South Sister Summit.

Jerell Carper - Pastoral Intern. Working with High School Youth Group.

Paul Crouse - Discipleship Intern. Working creating art for Antioch.

The horizon vs. the climb gradient. It was steep, especially on that last 1500 ft. to the summit.

If you look closely, those tiny white dots over on the left side of the ridge, are actually people. The upper rim of South Sister is big.

Me, climbing to the summit.

Broken Top Mountain from the summit of South Sister. Broken Top was (is?) a volcano.

Hydrating.

With a view like this, how could you NOT worship? I can't begin to imagine the sheer scope and beauty of heaven.

Really big lakes look really small from way up here.

Matt Albacete - Graphics Intern. Working on computer graphics and media for Antioch.

The interns at the top of South Sister.

August 2

This past weekend, we had our church-wide Family Camp: time for the church family of Antioch to meet up at Camp Tadmor and spend time with each other. I had the time of my life getting demolished in volleyball by a couple far more intimidating former volleyball players (they had to have played volleyball back in their college days, or something). Anyway, helped with skits and setup with the theme of the weekend: Superheroes.

Saturday night, I headed back home early because for yesterday morning’s service, I played special music – a song I wrote while here in Bend. It went well. As soon as I get the link for the video, I’ll post it for you. Most people weren’t there, as they were at Family Camp still, which should take a bit of the pressure off, but I still managed to forget a word. Oh well.

Matt, my mentor and ministry focus leader this summer, delivered a great message this Sunday about wisdom. Again, I’ll post a link to the message as soon as I get it. He spoke of the secular/sacred divide and how to find wisdom, truth, and discernment. It was delivered in a very different way than I expected, and I enjoyed it.

This Friday, I speak at Paradox again, and then Saturday I lead some interns out on a hike to practice solitude and to pray and to meditate on specific truths and questions about God. I hope that it will be rich with beauty and rest and satisfaction. I’m excited about it.

I’ll be posting a few posts this week. It’s our last week here! It’s gone by so fast already, and I feel there’s so much still to do and to prepare for this fall. Overall, in all areas, I’m excited for what God’s done and what he’s going to do in the future. Stay posted!

Mt.13 / Graphics Design / Surf Trip.

Okay, so I’ve been writing and reading and working hard with message preparation for last night at Paradox.  After talking with Matt Smith, the missions pastor of Paradox and my mentor this summer, he told me that each lesson I teach at Paradox will follow the flow and story of what they’ve been working through so far.

Matt Smith

My guidelines were to follow a parable of Jesus, and how it connects with the kingdom.  I picked Mt. 13:33-34.  I’ll post my manuscript below.  Maybe I’ll scan my actual notes (after I print them, I write all over them to help me remember points that will move me along in thought as I speak).  There’s lines and arrows and underlining and circling and notes jotted in the margins.  There’s two parts right at the end that are large quotes from Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis – a book I revisited this week after reading it 4 years ago, and I was surprised to borrow a lot of material from it – I was thinking about the text I would be teaching, and was thinking of teaching it in terms of the enormous expanse that the kingdom is, and when I started reading it, realized my thinking had been shaped in ways I hadn’t realized by the material he had written years ago, along with the teaching of Cornelius Plantinga Jr. in his book Engaging God’s World.  I’ll take the time to type out the quotes for you, because I’ve been so busy this week and haven’t posted in a while, so I hope this will make up for the lack of posts this week.  Anyway, here’s what God’s been teaching me:

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THINKING AND JOY. I’m a thinker.  I think a lot.  I love to think about things, I enjoy it.  I enjoy the little things I thought about before that end up showing up later.

And I think that sometimes joy can come not from just doing the “right” thing, but with understanding it, with thinking about it in a really beautiful way.

Tonight I hope to push and press how you think about this world, about your identity, about the kingdom of God – I want to journey through understanding the kingdom of God to be bigger than maybe you’ve ever thought it could be, and I hope that it can come crashing into your reality, into your life, into your unique story with joy and delight and real, deep, saturating satisfaction.

THEN & NOW. I grew up mostly in the church, and was taught the Bible and what it says – that basically God made everything perfect way back in the beginning and put two people in a place called Eden, they sinned and screwed everything up for us.  Then a bunch of years later – after a big flood, a bunch of wars, some pretty bad kings, and getting kicked out of their country – Israel’s back in Jerusalem and hasn’t heard anything from God in 400 years.  Then comes a Jew named Jesus, who says he’s God and attracts a pretty significant following.  Which didn’t go over well with the local religious leaders.  So before he turns 33, one of his followers stabs him in the back for a little cash from these leaders, and Jesus is crucified. There, he dies for our sins on a cross, then rises again and leaves his life and teachings to his disciples to spread everywhere.  Fast forward 2000 years, and here we are, waiting for his kingdom to come.

It’s a great story, and a real one.

But for me, if that’s all there is to it, and if there’s nothing more to be said or thought about than that, then its dissatisfying to me.  Jesus came, and Jesus is coming back with all the glory of his kingdom.  But I want to know, What about today?  What about this – this life, right here, right now?

QUESTIONS & OUR BROKEN WORLD. I think we all ask those questions.  I know there’s times in my life when I look around – and I see the dysfunction of my family or feel the deep, deep pain in my friend’s life.  There’s times when stories travel from halfway across the world to shatter my own world like glass – and I hear about young girls who are raped and abused by their brothers and fathers on a daily basis, I hear about a country so ravaged by civil war that there are more land mines than people’s feet, I sit and listen to a friend on a street curb cry over her second miscarriage, I realize this world is far from what it was ever meant to be.  I find myself looking for some comfort or distraction, something – anything – that might keep my mind off of that ugly, ugly truth.

This world is broken.  We are broken.  We can look like we have it all together, and life can produce the illusion that all things are exactly as they should be.

But there’s more here than being broken.

LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW. There’s this dichotomy, this split, this division between the IS and the OUGHT.  Our lives are all in this hallway where, at times, we have a feeling or a sense, or we can see, or we experience in some event a glimpse of what the OUGHT looks like.

They are windows.

These windows are events or conversations or even just a moment, where we look out of the IS and see the OUGHT, where we stand in this dark hallway, walk over to the window, wipe the dust away and press our noses to the glass and peer out into the OUGHT – into the world God had always designed for us, the world that he desires for us now – and we see it and we want it.  We want it so badly.

This hallway.  This IS – it can look great.

Until we find ourselves staring out these windows into this fantastic world, this world of wholeness and completeness we could have never dreamed but always knew we were meant for, of all things being exactly what they were always meant to be.  Our eyes have adjusted to a dim world.  But if we’ll step to the window-pane and look out long enough for our eyes to re-adjust, to really see again, we realize…

We are really only left with one reaction.

THE PARABLE. If you have your Bibles, turn with me to MATTHEW 13:33.

He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

For those of you who don’t know, yeast is the thing that makes bread rise. It’s this fine powder you put in the dough mix that keeps bread from being a flat, bubble-less cracker.  And in the Bible, it’s almost unanimously used as a symbol for something negative, something evil, something that corrupts.  It’s used in the Bible to incite the same feeling we get when we think of a computer virus.  And here, it’s using the same imagery, but meant to deliver a different meaning.  This parable, this simile, is told by Jesus so that we can begin to understand the nature of the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is about restoration.  And it’s unstoppable.

The idea of yeast in the dough is really important.  It’s the whole point.  The kingdom of God permeates everything, it is involved with everything, it works through and through and through until it has had its full effect on the whole thing.

Let’s go back to the text – look at verse 34.

Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled  what was spoken through the prophet: “I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.”

Here, Matthew’s calling us back to the beginning. When I think of the kingdom of God, I usually start with Jesus, with his ministry here on earth and him living out the gospel, teaching his disciples, doing miracles.  But Matthew – who we know is specifically writing to a Jewish audience – is calling their minds back to Genesis, back to the story of beginning, before all the bad kings and the wars, before the flood and the fall, back to Eden.  The kingdom was set in motion from the start.

EDEN AND PROGRESS.  Back in Genesis, we find God creating the world – but not just creating the world and looking at it, but creating it so that it embodies and mirrors and reflects who He is.  So God creates land, and then when he wants to make vegetation, he doesn’t create it himself, he says, “let the land produce vegetation” – he’s empowering creation!  We see it with the animals God has made – he tells the birds and fish to fill the skies and seas.  He doesn’t fill the skies and seas.  He has them fill the skies and seas.  He has filled creation with potential and the capacity for progress.  He teaches creation to create, just as He creates.

Then God creates people and tells them to care for it – this creation that’s made to reflect him and his creativity, to progress and increasingly bring him glory by being and operating in the way they were created to be.  Man now has this responsibility for the creation that God has named “good”.  So the first people were intimately connected to their environment, their purposes were inextricably unmistakably intertwined in a beautifully orchestrated masterpiece.

REALLY BIG REDEMPTION. This connectedness – this intertwining intimacy and interaction – is why redemption is so big.  Sometimes we think redemption is just about us.  Sometimes we think the cross is about our forgiveness, about getting back on good terms with God, about Jesus paying for our sins so we can be with him in heaven – and don’t get me wrong, it is!  It is about that, it’s about all those things.  But it is about so much more!  Take a look at Colossians 1:15-20:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead so that in everything, he might have the supremacy.  For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Jesus is about reconciling to himself all things.  All things!  There’s a figure of speech in the Bible called merism, where you name one extreme and then name the opposite extreme, and together they really mean everything in between.  It’s like when someone loses something and they say, ‘I searched that room floor to ceiling’ – they mean they looked everywhere.  Or if someone says ‘I’ve been working on this project from dawn to dusk’ – they mean they’ve been working on it not just in the morning or in the evening, but at all times in between.

Here Jesus isn’t interested in missing anything.  Jesus wants to reconcile to himself all things.  In Eden, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they were in relationship with their environment, they were part of a masterpiece, and when they sinned and stepped out of harmony with God, out of shalom, everything fell apart.  Everything swung into chaos.  Jesus is about restoring everything, making everything right.  In Eden, everything Adam did wrong, Jesus lived out the right way, so that he could reverse and rewind the curse.  Jesus wants to restore all things back into harmony with him, back into shalom.

This is the kingdom and it is now.

A little yeast works through the whole dough.

WHAT NOW? The kingdom of God is about being involved in the movement of Jesus.  He’s taking old things and Jesus says, “See – I am making SOME things new?”  “I am making JUST MANKIND new?”  Jesus says, “See – I am making ALL THINGS new.”

Jesus is bringing heaven to earth.

Jesus is bringing the kingdom here.

Now.

Today.

Do you want to be a part of it?

In his book, Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell says this:

Jesus wants his followers to bring heaven, not hell, to earth.  This has been God’s intention for people since the beginning.  Jesus is not teaching anything new for his day.  God walked in the garden, looking for Adam and Eve.  God told the Israelites to build a tabernacle so he could live in their midst.  King Solomon built a temple, God’s house, so God could live permanently among his people.  And when Jesus comes, he’s referred to as God “taking on flesh and dwelling among us.”  Another translation of this verse is, “The word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”

The entire movement of the Bible is of a God who wants to be here, with his people.  The church is described later as being the temple of God.  And how does the Bible end?  With God “coming down” and taking up residence here on earth.

True spirituality then is not about escaping this world to some other place where we will be forever.  A Christian is not someone who expects to spend forever in heaven there.  A Christian is someone who anticipates spending forever here, in a new heaven that comes to earth.

The goal isn’t escaping this world but making this world the kind of place God can come to.  And God is remaking us into the kind of people who can do this kind of work.  (Velvet Elvis | 149-150).

T’SHUVA.

The kingdom is here.  The kingdom is now, it is present every day, will we open our eyes to it?  Will we participate in the movement of Jesus?  Are we in the business of restoring and renewing and reconciling all things?  What would that look like?  What does it look like to bring heaven here?  What does it look like for the kingdom to work its way through the whole batch of dough?

I want to leave you with this:

The remaking of this world is why Jesus’ first messages began with “T’shuva, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

The Hebrew word t’shuva means “to return.”  Return to the people we were originally created to be.  The people God is remaking us into.

God makes us in his image.  We reflect the beauty and creativity and wonder of the God who made us.  And Jesus calls us to return to our true selves.  The pure, whole people God originally intended us to be, before we veered off course.

Somewhere in you is the you whom you were made to be.

We need you to be you.

We don’t need a second anybody.  We need the first you.

The problem is that the image of God is deeply scarred in each of us, and we lose trust in God’s version of our story.  It seems too good to be true.  And so we go searching for identity.  We achieve and we push and we perform and we shop and we work out and we accomplish great things, longing to repair the image.  Longing to find an identity that feels right.

Longing to be comfortable in our own skin.

But the thing we are searching for is not somewhere else.  It is right here.  And we can only find it when we give up the search, when we surrender, when we trust.  Trust that God is already putting us back together.

Trust that through dying to the old, the new can give birth.

Trust that Jesus can repair the scarred and broken image.

It is trusting that I am loved.  That I always have been.  That I always will be.  I don’t have to do anything.  I don’t have to prove anything or achieve anything or accomplish one more thing.  That exactly as I am, I am totally accepted, forgiven, and there is nothing I could ever do to lose this acceptance.

God knew exactly what he was doing when he made you.  There are no accidents.  We need you to embrace your true identity, who you are in Christ, letting this new awareness transform your life.

That is what Jesus had in mind.

That is what brings heaven to earth.  (Velvet Elvis | 150-151).

Be who you were made to be.  Ask someone who knows you well – a really good friend or a family member and ask them the one or two things you are great at.  Who is it that you were made to be?  What is it you were uniquely crafted to do?  When we discover this, we are in process of restoring the image of God in us, restoring our first nature, our deepest purpose.  We open the windows of this hallway out into the OUGHT and pull it into the IS.  We take hold of it and allow it to renew us and restore us and reconcile us, and then we become the renewal and restoration and reconciliation of all other things.  Be who you were made to be.  Bring heaven to earth. Bring the kingdom here.

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In addition to message preparation and delivery, I’ve been working on graphics and media to be used for Paradox on Friday nights.  I’m designing three different cards that will be available to people coming to Paradox: a connection card, a card telling people what we’re about and who we are, and a card that has our calendar and events on it.  Here’s the first card, FRONT then BACK:

Contact Card (FRONT)

Contact Card (BACK)

In total, this card took 8 hours.

Last week, some of the interns went on a surf trip to the Oregon coast with the Antioch leaders.  It started off as a really rainy, cold day.  We walked all of our gear and stuff over to the shoreline and we were soaked with rain and mist and the wind was blowing, clouds were rolling over our heads, blocking the sun.  It looked bleak.  I was still really stoked about surfing, but I knew it wouldn’t be as fun without great weather.  And then, out of nowhere, the sun started to shine through, the temperature rose, and it turned into a beautiful day of relaxation and soaking in the beauty of creation.  We enjoyed one another’s company, and had a great day.  Here’s some photos:

First time I saw the Pacific Ocean.

The beach was a cove, where waves would come in to a roundabout, and was perfect for beginner surfers to practice catching some waves.

One of our intern friends spending some quiet quality time with God, just before he shared some of his heart and participated in communion together there on the beach.

I'd love to live by the ocean. Surfing is so much fun, and the coast is beautiful.

Antioch leaders and interns had a small fire and made food for lunch and dinner on the beach. Everyone had a great time, and as the sun began to sink, we grabbed our coats.

We stopped before leaving the beach to take some pictures of the beautiful view. It was breathtaking.

Rocks like these jut out of the water where we were surfing. There was a giant rock that was in the film "The Goonies" and we got to see that, too.

Here's some of the other interns enjoying the view - (from left to right) - Matt Albecete, Cole Timm, Liz Hild, Marianne Bach, and Becca Batten.

The sun set, and it was glorious.

PARADOX.

Tonight was my first night at Antioch’s college ministry, Paradox (paradox.antiochchurch.org), and all this week we’ve been meeting as interns with the church leaders and our specific internship supervisors.  Mine is Matt Smith – we had coffee today and went through some “getting-to-know-you” time, and we’ll be working on possibilities for Paradox together very soon.  I’ll have my hands full.  It’s going to require a great deal of time, because Matt wisely refuses to settle for simple answers and symptomatic solutions, but rather reaches deeper to the core of our beings, asking questions of our identity, our fears, our hopes, our needs, and most importantly – our God.

Tonight, Paradox went well.  It was my night to simply observe and understand what is going on already.  I think it would be arrogant and naive to strut right in as an intern and act as if I have the answers to all questions regarding ministry.  It is extremely important for me to learn first.  Always.  It is damaging and destructive whenever we enter into a situation, circumstance, or someone’s story thinking we know it all.  That is why it  has been so crucial to hear Matt’s heart for Bend, to try to step into his worldview and how he sees God involved, and listen to his wisdom.  God is here in Bend, and God is at Paradox.  It is my desire to find him there, and join him.

More to come on Paradox.

Day[1].

(I was going to post this yesterday morning before I left, but my computer wouldn’t let me, then it died.  But we can pretend like it’s still yesterday.)

Good morning!  In just a while, we will be having our first official meeting of the internship to kick off the next ten weeks, get our intern vehicles, and get everything set into motion with our respective leaders.  With Paradox, I’ll be meeting with Matt – I don’t know him very well yet, but I’ve heard such great things about him and the wisdom he has to offer that I’m looking forward to learning from him, growing because of what God is doing in him, and participating with him in what God is doing here in Bend and at Antioch.

Today, kicked off the day at 5:00AM with a 4 mile run in the woods.  Jen and Forrest are running the half marathon coming up here, and they’re training, so I might join them.  They ran the whole 13 (or so) mi course on Sunday.  I’m not in good enough shape to have that endurance, but hopefully by the end of summer I can.  It’s great all the outdoor sports and activities that are available here throughout Bend and out in the woods, caves, mountains, and rivers.  Yesterday the church leaders took the interns that had arrived already out to the lava tubes and we went spelunking.  Which is pretty much cave exploring.  We went as far as we could go, belly-crawling through the dirt and climbing over rocks.  I’d post a video, but apparently it costs money to do that here on WordPress.

Sunday evening Paul and I were given tickets to go see a show at the Les Schwab Amphitheater downtown.  Three bands played: Dawes, She & Him, and Band of Horses.   They were great, especially Band of Horses.  There was even an accidental simultaneous fireworks show just down the river a bit from the amphitheater during the band’s final song.  We had a good time, and got to know Cole, one of our Bend friends, and a few of his friends.  A big thanks to Jen and Forrest for giving those to us.  That was an amazing blessing.

Yesterday was Paul’s birthday, too!  He just turned 25.  The boys made cards for Paul when we got home from spelunking, and we had apple pie and ice cream with them, and played a little “would you rather” game.  That’s always a blast.  He loved it.

So now I’m about to eat breakfast and head out for the church offices with Paul, and we’re going to get this thing started!  Please continue to pray for everyone here.  It means so much, and it is our act of surrendering our lives and the lives of those we know and love in speech before God.  That’s a big deal to me, and I deeply appreciate your prayers and support.  I can’t say it enough: can’t do it without you all.  And I wouldn’t be where I am were each of you not present in my life.  Thank you.

Now let’s get this party started.

Here’s some pictures from the past few days!

Antioch meets in a nearby high school. There were more people there than we expected.

Redux meets after the morning service as a Q&A time where people can text or ask questions.

At the Les Schwab amphitheater, She&Him played. Zoey is "she", but the old guy here isn't "him".

She&Him

Band of Horses.

Band of Horses.

Spelunking in the lava tubes with Jarrell.

Interns riding back from the caves.

Paul, hangin in the caves. Happy Birthday, Paul

This is Angus. He came spelunking with us. It was pretty amazing.