family matters to my family and so we’re all watching out and helping each other. As Christians we also understand ourselves to be part of a greater family - the family of God. We call it church. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The trend I’m worried about in the church that is that you quit working with kids because yours have grown up. “I helped out at church until my kids were grown. Now it’s someone else’s turn.” But what about everybody else’s kids? We live in an age when, demographically, the traditional family is decreasing in churches. How will we be able to minister to all the kids who need to be at church if we only rely on people with kids in the system? We have to be concerned about everyone’s kids. We have to pull together and minister to them. It’s counter-intuitive. It’s counter cultural. It’s Jesus.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our congregation has a unique situation: other people’s kids love to come here. We have a magnificent opportunity to influence those kids. By investing in them we may see them succeed, prosper and ultimately, be saved. When I look behind us I don’t see anyone else willing to commit to these kids. So I think we have to commit to them. For the sake of the kids and for the sake of our community, and ultimately, for the sake of our families. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Two and a half years ago we began a journey together, a journey that was counter-intuitive and counter cultural. A journey that has shaped us and given us a new identity. A journey framed around Luke 14 and characterized by the phrases, “Jesus says go!” and “Let’s do something beautiful for Jesus.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We began with a question: Would anyone in our community miss us if we closed? At the time, the answer was “not really.” What about today? Today, I believe the neighborhood would really miss us. How did this turn around happen so quickly? Because we made a conscious choice to bless those who couldn’t bless us back and found ways to intentionally love those who were not our friends, families or rich neighbors. This approach has fundamentally changed who we are as a church.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here are some of the things I think we’ve learned together:</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>We’re learning that radical dependance upon Jesus to get things done is the best way to run a church.<b> </b> Simply put into action what he taught us and trust him to handle the bills and the details. We should have crashed or gone broke by now but we haven’t. God provides. </span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We’ve learned that worship is more than singing, surviving the sermon and taking the sacraments. </span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Romans 12:1 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">James 1:27 “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If worship doesn’t lead to intentional acts motivated by the love of Christ, what has it accomplished? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Worship leads to service and devotion which, in turn, lead to worship. And if that isn’t happening, perhaps we’re doing it wrong. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Liturgy (liturgia) is “the work of the people.” Worship is our work. We worship him by serving others.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So we switched our focus as a church. Instead of focusing our attention every week on a worship service that lasts 60 minutes, we focused on the results of that worship - the other 167 hours of the week. </span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b> Turns out, serving people in the love of Jesus is an amazing avenue for spiritual growth.<b> </b>We see this particularly among the young. Putting their faith into action, making connections with others, many of whom are less fortunate than themselves, dealing with cross cultural issues, needing to make sacrifices for others. This is making faith real, not abstract. This summer, a couple young people are going to do some camps for the neighborhood kids. It was their idea. They’ll do the work. They are motivated to put their faith into action and serve. I’m looking forward to it. </span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We’ve developed some philosophies:</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>About donations: Clothes and furniture specifically: Take it all. Don’t make too many rules. The more rules their are about drop offs and what we’ll take, the harder it is for people to give. The harder it is to give, the less likely people are to give and the more people without clothes and furniture there will be. </span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Err on the side of grace. Don’t make too many rules. Having many groups use our space challenges us to grow spiritually: to be patient, kind, loving, and forces us to work through conflict - and grow because of it - rather than avoid conflict. We want to bring that church wide - no more church politics, no more factions, no more passive aggressive behavior - bring your issues into the open to staff or boards or let them go. </span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>That even though some ministries are rather larger - collect more money, take up more calendar time and space, (like STAR kids, Street Outreach, Mhezi, for example) we don’t want to define our entire ministry as just one ministry. We don’t want to be known as the church that does “this or that.” We want to go out of business in all our ministries because we met the need and their are no more hungry people or people who need furniture or clothing or anything else. Rather, we want to be known as the church that does whatever Jesus shows us needs doing. We want to be able to re-calibrate ourselves at a moment’s notice to please Him. </span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>That everything we do would be open to everyone - regardless of age, race, creed or color or membership. If you’re in need, you’re in need. </span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Publicity. Jesus says that when you do your acts of charity or give alms, don’t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. Hard to balance that as a non-profit looking for ways to market ourselves so we can get more donations. Why does money always dictate what we can and cannot do? If they notice, we’ll talk to them. If not, no, we won’t seek it. In the meantime, Jesus has provided and we trust he will continue to do so. </span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>We can do a lot of things without money, space and equipment. But we can’t do anything without leaders (volunteers).</span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>The job of the staff is to empower people to serve. Sometimes by backing them up and sometimes by creating opportunities for them to serve. The job of boards is to provide accountability. </span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Fairness is not a biblical concept. Who do we help? The one who needs it. We don’t help everyone the same way. </span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Care. It used to be only pastors went and visited the sick and home-bound. Now, more people involved. Pastors are still trying to be regular in visiting. The greatest challenge is time. Some will say it’s not fair. Most of our shut ins, though, make it to doctor, grocery store, have really good family systems. But we have wonderful volunteers who are filling in many of the gaps. Thank you!</span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>The Church in general needs a new scorecard. Not numbers and money. What would that score card look like? </span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Are lives being changed? How many people did you feed this week, serve this week, clothe this week? </span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Has Zion inspired you to become more involved in your community/neighborhood?</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>How many volunteer hours do you give per week?</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Has your marriage improved?</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Has your relationship with your kids, teenagers improved? </span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Pastor Ringa, the Mizo speaking pastor we’ve called will arrive and bring closer collaboration with the 1:00 service. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Community Gardens Expansion. So many want to garden. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Baptisms. We’ve spent years building relationships. I think this might be the year we see kids and parents want to be baptized. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Muslims. Continued expansion of Arabic Sunday School. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Summer - VBS, Art Camp, Swimming lessons, sports camps, Bible Camp.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>New relationships: EMBARC, Transformation Group, Hoover and Meredith. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>Emphases: Kids. Growing cross cultural friendships. Parenting and marriage. Prayer. </span></li>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>We really need 3 vans for transportation. </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>We need a growing dependance upon prayer</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b>We need to step it up. When holidays or summer come around we end our programming. The people we normally bring to church don’t come. We don’t send the vans. Why do we stop on holidays? We also need to add transport to 15th Street. </span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Conclusion:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Analyzing long term trends: in ten years every church is going to be doing what we are. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We’ve had our share of upheaval. Some of the changes we’ve made haven’t been easy. But each challenged we’ve faced we’ve done so with a radical dependance upon Jesus. We must stay the course. It isn’t what we do that defines us. It’s who we are. People bought for a price. Redeemed to be useful to God. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Perhaps you’re worried we’ll get a big head and get puffed up. Christmas helps to keep us humble. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One of the lessons of Christmas to me is simply this:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“If my God and king became a baby and a carpenter, what must I become to serve him?” Thinking like that won’t give you a big head. It will make you just the right size for God to use you. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Oswald Chambers puts it this way: “Beware of becoming a profound person. God became a baby.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thanks for reading. God bless.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">PJ</span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-44806731070405301182012-12-07T14:28:00.002-08:002012-12-07T14:28:20.906-08:00Giving Up On Excellence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I am a product of the Church Growth movement.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I went to a denominational seminary and at the time they didn’t teach us anything useful about evangelism or about growing churches.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I’m serious.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">We were taught that people would just come because they were Lutheran.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Our job was to minister to the needs of our flock.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I didn’t buy that then, and I certainly don’t buy that now. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, early on in my seminary career, I started to go to conferences and read books to supplement my education. My first call as a pastor was to be the second full time staff member at a church with 600 members that became a mega church very quickly. My whole professional life has been about church growth. When we lived and taught in Eastern Europe, I taught church growth principals to my students. I’ve been sold on the movement for a long time as the hope for the future of the Church. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One of the tenants of the Church Growth movement is the pursuit of excellence for the sake of God. In other words, what we in the movement saw in North American churches was that no one cared enough to give their best. Especially pastors. We felt that God wanted our very, very best and that our services, especially, but all things we did as a church, should pursue excellent. It was the same kind of idea that was big, at the time, in business culture and also becoming to be a big idea in aspects of education and school administration. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Like all my peers in the movement, I bought into the necessity to pursue excellence for the sake of evangelism. After all, why would unchurched people trust us with their kids in Sunday School or Bible School if we didn’t look like we were excellent? Why would any unchurched person come to a church that looked like it didn’t know what it was doing? Why would any unchurched person go to a place whose publications were below the ability of most desk top publishing programs? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Excellence has pursued me and haunted me all during my tenure at Zion where I currently pastor. For several years I ran into stiff opposition to the pursuit of excellence. Why would we want to spend money on having everything look so “professional?” “What we’ve been using for years is good enough, pastor.” “We don’t need new signs, pastor. Our people know where things are.” When we introduced new ideas into worship (that is, we introduced Church Growth ideas) we also met opposition. The worship was said to be “too professional.” I admit I was frustrated. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But now, thankfully, I can tell you that I’m done with excellence for the time being. Why? Because our current ministry is simply too vibrant for excellence. What do I mean by that? Well, simply put, we’re so busy trying to keep up with the needs of the people we serve that we don’t have time to be excellent. The image in my head is one of a rescue ship that comes upon a wrecked vessel. You have to get people out of the water as quickly as possible. There simply isn’t time to be orderly or excellent. There is confusion and chaos, but people are being saved. And that’s where we are as a church. We simply have so many opportunities to witness to Christ at any given moment, we don’t have the time to pursue excellence.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I think our focus has shifted as well. Instead of our focus being on what we do in worship or care, our focus has shifted to serving. Instead of spending hours trying to figure out the perfect transitions in worship and pursuing the latest and greatest worship songs and making sure that every word on the power point is spelled correctly and so on, we’re praying with people, helping out at the local school, delivering groceries, teaching people English, and tutoring kids, all the while sharing the Gospel as living sacrifices. It isn’t that we don’t care about what happens on Sunday, it’s just that we’ve moved beyond Sunday and our focus is on the rest of the week where faith has to be lived out to be real and to be seen by a world that increasingly doesn’t attend church.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This blog won’t be published right away so let me say this: Tomorrow night I have a board meeting. It’s really important that I be there. We have a lot of things to discuss as the leadership of the church. But that night, at the same time, is also the school board meeting and I’ve been invited by a board member to come and speak and explain how our church “buses” 30+ kids to and from school every school day and how a simple change in their policy will lead to a major benefit for 100s of kids. I think I have to be at the school board meeting. I think the love of Christ compels us to go. Jesus said, “Go!” And when we go we can’t stay and take care of our own business. Our Master is on the move and we must follow him and help him take care of his great business. Because the world won’t come to church because it should. It will only come to faith when the church goes out and shows the world what the love of Christ is all about. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, for the sake of the love of Christ, we have changed our opinion about excellence. What was once the pursuit of excellence in service to those who came to us is now the pursuit of excellence in service to those who have no idea who our Lord Jesus is yet but will hopefully come to faith in him through our meager efforts. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We aren’t even excellent in what we can do for others because there are so many of them in need. But I take comfort in this: What we do we do for Him, our Audience of One. And also, that in a great darkness, even a weak light shines very brightly. Thanks for reading. God bless you. PJ</span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-67558055553840572722012-11-26T14:39:00.002-08:002012-11-26T14:39:42.485-08:00Where Are We With That? Catching up on some projects at Zion...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We’ve been talking a lot about various projects and maybe you’re wondering where we are with them. Here’s a quick update. If you need more information about a specific project not mentioned here or even one that is, please contact me and let me know and I’ll be happy to let you know what’s happening. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Pastor Van Lal Ringa, our Mizo speaking pastor.</b> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Pastor Ringa and I are in communication weekly. He has applied for his passport and is waiting on that document to come to him. After he has his passport and we have that information from him, we can then proceed with finishing the paperwork we need to do to complete the application for the R-1 Religious Workers Visa we need for him to enter and stay in the US. To help with this involved and complicated process, we have hired Ta-Yu Yang, a noted immigration attorney, with funds provided especially from the 1:00 service. Mr. Yang intends to donate 50% of his fee back to Zion as a gift. We’re grateful for his generosity and for his wisdom in guiding us through this process. So we hope to welcome Pastor Ringa sometime in the spring of 2013. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Buying another church van.</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We received half the money we needed for the van as a stock donation. We are very grateful. It took much longer than we expected to get the stock sold and for the check to arrive. Now, with the increase in activity at church because of Christmas and all the events and good works associated with it, it may be the first of the year before the van actually appears in our parking lot. But don’t give up! It will get here! Until then, we continue to borrow a van from Meredith Drive Reformed Church for our weekly needs.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The new van will be especially useful to us when we can’t borrow the Meredith Drive van, like on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. We’re so happy so many people want to come to Zion and we will be so relieved to be able to double our capacity for people to come. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>The Great Mosque Food Challenge.</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our friends at the Bosniak Mosque challenged our congregation and our youth to collect food items for the needy. So far, Zion has collected over 1,000 food items for this challenge. We’ll have a full report to share with you once we combine our items with those the mosque collected. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thanks for reading! God bless you. PJ </span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-28408771091290550502012-11-19T15:03:00.001-08:002012-11-19T15:03:34.674-08:00Thanksgiving: Why We Need to Be Grateful and Not Expect Others to Be Grateful to Us<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thanksgiving: Why We Need to Be Grateful and Not Expect Others to Be Grateful to Us</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Contrary to popular mythology, I’m not made of stone. My feelings get hurt from time to time same as everyone else. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Today I was transporting a young man with some severe behavioral problems to and from an outpatient treatment program. He’s rather young, under 12. He’s been in this country just two years. Our church has gone to extraordinary measures to help this boy and his whole family. I won’t elaborate on the extraordinary efforts, but just know that I mean way, way, way beyond some food and clothes and a smile. I mean extraordinary. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The boy and his sibling weren’t in church on Sunday. I wasn’t too concerned as I knew that the family that brings them and has pretty much adopted them was out of town. So we’re leaving the hospital together, the boy and I, on our way to get some ice cream as a reward for having survived his first day of treatment. Then he tells me that he and his sibling went to a different church on Sunday with a friend. The other church has a big bus that comes to your house. This is where that whole “I’m not made of stone” comment comes in. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">OK. Did you enjoy it? He did. My stoney facade cracked more. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What made it enjoyable? Well, turns out they played a game where they chased a man who had money stuck all over him around the yard. If they grabbed money, they got to keep it. He got $4. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How am I supposed to compete with that? All our money runs out the door, too, but it isn’t a game. It’s just reality. I crack some more. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What was the lesson? What did you learn? He doesn’t know. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So now I’m getting ugly on the inside. I’m actually feeling smug because while the game was fun, it failed to convey a message. I say to myself: we may not be fun or have money, but surely we get our point across. Then I remember how many people we’ve lost because they didn’t get the point of the ministry we’ve been called to do. And I remember people saying I didn’t communicate the point well enough. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I feel terrible inside. I know I’m sinning like crazy. I know that I’m making it about us and about me and it isn’t. It’s all about Him. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s been tough lately. We’re being refined. Our Master is testing what we’re made of. Lately there’s been a lot in the paper about a particular apartment complex where we do a lot, a lot of ministry. No mention of our church. Some of our folks are frustrated by that. They see others, who do less, being celebrated. But hey, we aren’t doing what we’re doing for anyone else. We’re not doing it to be recognized. We’re not doing it to be rewarded. We’re not doing it to be celebrated. We’re not doing it to be liked. We’re not doing it to be famous. We’re not doing it even for the people we’re doing it for. We’re doing it for Jesus. And He knows we’re doing it and that’s all that matters. We do what we do not for the praise of men, but for the praise and glory of our Master. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ve been sad lately. A long time friend at our church simply quit coming. When I called to find out why, she hung up on me. It stung. It stung because I had personally invested so much in this family, their trials and tribulations with their kids, their worries about extended family members, the whole thing. But at the end of the day they’re gone. No explanation, no goodbye, no chance to reconcile or even explain anything. They’ve packed up and gone to a different church. It’s probably more fun. I’ll bet they can even get their point across. At least that’s my prayer. Because I’ve been reminded of two things this Thanksgiving Season: 1.) We do what we do for an audience of One. What other people think of us ultimately doesn’t matter. We are called to serve the One, not to be liked or admired or fussed over. And, 2.) We’re a part of something bigger than we are. If people are happier or get the point at other churches, that’s OK. We have a unique role to play within that greater body. Turns out we can do what others can’t, and they can do what we can’t. It’s glorious. And I’m grateful for both of these things.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So I’m having ice cream with my young friend before we go home. And out of the blue he says: “Pastor John: If I can chose where I go to church, I’ll go with you.” Thank you, God. Thank you for the opportunity to serve those who are different from us in so many ways but reflect your beauty and your holiness in such awesome ways. Thank you, Lord, that we are a part of your amazing body, the Church, which has so many different parts and reasons for being. Thank you, Christ, for reminding us whom it is whom we serve, namely, your great Self. And thank you, Holy Spirit, for accompanying us along the way. Thanks for reading. PJ</span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6673026911024876557.post-82235520947530778892012-10-19T14:25:00.002-07:002012-10-19T14:25:58.229-07:00Report from the LCMC National Gathering Part 4<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Report from the LCMC National Gathering, Part 4: Mike Breen, 3DM discipleship movement</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(A bio on Mike Breen from the LCMC website follows this report)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I really enjoyed Mike Breen’s presentation. He was specifically asked by Mark Vander Tuig to give us a talk Mark had heard once before, a talk about feudalism in the church. I will do my best to condense Breen’s excellent one hour lecture on history from the Roman Empire to today into a few short paragraphs. It was amazing. If you have the opportunity to ever hear it, be sure to listen to it. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Mike grew up in a military family where he learned that the last thing the commander says is the first thing you do. So as a Christian he takes Jesus’ parting words to his disciples in MT 28 very seriously. Making disciples is the essence of his faith. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Gospel is simple and hard. It is not easy. But it is not complicated. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So is making disciples. It is a simple reality, but hard to embrace. Either Jesus is worthy of following or not. Simple. But living out your life as a disciple is hard. Jesus says to make disciples. We believe we should. Easy. But doing it is hard.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What Mike said about his early success in ministry in the Church of England really struck me. He said that he had an amazing ministry, won the acclaim of the hierarchy, got to be on TV and celebrated, but now, what he started is almost all gone. He thought long and hard about why that was. He realized that he himself could draw people to himself but that unless he taught them how to make disciples themselves, it wouldn’t be sustainable. In the church we didn't work out how to make a disciple that could make a disciple. So many of our “successful” churches growth It depended on their influence</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">His last assignment grew to be the largest church in England. But since he taught them how to make disciples, they’ve gone on without him. The church has doubled since he left. Instead of counting how many people attend church on a Sunday or how much they give, this church now counts how many people are in intentional discipleship groups. That is how they measure their success. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Anyone can make a disciple - people want to be like you. But what we want is a disciple who can make a disciple who can make a disciple. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In our culture, success means bigger, faster, stronger. In the Bible, fruitfulness is the concept that is used. Fruitfulness means reproduction. It is a kingdom principle. In making disciples, you celebrate what God has done in you reproduced in another person. Fruitfulness is to have lots of children. In making disciples it is to have lots of spiritual children who go on to have lots of spiritual children. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In the world it is commonly understood that it is better to have healthy family than a successful business. In the Church we need to understand that it is better to make disciples than draw big crowds</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">During the last supper in Luke 22, Jesus is having quality time with his disciples. The disciples are beginning to brag a bit over brandy and cigars. They ask, “Which of us will be the greatest in your kingdom?” They don’t understand that they are co-heirs of a kingdom given by covenant. They don't understand that they aren’t to function as world leaders. In the world, Leaders = power and provision. They have power and they are expected to provide for their constituents. That’s how the world works. In the Roman world it was:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Don't be like that, Jesus says. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Edict of Milan 313, 270 years after Pentecost or so. Constantine declares Christianity the religion of the Empire. Before this the Church was brutally persecuted. To be found out to be a leader of the Church was to be executed. But it was during these years that the Church grew from 120 to 50% of the population.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How? The Church before 313 had no buildings. No public leadership structure. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After the fall of Rome and the onset of the Dark Ages, the Church preserves culture. There was a hierarchy: Nobility and Serfs. It was a social contract called feudalism but it was the same old system. The nobles had the power and they were expected to feed and protect their people. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What ended the Dark Ages? Famine and war and urbanization. Things began to change. Feudalism ends with French Revolution in France after 3 years of failed harvests. It ends in England after WW I. Fight for king and country. 100,000s of men die. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What happened to the world system then? Feudalism didn’t really end. It took on a new form: Marxism. Marx replaces the aristocracy with the government / State, but the State still has all the power and it is still expected to provide for it’s people. Socialism is reignited feudalism.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In America, Breen says, we tried a different experiment. In the Colony days we started out feudal (land grants/slavery). But then things changed. New ideas. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">No taxation without representation. Life, liberty and freedom. Every one responsible for their own. Build your own. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What emerged was the most powerful, generous and collectively compassionate people the world has ever known. And a system where people didn’t lord it over one another. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But a virus was maintained in churches, especially European import churches to the U.S. Feudalism. What does he mean? Look at how we measure the success of the Church? How many peasants (attendees/congregants) do you have? How much tax (offerings) do they pay?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The clergy are then expected to provide for people. To feed them, spiritually speaking. Drive past a church on a Sunday morning and listen in on a conversation in the parking lot: One congregant asks another, “Did you like the sermon today? The music? Are you getting fed? I’m going to go where I’m being fed.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is the same mentally that serfs have. They aren’t responsible for their own provision. There exists a poverty mentality within feudalism, “we don’t have enough food!” The leaders are seen as the providers. We don’t make disciples. We just feed one person at a time. The system prevents us from production - from fruitfulness - from making disciples who make disciples. Our current structure for doing church is like a condom that keeps us from having spiritual children. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Instead, we should make disciples the way Jesus did it. He had a tension between invitation and challenge: </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Come = invitation</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Go = challenge</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Throughout the three years he spent with his disciples, you saw an increasing calibration of both.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Invitation or challenge? Which comes easiest to you? To your congregation?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At this moment in the presentation, I took a moment and texted Pastor Tina. She concurred with me: Zion is a low invitation, high challenge church. We are in the proverbial “valley of the shadow of death” according to Breen. But we are very near the border of High Invitation, High Challenge and we have to keep going. Where we are is necessary for our future together. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then Breen went on to use a graph to demonstrate the various combinations of invitation and challenge. In the upper right is Jesus. High invitation (relationships), high challenge culture. To the upper left, high invitation low challenge. To the lower left, low invitation, low challenge. In the lower right, low invitation, high challenge. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">High invite, low challenge = cozy culture</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Low invite, high challenge - Feel stressed, discouraged. Only as good as last week. So you go on retreat, to reset the invite/relational piece. But you’re doing amazing ministry. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">High challenge, high invite - Jesus builds toward this. This is the goal. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Low invite, low challenge - Anglicans Every ones bored.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Increasing challenge, "I'm not responsible for making disciples, or your kids, either. You are."</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The journey toward the Church that Jesus wants is the withdrawal of invite and the move to high challenge. The invitation comes back as we accept His challenge. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Jesus model of Church, to Breen, looks like America. Everyone is expected to stake a claim, to participate, to work on their own spiritual development and on making disciples who make disciples. Such a church is free from feudalism in all it’s forms. It is new. Thanks for reading. PJ </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Mike Breen bio from the LCMC website:</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Mike Breen has been an innovator in leading missional churches throughout Europe and the United States for more than 25 years. In his time at St. Thomas Sheffield in the UK, he created and pioneered Missional Communities, mid-sized groups of 20-50 people on mission together. The result, less than 6 years later, was the largest church in England, and ultimately, one of the largest and now fastest growing churches in all of Europe. In 2006, Mike was approached by Leadership Network to lead an initiative into church planting. Through this partnership, more than 725 churches were planted in Europe in just three years.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Today, Mike lives in South Carolina, leading 3DM, a movement/organization that is helping hundreds of established churches and church planters move into this discipling and missional way of being the church. Mike is the Senior Guardian of The Order of Mission (TOM), a global covenant community of networked missional leaders. He has authored numerous books, including Launching Missional Communities, Building a Discipling Culture and Covenant and Kingdom.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Mike has been married to Sally for over 30 years and they have 3 grown-up children. Mike’s passions include contemporary design and architecture, travel, movies, cycling, golf, fine wine and food...though not necessarily in that order.</i></span></div>
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Pastor Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02985728106929059405noreply@blogger.com0