start/continue a church

I’m contemplating taking this goal off of here. Not because I don’t want to do it anymore but because I’m not sure I really know what I mean by “start a church”. I don’t think very many other people do either.
I guess I kind of know what my goal is. I just dont know what it looks like…
I really just want to have a group of people that I can call family, that are Christians, that are there the second I need them and I can be there for them the second they need me. I’m not sure I want to set up a structure or anything like that. I really, deeply just want to live my life as close to God as is humanly possible and I want to take people along with me. Really my goal in life, and the real essence of this goal, is I want to be able to say to,everyone, but specifically to a group of people that I call my family, “Follow me as I follow Christ”. That’s really all Paul did. He spread the good news to people all over the place and told them “Follow me just like I follow Christ”. Paul was a tent maker for his profession. He had a ‘real’ job so he could pay the bills. He just lived his life. But he lived it, knowing that he was a creature made by God for a love relationship with that God and that that was only possible through Jesus. So while he lived his normal life, he told people what he knew to be true. That’s really all I want to do. I just don’t know what that specifically looks like right now. I’ll just do whatever God tells me to do. It’s all good.

Oh man. I’m so glad I went to service today. I wasn’t going to because I’m feeling kind of sick and I don’t like RFA service. But God moved today. He called for His children, and they answered. People gave their life to HIM today!! GOD IS CALLING HIS CHILDREN!!! I really wonder how many people gave their life to Christ today all across the world. God is moving. It’s time. It’s time we get on board. He is leading. He is the pillar of smoke and the pillar of fire. He’s MOVING! It’s TIME to follow!
God is issuing His call to love. LOVE! The highest goal! The only goal. The only command in this new law of faith.
I don’t care what love prompts you to do, just do it! If your honest response to true love for GOD then love for others is to put together a service that people can come to every week and if that is the BEST and MOST EFFECTIVE way to show the LOVE of Christ to others, then by all means do it! Go ahead and continue!
But if your love urges you to do something else, then shake off the dust of what people have told you “church” HAS TO look like. I don’t care what you do as long as it is the honest response of your love. If your response is a weekly service, do it because you love. If your response is to show love to a prostitute, then show love.
If you say that you love, if you claim that you have made love your highest goal(ie if you have claimed to be a Christian), then don’t wait for people to come running to you. Don’t sit there basking in the love of God and say “If people want it, they can come and get it. If they don’t, they don’t”. Do you think that’s what God said? Absolutely not! He said, “I love them so much! The only way that they will realize it, is if I make myself like one of them and let my body be ripped to shreds. Perhaps if they see my blood splash onto the earth, perhaps then they will realize my love for them” God’s response to love was dying for us. If your honest response to love is to open doors to a service and say “Come on in, if you want”, then go ahead. If you love prompts you to stay put, then stay put. But if you love people like God loves them, MOVE! Don’t you dare wait for people to come to you and claim that you love them.
God is moving, loving. Are we going to follow?
I want to. I have to.
Romans 10:13-15 “For ‘Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’. But how will they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is what the Scriptures mean when they say ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news!’”

So I mentioned in a previous entry, that I don’t wanna become one of the rock stars of the church. Ya know, the people who walk into a room and instantly there’s applause and they just smile because they know it’s for them but the want to be humble still. The people who know they have power and seize it.

I’ve been given the task/opportunity to speak to the first and second year Masters classes as well as several visitors this Friday at our chapel service called “Encounter”. This week, all the 3rd years and staff that runs Masters is in Phoenix for the huge Masters convention. It’s tradition that the first years put on their own Impact night (where we take our regularly scheduled chapel and move it to the evening and open it to the public). Well they(my first year classmates) elected me to speak that night. As soon as people decided on me, they instantly started acting a little different. Although they were mildly sarcastic they were saying things like “Oh, you can just call him Pastor Ethan, now”. And they were congratulating me on being the one to speak! Whether they realized it or not, the had, within a matter of minutes, put me on a pedestal. We had another meeting about Encounter today and people were telling me that if I needed ANYTHING for that night, that I could just let them know and they’d get it for me. I mean, things like that are ok because people know that preparing message is time consuming and being a Masters stupid, time is sparse. But now, every little detail about Friday is being run by ME.
I don’t know. I could go on with examples of things but it’s not really important I guess. But I definitely see how people can easily accept the role of being a rock star in the church. People look at you different. It’s kind of nice, to be honest. It feels good. But it’s not good.
Don’t take this to say that I hate having responsibility and hate being looked at as a leader. By all means, that’s what God has put it in me to do and I’ll do it with all my heart. All I want people to realize is that I’m a servant. I’ve been entrusted with the task of communicating the heart of the Father. I think if people really understood that, they’d spend more effort praying for me than thinking of creative elements to help get my point across. I think if I understood this, I’d pray for my leaders more…

This is key.
John 14:11-14 says “11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. 12I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

This goal and the things I hope it will bring CANNOT be motivated only by the desire to change. Just because I think church is wrong and I really desire to have it be the way it was meant to be, just because I believe I have vision for what it should be, doesn’t mean it will be successful. I could do things just right, we could be the church as Christ intended, we could act just right, but if the only reason we do that is because we want to be different then what we used to be, we will fail. I can’t be motivated by excitement or trying something new. Those things are great and will definitely boost morale but they don’t even hint at success. The only thing that guarantees success is Jesus. Plain and simple. Not creative ideas and perfect methods. It is Christ alone who is the Way and the Truth and the Life.

“You are the Life to my heart and my soul,
You are the light to the darkness around me,
You are the hope for the hopeless and broken,
You are the only, Truth and the Way.”

‘Church’ is not the way it should be. things need to change. people, minds, hearts, focuses, politics, economics, loyalties, all these need to change for ‘church’ to be what it was meant to be: the bride of Christ. Cameron and I have been talking about this for a long time. It’s our vision.