Jay Kim Thinks…

my heart and mind on a digital page

Category: Bigger Stories

April 22, 2013

What I’d Tell 23-year old Me

Stop trying to be smart.  Be curious.  Yes, you read half [or 17 pages] of that one Kierkegaard book that one time.  Yes, you [just barely] graduated from college.  Yes, you’re pursuing [or crawling toward] your Master’s degree.  Yes, you’ve doled out some [terrible] advice to a few prepubescent boys about their girl problems.  But none of this makes you smart.  In fact, the “smartest” people in the world are the ones who know just how little they know and how much more there is to know.  It’s this acute awareness that allows them to contribute much to our world.  You think you’re smart and that you should write a book or something to let everyone know just how smart you are.  But when you sit down to write, you find that you really don’t have much [or anything] to say at all.  Don’t be discouraged.  You’re not alone.  Most of us don’t have much to say.  And it’s in accepting this truth that you will be inspired, challenged, and motivated to learn more.  Something amazing, almost mystical, will happen when you take the posture of a learner.  You will begin to embrace the joys of curiosity.  The blinders will come off and you will begin to see the world for what it is – interesting, wondrous, maybe even a little magical.  You will find God in new, life-giving ways as you ask questions and open yourself up to all sorts of answers.  The Bible will speak to you in a new voice.  Incredibly, you will find that many of those annoying axioms your mom used to drill into your head as a child are actually pretty accurate.  The people and places you categorized neatly into your little boxes of opinions will be unleashed and they will teach you what it means to be human, fully and humbly.  Speak less.  Listen more.  In the words of Dallas Willard, “Practice the discipline of not having the last word.”  Master the art of asking questions and you’ll discover answers bursting forth all around you, with life and grace.

Keep dreaming.  No, really.  KEEP DREAMING.  First, stop believing the lie that cynicism is an undeniable symptom of old age.  Some of the most amazing dreamers I’ve ever met are men and women in their retirement years.  And some of the greatest cynics in our world are privileged, bright, well-educated twenty-something’s with their entire lives ahead of them.  Cynics are simply dreamers who stopped dreaming and think everyone else should stop dreaming right along with them.  Cynics are trying to sell you the lie that things will always be as they currently are, that change isn’t possible, and that love finds its end in the grave if it ever really existed at all.  But none of that is true.  Things will not always be as they currently are.  Restoration is coming.  And there are those who are giving their lives to the work of restoration here and now, believing that it will all culminate in a glorious someday, when all is healed and made well.  Change is very much possible.  We’ve all seen it – both in the world and in ourselves.  Yes, human history and our personal histories are marred with the blemishes of evil and injustice.  But woven into even the darkest portions of the fabric of our histories are the threads of heroism, grace, sacrifice, and love.  Most importantly, love is indeed real and it will not find its end in the grave.  Jay, in your early 30’s you will lose your father.  And in losing a father you did not know, you will discover a love for him that always existed somewhere deep in the recesses of your heart.  Beautifully, his story will reveal to you that love does not end in the grave but in fact finds its truest form in the celebration of Resurrection, the rescue offered us by the One who’s name is Love.  So let the cynics make their noise.  You just keep your head in the clouds and keep on dreaming.  Continue to believe in the possibilities all around you.  Give your heart recklessly to love.  Run hard after the things of God.

You’re not here just to change the world; you’re here to let the world change you.  You think you’re here because you have so much to offer the world.  And you do.  You think you’re here to change the world for the better.  And you are.  But you’re also here to let the world change you.  Like I said earlier, our world is a big and wondrous place, full of interesting and amazing people.  Sure there’s a ton wrong with it and some people lose their humanity to the point of harming others.  But don’t forget that there’s also so much beauty and goodness here.  Experiencing it with an open heart and open hands will leave you changed for the better.  So let God do that work in you through his world.  Pray that God would give you eyes to see and ears to hear his grace incarnate in the people, places, and things surrounding you.  Pursue childlike faith, believing that there is good even in the bad.  Stop keeping the world at arm’s length.  Let it in.  Don’t be afraid that it will contaminate or ruin you.  Keep God at the center of your soul, and then let the world come in close to you and watch as God redeems even the worst of it to shape you into the person he’s always intended for you to be.  Get rid of that NOTW jacket in your closet.  You are not of hell.  You are of heaven.  And heaven isn’t a distant place on the other side of the galaxy.  It’s God’s reality, where all things are recreated and renewed.  So work toward that.  Join God in recreating and renewing this world, here and now.  And let him recreate and renew you through it.

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March 29, 2013

Good Friday in the Laughter of Children & Aged Lovers

Our world is a difficult place to live.  A quick glimpse at the news, the neighborhoods we live in, and our own families reveals the story of the world as a story full of dysfunction and pain.  We long for something else.  Something different.  Something divine.  And so we run hard after things that fool us with illusions of healing and wholeness.  Money.  Success.  Social change.  Legislative reform.  But when all that we run after reveal themselves as illusions, we are left disillusioned.  When they don’t fix things the way we thought they would, we’re left wondering what went wrong.  We decay slowly from the dreamers of our childhoods to the cynical shells of ourselves that many of us know far too well.

However, there is a different story unfolding.  Today, Good Friday, we remember that a man died two millennia ago, believing he was dying for each and every one of us.  Jesus of Nazareth was either out of his mind or God himself in human skin.  Whatever he was, we can all agree the he is not easily forgotten.  He is undoubtably the most transcendent figure in human history.  His legacy is obvious, here and now, even in the midst of suffering and pain.

Yes, his followers have often done evil in his name.  Over the centuries, genocide and bigotry have been carried out under the banner of the Christian flag.  But his followers have also done tremendous good.  Education for the poor.  Medical care for the marginalized.  Freedom for slaves.  These are just a few examples of global reforms that were initiated by those who bore the mark of Christ in their lives.  It is a complicated story and its nuances are far too many to understand with just a single, narrow perspective.  Careful and humble consideration is required.  A learning spirit and a willingness to admit that we don’t have it all figured out is where we must begin if we are to experience the shalom, the peace, that Christ himself promised.

Today, as we ponder the cross and what it means for the world, may we open our eyes, ears, and hearts to the hum of new life in the air.  It’s all around us.

It’s in the joyous laughter of children too young to know that there’s nothing to laugh about.

It’s in the embrace of lovers celebrating decades of faithful commitment to one another, too old to care about the acrimonious taunts of a generation that doesn’t believe in love.

It’s in the restoration of broken relationships, brought about by the relentless grace of those who refuse to give up even when it feels like there’s nothing left to fight for.

It’s in churches and bars.

It’s in our hearts and the hearts of our enemies.

Good Friday reminds us that Jesus believed in all of us enough to give up his own life in order to afford us an opportunity to join him in writing a different story for the world.  So may we yes to this invitation to write a better story.  May we give ourselves wholly and completely to the work of making certain that the story of every person on this planet doesn’t end on Friday, at the cross, in the grave, but instead culminates in new life, resurrected and restored, on Easter morning.

christ cross

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March 4, 2013

Lent & Fasting

In her book The Overspent American, Harvard economist Juliet Schor notes, “Twenty-seven percent of all households making more than $100,000 a year say they cannot afford to buy everything they really need. Nearly 20 percent say they ‘spend nearly all their income on the basic necessities of life.’”  $100k on basic necessities.  Clearly, necessity is a relative term.  Schor continues, “But while 70 percent of the sample described ‘the average American’ as ‘very materialistic,’ only 8 percent felt they were materialistic themselves.”  Relative indeed.

For Lent, our community is fasting from a few things.  It’s nothing novel but it’s been significant and formative in a number of ways.  Currently, we’re fasting from all drinks other than water.  In the larger scheme of things, this isn’t much of a sacrifice.  But not drinking coffee has been tough.  A headache greets me every morning.  And just the other day I found myself in the grocery store, staring at a bottle of Snapple like I was a meth addict in Walter White‘s RV.  I like Snapple but I can’t remember the last time I drank one, much less craved one.

When we wean ourselves off of the excesses and luxuries of our indulgent lives, the addict in us rears its ugly head.  We find ourselves longing for all that which we cannot have.  Our desire becomes inflamed and takes on a life of its own.  If you’ve ever fasted from anything, you know what this is like.  At a certain point, we realize that what we’re most addicted to is addiction itself.  Its not that we need coffee or Snapple or meth to survive.  Instead, we discover that we have physically, emotionally and even spiritually acclimated to developing addictions and the temporary rush of satisfying them.  But this is a toxic habit that moves us further and further away from our truest selves.  Our addictions weaken us to no end and damage our ability to enjoy deeply the most meaningful things of life.  This is why practicing the discipline of fasting is so significant.

Fasting reminds us that the distance between what we want and what we need begins in our heart and mind.  It reminds us that this distance must be bridged with resolute discipline and a broad perspective.  Fasting strengthens us in ways that the addictions we long for never could.  It reminds us that every fiber of our being was made for a reason and that God is the reason, nothing and no one else.  To be loved and to love – this is our purpose, the reason we live and breathe.  Fasting reminds us that everything else is secondary.  Fasting during Lent reminds us that we look forward to Easter morning, when Love did what only Love could do – rushed into the grave, beat the hell out of it and rose victorious.  And because victory has been won for us, we no longer have to live enslaved to anything less.  God is Love and fasting reminds us that He is to be our only addiction.

Lent slide

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January 28, 2013

Dayquil Thoughts on Perfection & Weakness

I’m sick beyond belief today.  I have the sort of cough you have to brace yourself for; the sort of cough that hurts so bad, an involuntary groan concludes each one.  I’m hopped up on Dayquil and trying to drink as much tea as I can.  But nothing seems to help.  It hurts and I feel weak and I want this to be over.  I don’t feel like myself.  Instead, I feel like some weird, inebriated carbon copy and it’s a version of me that’s not much fun to be around.

But being sick does provide some perspective.  I worked from home today.  To be specific, I worked from my bed.  I’ve been laying here for hours, fluctuating between typing away and nodding off to sleep.  I had to cancel a couple of meetings.  It stressed me out at first.  I went back and forth between cancelling or just trying to grind it out.  And it was in the tension of this back and forth that I gained a little bit of perspective.  It’s nothing new.  You’ve probably heard it a thousand times.  It might seem like a redundant idea.  But it’s in the Bible so pay attention (that’s what my Sunday school teacher told me when I was seven):

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”… that is why for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses… - 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

There it is.  Nothing immensely profound.  Definitely not new or clever.  I laid in bed today, cancelled meetings and wasn’t terribly productive but the world kept moving on and God continued doing the stuff only he could do anyways.  Physical sickness is a helpful reminder of this truth – that Christ’s power rests on us most distinctly and dynamically when we are weak.  Rather, when we are aware of our weakness.  Because the truth is, we’re always weak.  We’re never capable or able on our own to accomplish all that a meaningful life ought to accomplish.  When we catch a cold or the flu or something worse, it’s our bodies catching up to what has always been true about the human condition.  We’re imperfect.  But it is in our weakness that Christ’s power is made perfect.

Contrary to popular belief, the Bible doesn’t actually talk about perfection all that much.  This is a rare occurrence.  Paul was a good Jew, well versed in the ways of the Torah and astute in his understanding of Hebraic thought.  The Jewish understanding, and in turn, Paul’s understanding, of perfection is different than our Western understanding.  We think of perfection as a static reality.  If a flower arrangement or a song is perfect, then rearranging a single stem or a single note would make it imperfect.  But the Jewish mind thinks of perfection as a dynamic reality.  Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote this:

“To the Jewish mind, the understanding of God is not achieved by referring… to ideas of perfection, but rather by sensing the living acts of His concern, to His dynamic attentiveness to man. We speak not of His goodness in general but of His compassion for the individual man in a particular situation.”

So when Paul writes that Christ’s power is made perfect in our weakness, he does not mean that in our moment of frailty, we are made suddenly, statically whole, without defect or flaws.  What he means is that our very weakeness is what creates the space for God to enter our stories, to reveal his dynamic attentiveness to us, to display his compassion on us perfectly in our particular situations.  When we are weak, our eyes are opened wide to watch as Christ rescues us perfectly.

Whether you’re sick like me or feeling just fine, remember that we are all people in need of rescue.  We are too weak to accomplish anything great on our own.  And it is this realization that opens us up to experience the perfect power of God changing us and the world around us.

It’s 8pm.  I’m going to go take a Nyquil now.  Good night.

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January 25, 2013

Possibility of the Present

Here we are, more than three weeks into the new year and I’m still struggling with the idea of “2013.”  It doesn’t sound real.  It’s a little too futuristic for my taste.  Remember the second Back to the Future movie?  Marty McFly travels to 2015 and encounters a world of flying cars, hover boards and Jaws 19.  Now, 2015 is just a couple of years away.  There are no flying cars, hover boards or Jaws 19.  This is how time seems to work.  As the future marches toward us, it often loses the glow of possibility and in its transformation from future to present, its light grows stale, replaced by the dim glow of muted reality.

Unlike Marty McFly, you and I cannot travel into the future.  We are forever wed to the present.  It is our constant companion, with us in good times and bad, saturating every bit of our reality.  The present is our reality.  And we have a constant choice before us – we can choose to grow tired and weary of the perceived limits of our present lives or we can choose another way.

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going.  What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope. – Thomas Merton

If we would stop for a moment and consider all that the present offers us – all of its possibilities and challenges – we might find ourselves living under what Chesterton calls freer skies.  We might allow ourselves to breathe in more deeply and enjoy more fully the wonders of today.  Instead of fixating on our resolutions for the next year, what would it be like to live with a resolve to embrace the reality of the next twenty-four hours?  How full might our hearts become if we took the emotional stock we placed in hope for the future and instead began investing in living fully into our today?  The truth is, today holds just as much possibility as any day that’s ever been and any that will ever be.  Today, the sun came up and it will shortly go back down.  This rhythm reminds us that today is finite and precious.  We will never get this back.  The present is literally once in a lifetime.  So let’s embrace it.  Let’s stop fretting about what isn’t and what should be.  Let’s immerse ourselves deeply and fully into what could be, right now.  Let’s give ourselves to big hopes, big dreams and let’s give ourselves to them in this moment.  Let’s open our eyes to see the possibilities of today and embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

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November 7, 2012

Presidents, Caesars, Empires

The post-election vitriol and venom that’s being slung around like mud seems to be especially destructive and ugly this time around.  It says a lot of things, not the least of which is that ours is a highly polarized and passionate nation.  This isn’t a bad thing.  We ought to fight for the things we believe in and speak our minds when it comes to issues that matter.  That’s one of the great tenets of our society – that we are free to say as we please.

Social media is amplifying everything.  Facebook and Twitter have become middle school back lots where we stand around with our chests puffed out, our friends standing behind us, cheering us on as we stare down those who disagree, pushing each other a bit but holding back from actually throwing a punch for fear of repercussion or embarrassment.  I get it.  Emotions are running high.  Half of us feel like we’re sinking and half of us feel like we’re soaring.  But can we reconsider things a bit?

When Jesus was born in a small Bethlehem cave, the world was in turmoil.  Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome, suffocated the land with a violent, iron fist.  Caesar, the emperor of the empire, was considered a deity and dominated the political landscape with no equal and no accountability.  He was king and lord and no one could say otherwise for fear of execution.  The Jews were a marginalized people, living on the outskirts of the empire, paying up to 90% of what they made in various taxes to the empire and fighting amongst themselves about the best way out of the mess they found themselves in.  All the while, they were awaiting their Messiah, the promised Savior and King who would be sent by God to free them from tyranny and restore their nation to its rightful place.  Almost all of the Biblical story, from beginning to end, is told from the perspective of people living under the oppression of an empire.  It is written from the margins, echoing across generations from the cracks and crevices of poverty, slavery and tragedy.  Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Assyria, Rome.  These are the superpowers in the narrative.  Israel is almost always found flattened beneath the trampling feet of empires larger and more powerful.

This is why God commands over and over again to care for the alien and widow and orphan, to leave some crop on the edges for the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to take in the stranger, to visit the prisoner, to clothe the needy and to love the enemy.  God is not imposing a set of backwards ideals that make no sense.  No.  God is commanding them to live in a way that makes the most sense possible.  He’s speaking to a nation that has no land, full of widows who’ve lost beloved spouses to war and death, to children who’ve lost parents to famine and disease, to a people who’ve tasted hunger and thirst and who’ve lived on the margins as strangers, to a people who know all too well the dark gray of prison cells, the anguish of desperate need, the bitter cold of winter and the pain of being ostracized as the enemy.

Jesus entered this story and instead of winning an election and toppling an empire, he succumbed to death on the cross.  Instead of political victory, he achieved something far greater – victory from the grave.  He reversed human trajectory.  No longer must we fear the end of this life.  And along the way, Jesus touched lepers and ate with prostitutes.  He also partied with the rich and drank with the social elite.  He didn’t side with the poor or the rich.  He didn’t run to the left or right of political center.  He simply did away with the divisions altogether in order to remind us all that in God’s kingdom, we are all beloved sons and daughters, nothing more and nothing less.

So in this post election season, as followers of Jesus, may we remember that we are called to make a difference, not just a point.  May we remember that no man is our savior nor our downfall.  May we remember that we are shaped as a people by the decisions we make on a daily basis, not just on election day.  The choice you made to check either “Obama” or “Romney” on your ballot did very little in terms of actually changing the world.  Remember that the hard work begins with you.  We can all choose to make political policies and agendas the crutches upon which we lean, doing nothing and blaming it on everyone but ourselves.  Or we can choose to go above and beyond by loving and giving sacrificially, accepting and embracing those who don’t deserve it, replacing our appetite for fairness with a hunger for grace and mercy.  It’s what Jesus did and it is to him alone we ought to pledge our complete allegiance.  So today I pray along with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney that God would indeed bless America.  And I pray that this blessing would look nothing like what we desire in our selfish hearts and instead would only be what God desires for us as a people.

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October 29, 2012

Baseball, Bob Goff & Perseverance

Last night I watched the San Francisco Giants win their second World Series championship in three seasons.  Unbelievable.  While they were clinching in Detroit, more than 10,000 fans gathered at San Francisco’s Civic Center plaza to watch and celebrate.  The entire Bay Area’s come alive these past few years because of baseball.

I first fell in love with the San Francisco Giants because in 1989, Will Clark hit .650 in the NLCS against the Cubs.  He hit two homers in game one of that series and at the time, I thought that was the most superhuman thing I’d ever seen.  I couldn’t get the soccer ball out of the infield during kickball games at recess and here’s Will Clark hitting two homers at Wrigley Field.  One was a grand slam, by the way.  I was hooked.

But here’s what I’ve come to really love about baseball over the years.  It’s not about one game or one player.  It’s not even about one playoff series.  What I love about baseball is that every detail matters infinitely more than any detail that’s come before precisely because there’s so much that’s come before.  Sergio Romo struck out Miguel Cabrera last night in the final at-bat of the World Series.  The slider he threw to strike Cabrera out, that single pitch, was absolutely the most important pitch in all the world at that moment.  But it was only as important as it was because Giants pitchers threw more than 20,000 pitches over 162 games in the regular season just to get to the playoffs and another 2,000 pitches over 15 games in the playoffs in order to get to Romo’s final pitch.

Baseball is a game of few successes built slowly over time upon heaps of failures.  It requires patience and perseverance.  And the only guarantee is that perfection is impossible.  No one bats 1.000 and no team wins all 162.  In the modern era, Rogers Horsby holds the record for highest batting average [.424] and the Seattle Mariners hold the record for most wins in a season [116].  This means that the absolute greatest hitter in a single season still failed almost 58% of the time and that the winningest team still lost 46 times.  In baseball, success is the exception and failure is the rule.  This is what makes the game great.  Successes are savored, enjoyed and celebrated because they’re rare and take a long while to achieve.

If baseball offers us any great life lesson, it’s this: It is the often mundane and monotonous journey, full of failures and imperfections, leading us to the rarified air of success, that makes the success itself meaningful and significant.  

Our tendency in life is to see others’ highlights and compare our failures to their successes.  The other week, our church had the chance to host Bob Goff.  As he spoke and shared his story, I couldn’t help but wonder, “What am I doing with my life?”  This is a common response when we experience others’ highlights.  But what’s true about Bob and what’s true about the San Francisco Giants is what’s true about me.  The highlights only matter because there have been so many low-lights that have come before.  The world-changing successes have been built upon story after story of failure and imperfection.  It’s only when we embrace this reality that we might begin enjoying the entire journey and seeing our stories with the proper perspective.  They say that Babe Ruth was fond of saying, “Every strike gets me closer to the next home run.”  He was right.  Maybe the difference between those who change the world and those who don’t is as simple as making the decision to push onward when failures and imperfections nudge at us to quit.

I love how James encourages us in his New Testament letter:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. [James 1:2-4]

So when you fail, push onward.  Keep going.  Persevere.  Remember that your failures and imperfections are the steps you’ll climb to your greatest successes.

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September 26, 2012

Microbrews, House Churches, Community

A few months ago, the New York Times ran an article about the recent comeback of the London beer scene.  It made me want to fly to London, enjoy a few pints and watch a little football [Wayne Rooney, not Tom Brady].  Here’s a snippet from the article:

Indeed, London is experiencing a craft beer renaissance so remarkable that keeping up has become a full-time job… Despite its history as the home of many of the world’s best-loved brewing styles —  IPA, porter, stout, brown ale and Russian imperial stout are all from here — London’s beer culture suffered through several decades of decline, resulting in just seven working breweries by 2006…  But today, the number has at least tripled, with adventurous new ales and lagers appearing from the likes of Camden Town Brewery, which first fired its kettles in 2010, and the East London Brewing Company, which dates from 2011. In addition, a new generation of pubs and bars makes it easy for beer-loving travelers to sample local flavors and rub elbows with the natives.

I knew nothing about the London beer scene until reading this article.  But oddly enough, I’m inspired by what’s happening there.  Drinking a well crafted microbrew is special because you’re enjoying something unique and finite, limited in its availability, to be appreciated fully because another chance at it is far from guaranteed.  A few of my friends have been talking recently about a beer called Pliny the Elder.  It’s brewed at the Russian River Brewing Company, about 100 miles north of where we live.  I’ve been told that other than driving the two hours to Santa Rosa, the only way to get my hands on one is to luck out and find it at one of the few, sporadic liquor stores they distribute to on occasion.  This same brewing company also produces another IPA called Pliny the Younger.  Reviews on the user-driven site beeradvocate.com deem it “the best beer in the world.”  Russian River Brewing Company only offers Pliny the Younger for two weeks in February because of the extensive time and space required to brew it properly.

And herein lies the beauty of what we’re seeing in both the London beer scene renaissance and local breweries like Russian River.  Bigger is not better.  More, faster is the working formula for mass producing the same old product over and over again but it doesn’t work when attempting to create something memorable.  Profit margins take a backseat when it comes to making great beer.  Budweiser profits are in the billions annually while the best beer in the world makes Russian River Brewing Company a minimal profit during its two week run every February.  Crafting a truly memorable beer like Pliny the Younger requires patience over time with meticulous attention paid to the details and an emphasis on developing unique flavors that tell a story and leave an indelible mark.  The really great stuff takes a while.

I am challenged by these characteristics of brewing great beer because they seem to share so much in common with the process of learning to live with and for others as followers of Jesus.  There are all sorts of models used by churches to try and create authentic, genuine community.  Each has its pros and cons.  At some point we simply choose and do our best.  My church community uses the House Church model.  In addition to our Sunday worship services, we gather in communities of 20-40 in various homes throughout our city in the middle of the week to try and create exactly what these brewers are trying to craft in their beers.  Something great, something memorable, something worth enjoying fully.  Something that tells a story worth telling.  And while it might be easier to mass produce House Churches, following a static, fixed formula, I am finding that doing the difficult work of paying attention to the meticulous details of each and every unique community is the only way for us to create the sorts of communities that truly mean something, both to themselves and to the world.  Christian communities, whatever the context and method might be, universally require extensive time and space.  We must live into them patiently.  They need the space to grow and develop their own unique flavors.  None of this is easy but nothing great ever is.  The writer of Hebrews implores us to not give up meeting together and encouraging each other [Hebrews 10:24-25].  Paul instructs us to bear with each other and to forgive each other [Colossians 3:13].  He takes it even further by calling us to carry each other’s burdens [Galatians 6:2].

Keep meeting together… encourage… bear with one another… forgive… carry each other’s burdens…

This is all so difficult.  It will cost us time and space.  It will cost us comfort and convenience.  But it will be worth it.  Because together, in our giving up of self for the good of the other, we will begin crafting our own unique communities that will shape us into the people God intends.  We will begin crafting communities that tell the world a better story of God’s love than the mass produced versions they’ve been told before.

One of the brewing companies leading the charge in the London beer renaissance says this in their mission statement: We are passionate brewers of cask ale, committed to crafting beers with character and integrity.  Located in north London, this brewery is called Redemption Brewing Company.  I hope and pray that we would all together passionately engage in the difficult and glorious work of crafting communities of character and integrity and that as we do, we might see and experience the redemption of God in ourselves, our communities and our world in ways that leave us all changed forever.

*If you live in or near the San Jose area and are interested in journeying with us in one of our House Church communities, you can email me at jay@awakeningchurch.com for info or sign up online.

©Luke Wolagiewicz for The New York Times

 

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August 20, 2012

Instagram, Jesus, and The Power of Words

This is my first blog entry in almost two months.  Some of the blame goes to the fact that I’ve been working on a church plant launching in a few weeks while also finishing up my last few seminary classes.  But equal blame must be given to Instagram.  After years of relenting, I finally bought an iPhone a couple of months ago and then immediately downloaded Instagram.  It seems that I simultaneously forgot how to write.  This blog went untouched and unchecked.  My twitter went from being a place to share my thoughts in prose to a digital art gallery of 5-megapixel snippets of my uneventful life, gussied up with “this-isn’t-really-as-cool-as-it-looks” filters like X-pro II or Hefe.  So instead of writing about my thoughts on God, faith, hope, love, etc., I’ve spent my time recently bringing you thoughtful pieces such as…

Hairs on Faces in Strange & Lovely Places

Tapatio Versus Dinosaur on Volcanic Rock

My Imminent Future

I’ve missed writing.  For me, writing is an exhale of thoughts, ideas and questions.  Not writing makes me feel sick.  It takes a while but eventually I start to feel an emotional nausea, as though the stuff rumbling around inside starts to spoil.  So here I am, writing again and it feels great.

The phrase A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words is said to find its roots in advertising.  It’s catchy and clever and memorable.  At times it’s romantic.  But it’s incomplete.  Advertising is by nature incomplete.  A picture may very well be worth a thousand words but the truth is, a few well written or well spoken words can paint a thousand pictures.  Words have erected and toppled empires.  Words have inspired and broken hearts.  Words have spoken into life both good and evil over the course of human history.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John begins his Gospel this way.  Logos [λόγος] is Greek for word.  This is how John describes Jesus.  Words are relational by nature.  When a word is spoken or written, its significance lies not in its utterance or written form in and of itself.  Rather, its significance lies in what the word does when it reaches the listener or reader.  Words come to life only in as much as they affect those for whom the word was given.  And in Jesus, the Word that was with God and the Word that is God, we receive the most powerful word ever spoken.  It is a word of grace and hope and love.  Regarding this passage at the beginning of John’s Gospel, N.T. Wright says:

John is consciously echoing the first chapter of Genesis: In the beginning God made heaven and earth; in the beginning was the Word.  When the Word becomes flesh, heaven and earth are joined together at last, as God always intended.

And so God speaks his Word to us in the life, death, and resurrection of his Son and his Son, the Word, brings it all together.  The Word of God mends back together the fabric of reality that was torn in the Garden.  The Word restores the union that was always intended for heaven and earth – that they would be one and the same, God with us, walking in the cool of the day as he did in Genesis 3.  May this be a reminder to us that words matter.  Our words, whether spoken, written, or otherwise expressed, matter.  What we say to God and what we say to others – it all matters.

So speak and write words that mend and restore.  Your words have the power to heal.  So speak and write them well.  Join together the broken things of this world with your words.  Speak light into dark places.  Write joy into the hearts of the hurting.  Put down your phone, stop living 5-megapixels at a time, and spend some time on crafting words of life that just might help change the world.

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June 27, 2012

Six Months, Six Lessons in Church Planting

In January, I started working on a church plant with a few friends.  My involvement wasn’t public until late February because of various timing issues but in total, I’m six months into this new venture.  As a church planting novice, this first half year has been eye opening, challenging, and exhilarating.  Here are six lessons I’ve learned from my first six months as a church planter.  This is by no means a comprehensive or definitive list for church planters – just a few things I’ve learned in my context.

Love for Community begins with Love for Team.  I love the people I work with.  I don’t just love working with them or planting a church with them.  I actually love them.  This love has developed over the past few months as we’ve been in the trenches, grinding it out on most days.  There is a sense of family that develops out of friendship when sharing something as intimate and intense as planting a church.  I’ve found that my love for our team has deeply influenced my heart for our community.  I am beginning to see our community as an extension of our team and so it has become increasingly more natural for me to love our community because I so deeply love our team.

Focus on Growing Stronger, Not Bigger.  I stole this directly from my friend Ryan, who also happens to be my boss and co-planter.  Let’s not over simplify and say that size doesn’t matter.  It does, for a number of reasons we won’t get into here.  But when an organization, especially a church, focuses primarily on getting bigger, there is a growing temptation to speed up the process in all sorts of unhealthy, unnatural ways.  Healthy things grow naturally, so a focus on growing stronger will result in healthy growth, often in supernatural ways.

Celebrate People, not Programs.  Churches, especially here in the west, are designed with our worship services and various programs offered as the centerpieces of what we do and, in turn, who we are.  But most of us would also agree that the church is people, not a building, a service, or a program.  Many of us have said as much.  We must address this discrepancy not just with our words but with our actions, in what we celebrate, promote, and emphasize.  We must focus on celebrating the stories of what God is doing in people and place less emphasis on all the cool stuff we’re doing or the great programs we offer.

Friendships trump Strategies & Systems… Strategies and systems are vital [more on that below] but friendships are of primary importance.  Jesus calls his disciples friends [John 15:14-15] and bases this friendship on the disciples’ ability and willingness to remain in his love for them, love one another, obey his commands, and produce fruit with their lives.  It seems to me that these are the essentials of any church – love God, love one another, follow him in obedience, and watch as God produces fruit through our efforts.  As such, we must begin with friendship – friendship with God and with one another.  Friendships are built on trust and where there is trust, there is room for failure, learning, and growth.  There is also joy, delight, and rest in friendships.  I’ve found this to be the best place from which to operate when church planting.

…But Strategies & Systems are Necessary.  I’m not good with strategies and systems. I tend to be much more abstract and ambiguous in my thinking, which gets me into trouble sometimes.  Thankfully, I’m surrounded by friends who are very strategic and great with creating systems.  Some have made the mistake of thinking that allowing the Spirit to lead means sitting by idly, waiting for something to happen with no plan in place, totally unprepared to respond well if and when God moves.  During the Exodus, as God led the Israelites through the wilderness, the people lived within a nomadic system with a detailed strategy for packing up and moving quickly whenever God was on the move.  Strategies and systems are never the catalysts for life change but they are the operating procedures which allow us to move with God as he leads our kingdom charge into our city.

God’s Kingdom has no room for our Empires.  The temptation for most of us, from small church plants to established mega-churches, is to build our own empires.  No one ever really admits to empire-building but it’s seen in a number of ways – lack of relationship with other churches, with the city, and with the community.  In these last six months, I’ve been humbled and inspired by the ways other churches in our city have rallied around us, supported us, and come to our aid in times of need.  Our relationships with these churches reminds me that we are all in this together.  Our churches are not warring empires from distant lands.  They are all cities on the one hill of God’s eternal kingdom.  When we embrace this reality, we are released from all sorts of false pressures and can more effectively go about the eternal work God has called all of us to.

*If you live in or near the San Jose area and are interested in hearing more about the launch of Awakening Church this fall, you can email me at jay@awakeningchurch.com or check us out online at www.awakeningchurch.com

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