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We had a great time last night at our monthly potluck! (We did miss Kathy and Joy, who couldn't make it.) We basically made it into a birthday party for Brian, who turned 36 on Tuesday. After dinner, we all (even the kids) played Trivial Pursuit, my favorite game in the world. It was great fun, even the part where everyone talked and shouted at once (although I may not have seemed like I was having fun, I was). I absolutely adore Alan and Liz's kids. They are lots of fun, especially now that they're getting older. It's interesting, too, the things you find out about people by playing Trivial Pursuit with them--the subjects they know a lot about give you good insights into who they are. We found out last night that Matt is well able to hold his own with Alan and myself (not bragging here, it's just hard to find people who want to play with us because we think we know it all). But of course, we had to let Alan win, since he's the Senior Pastor and all (OK, did everybody catch the sarcasm drippin' there?). Anyway, it was great fun, even if Alan did win--again!
| posted by #Debi | 9:29 AM | |
Saturday, August 24, 2002
Romans 12
From The Message
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity. God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.
In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.
If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.
Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.
Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.
Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.
Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.”
Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.
| posted by Matt | 1:16 AM | |
Thursday, August 22, 2002
Hi, guys! Just a quick "praise report" about last night. One of the things we did last night was pray for various needs of ourselves and others--I had a prayer request on behalf of one the young men at work, Paul, whose grandfather (who raised him) had had what was thought to be several strokes and is in ICU. I spoke to Paul this morning and told him we had prayed for his grandfather. He thanked us, of course, and let me know that his grandfather's condition is now much less serious than they had thought. It wasn't strokes, it turned out that Paul's grandfather is diabetic and had been warned against eating foods high in potassium. The family didn't realize that tomatoes and cantelope have lots of potassium, and apparently they had been eating a lot of those. So the reaction of the elevated potassium levels shut down his kidneys temporarily and caused stroke-like symptoms. Paul said his grandfather should be out of ICU and into a regular room by tomorrow. Praise God!!
| posted by #Debi | 5:47 PM | |
Good meeting last night. I was sort of fried so Liz lead the meeting. More on Romans 12. I swear I think you could spend your whole life on this thing and still not totally get it all. We talked about verse 3 - the "estimate yourself soberly" one - not thinking too highly of yourself. Everyone shared about ways in which they perhaps thought too highly of themselves and how we could go about correcting that. It was good - brought out some of our stuff - honesty - good. We prayed for a little bit, then celebrated the Eucharist (we always do this).
Our meeting times aren't always or even often spectacular. If we tried to make them that way, it would be rather fake anyway, so no point. And thinking that they have to be something like that every time we meet is against the grain of our philosophy of community. It would cut against the "long-haul" and the "more than a meeting" mentality that we're trying to foster in one another. We're not about getting everything done in the once a week meeting. It can't be done - was never meant to be done - so we don't try to do it. Our formation into the image of Christ is a wholisitc thing that happens all the time, by many means. We're not about "quick-fixes" either. Things don't generally work that way in the spiritual life. We are in process. It's a long haul thing, not an instantaneous fixer-upper.
I hope all that makes some sense. We live as community. We go along doing what we know to do. We listen and evolve as we need to. God transforms us along the way.
| posted by + Alan | 1:57 PM | |
Tuesday, August 20, 2002
Just checking out some other blogs & saw a cool posting on finding rest. It was on Laura O.'s blog Record of My Insanity Reminds me of a passage in The Message. I have been holding on to these verses for a while now. It seems God keeps bringing me back to this truth. We don't find our rest in things, accomplishments, etc. etc. etc. We find our value, our worth, and our rest in him. We do make it so difficult.
Matthew 11.
Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me - watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.
| posted by Matt | 9:26 PM | |
Monday, August 19, 2002
Sitting in Kevin Rains' office (from Vineyard Central)right now while he does his chores. Yes, the boy is 33 and still has chores - that's good probably. Anyway, I'm up here to hang with him tonight and also Jason Evans from Matthew's House in San Diego. Jason's coming into Indianapolis for some conference and is swinging over here tonight after he flies in to hang with us. Very cool. The whole thing is amazing - how God has woven so many of us together who are doing similar things from all over the country, through the internet. Now we're getting together with each other. Very amazing - very encouraging.
Kevin and I have become very good friends over the past year and a half - God has really given us that gift. I'm grateful for it. He's a very good man - and he's purty cause he looks like me! I've also gotten to know Jason over this past year - via meeting online, seeing each others sites, talking about our communities, etc. We actually got to hang some in person at Search Party in St. Louis in May. Tonight will be fun. If we solve any of the great problems of church planting in the 21st century, I'll let you know. We may just drink beer and laugh. That'll be good too.
| posted by + Alan | 5:27 PM | |
Sunday, August 18, 2002
This weekend I have spent most of my "spiritual time" on searching the Scriptures on the subject of tithing, inspired by the ongoing debate at Rachel Cunliffe's blog. I blogged my results on The Scriptorium; it's too long to try to reproduce here, so go there if you're interested. The bottom line is that I don't believe tithing is supportable as a "doctrine", but a really good idea, especially if you're not disciplined about listening to God telling you where to give and when and then doing what He says. I do, of course, think that living life open-handedly is part of being a Christian; I just have a problem with the concept of coerced giving to support the "machine" that some churches have become. I should say that VBCC has never gone down that road--here your giving is entirely between you and God. I actually think it would be cool to do the "...and the believers shared everything in common" thing; logistically, in America, I'm not sure how it would be implemented. Anyway, I'm not trying to reproduce the debate here--I just wanted to share what I've been doing with myself this weekend and invite anyone interested to read what I wrote.
| posted by #Debi | 7:43 PM | |
Saturday, August 17, 2002
We've been talking about Romans 12 for a little while - as a rule of life. I wanted to post a bit of the outline for what we discussed in this past weeks meeting. This will give you an idea of some of what we've been talking about. Here goes...
We started with a quote (longer than this actually) from The New Man by Thomas Merton - on spiritual identity
"But if my true spiritual identity is found in my identification with Christ, then to know myself fully, I must know Christ. And to know Christ I must know the Father, for Christ is the image of the Father. The "identity" which begins to make itself known and felt within me, under the action of the Holy Spirit, is the identity of a son of the Father: a son who is re-created in the likeness of the only Son, Who is the perfect Image of the Father. The beginning of self-realization in the fullest Christian sense is therefore a sharing in the orientation which directs Christ, as Word, entirely to His Father. And here we truly enter into the deep mystery of God."
"All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit." –2 Corinthians 3:18
"Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect." –Romans 12:2
Transformed is same word - metamorphoo - to be changed into another form - to be transfigured.
What form are we being re-made into? According to 2 Cor. 3:18, into the image we are to be looking at - gazing at - with unveiled faces - into that same image - the image of Jesus the Lord. The word "gazing" or "beholding" is "looking at as in a mirror" - has to do with reflection - gazing as into a mirror.
We look at Him and see ourselves in Him - our real selves - who we really are - not the illusion - not what has been stacked up on top of the real. We allow Him to show us who we really are and we become that by His activity in us.
"Glory" has to do with how something seems - it being apparent to those who look at us. I've heard it described as "manifested presence." It does have to do with manifestation for sure - something being brought out in the open for all to see. That's it. the more we look at Him and allow Him to show us and make us into who we really are, the more we will look like Him - the more apparent it will be who we are, who we are a part of.
We've been talking about Romans 12 as a rule of life. A rule of life is something to spend some time on, wouldn't you think? We're going to spend some time getting to know this. If we think we've known it already, we're going to lay that all down and pretend like we're ignorant. Then we're going to allow God to teach us what that all means all over again - in a fresh way, forgetting our presuppositions.
> Talk about how your life has been transformed in some way
> Has your view of how transformation happens changed at all - how?
> What are some things we can do as a community to cultivate a life of "gazing" and transformation?
It was a good conversation - and we will continue to have it until we re-learn some of those things we thought we already knew.
| posted by + Alan | 11:19 PM | |
Thursday, August 08, 2002
Well, we had dinner and said good bye to our friends (family members) Robert and Molly last night. That kind of sucked for us but they're on a new journey - moving to Tulsa. They will remain blog team members on the vine so they can tell their story from where they're going. We're looking forward to hearing about what they do there. Robert was talking some crazy crap about starting some kind of freaky community that will meet in their house. What's that all about? We love you guys!
| posted by + Alan | 11:03 AM | |
Monday, August 05, 2002
Here's a nice Vine & Branches quote from our friend Thomas Merton (from The New Man):
"...this new life in us is an extension of Christ's own risen life. It forms and integral part of that new existence which He inaugurated when He rose from the tomb. Before He died on the Cross, the historical Christ was alone in His human and physical existence. As He Himself said, 'unless the grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it remains alone. But if it die, it brings forth much fruit.' (John 12:25) Rising from the dead, Jesus lived no longer merely in Himself. He became the vine of which we are the branches. He extends His personality to include each one of us who are united to Him by faith."
Meaty, chewy stuff - chew the cud for a while...
| posted by + Alan | 3:02 PM | |
Saturday, August 03, 2002
Robert and Molly are moving to Tulsa next week. We're sad to see them go. It's exciting to see them move into a new stage of life though. We will be praying for them as an extended member of the vbcc family constantly. I think they're going to start some kind of "thing" in their house - sounds interesting. We're taking them out next week to celebrate our friendship with them. We'll miss them.
We have a new friend it seems - Kathy and her daughter Joy. We're looking forward to getting to know them more.
| posted by + Alan | 12:38 PM | |