Enter New Phase.

Yesterday was my first day as an RA back at Moody (RA stands for Resident Assistant). Been busy the past two weeks with RA training and preparation for new and returning students, leadership meetings, conflict resolution programs, etc. It will be fun and challenging to be the RA of a new floor. I’m looking forward to this new phase of my life.

This summer has been great. I would be overstating if I said it was phenomenal, but it was far better than any other summer I’ve had. I think. Here’s my review (I’ll indent it to make it look more official):

Antioch church has some really amazing qualities to it. The staff and leadership have expressed great interest in exploring, examining, exposing, and encouraging the divine design inherent in each of us as bearers of the image of God. That is a great goal to strive toward, since it makes God supremely valuable in valuing and trusting the purpose of his created design. I’ve always thought this to be idealistic, but it’s been so good to see it actually in practice. It will be great to see how this continues to play itself out as the church grows.

The internship is both fun and hard work, and the church is young, so there is lots to do. If you aren’t doing anything, just ask, and you’ll have plenty to work on. Meetings are short and sweet: this is awesome. For everyone. I don’t know if anyone really likes meetings, and so when we are able to maximize our time by sticking to the allotted time frame and meeting schedule. Things moved quickly. Meeting times and events were communicated clearly and continued to be communicated clearly throughout the course of the internship.

Mentorship was great. I had Matt Smith as my mentor. He has been heavily involved with an organization called World Relief NEXT and in addition to pastoring at Paradox, was also leading the Solitude internship for those interns as well. Matt’s been a great guy to bounce ideas off of and it’s been rich to hear his heart and take in his teaching. We went through the book In The Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen – the same author he used when mentoring the Solitude interns (a book ironically called Reaching Out). I’ve greatly enjoyed our time together and enjoyed learning from him, beginning to understand the value of slowing down and being still and being alone with the God of the universe. I catch myself sometimes in groups of students or other RA’s actually just wanting to leave and get away and be alone. It’s relaxing. It’s refreshing.

The other interns were all fantastic. At first, there was a complaint that a lot of the Moody students tended to hang out with each other for the most part. This tendency is normal. But I think it broke down soon after that, and we all meshed pretty well with everyone. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them all, working with them, hearing what they’ve been doing this summer, and spending time hiking or climbing or swimming with them all. As much as this summer’s been a great solitude experience, it’s been a great relational one as well.

The teaching and worship on Sunday mornings are great as well. Ken is a thorough thinker and carries his audience’s attention well. He allows them to follow his train of thought, and rarely loses them. He isn’t expositional and doesn’t necessarily speak straight from Scripture, but he does give a great deal of Scripture-informed thought. It is interesting and engaging to think through and beyond what Scripture says to what it means for us in our lives and in the lives of other believers throughout Christianity. I value many of the things he’s said over this summer, and have appreciated the opportunity to listen to his heart.

A potential hazard I foresee (and perhaps the only hazard, and maybe hazard is too strong a word) that would be wisely avoided would a path toward a somewhat-elitist value system. This summer I was stoked and excited for this internship largely because I was looking forward to a staff that would not only pour into me, but get to know me well enough to know what my natural strengths and weaknesses are, and how to make the most of those. Now I am good at a good number of things, but what am I great at? Am I great at anything? Some of the interns were specifically sought out and asked and encouraged again and again to come back to Antioch. They were extremely talented individuals. Others wanted to come back and offered, and were gladly accepted, but only a few were sought out. It’s been my journey over the last several weeks to cultivate in my own heart a readiness to celebrate the blessings that fall into the hands of others as if they had fallen into my own. It is good to do this. I don’t want jealousy to arise in me. I want to celebrate with them that something truly good has happened to them and they have found a place where their gifts and abilities are recognized, valued, encouraged, and challenged. And it is an unbelievably unrealistic expectation to think that everyone belongs there. But it would serve them well, and serve the body well, to see a staff or individual who intentionally seeks to draw out of people talents that don’t shine as brilliantly, and to value them just as much. There are fantastic individuals who have beautiful talents and abilities who have no idea they have them, or have had no one who has recognized those in them. And so naturally, they don’t make the best of those talents.

Maybe it’s just my heart to seek out the margins in every group of people, but I hope in the future to see not a wider or broader investment in interns, but a deeper investment. Not more interns, but maybe fewer. I love Antioch, and I love everyone there. They are awesome and perhaps one of the closest body of believers to what I hope will be the church I work with or attend for much of my life. And so, as with anything and everything, change is progress, and I hope that both change and progress continue to be a part of the growth process of Antioch church and its internship program. Corporations and organizations and churches – as with any system – are brutally attacked and criticized by so many, and I pray my voice would not be counted among them. Instead, I hope it would be an encouraging, sanctifying, empowering and trustworthy assessment that can be used for the growth and beauty of the body of Christ.

More to come on thinking over the summer, thank-you’s, and other great ways all of you can continue to journey with me throughout this semester and this year if you so desire.

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. 13:44 / “In His Joy”

The message this past Friday went well enough. I wasn’t satisfied with the delivery, though. And there were only a few people there because of a concert that was going on that same night. Which makes formal structure feel somewhat out of place.

I was excited about the material and the content of the message and had written so much. I wanted to communicate how it had taken grip of my heart. I was nervous about this message because of my excitement and because it had affected me so much this past week. And that’s a hard thing to show. It has affected my emotions, and you can’t manufacture that. You can’t just will that your heart would show itself, beyond your words, beyond the research and facts and structure.

Also, I switched my method of teaching right in the middle of the message, which I don’t know is a good idea or not. I am uncomfortable teaching, and I want to get better at it without having to learn by trial and error because when I mess up and feel I haven’t communicated well, I feel like I’ve wasted people’s time.  So post-delivery, I wasn’t feeling so great. I felt like I didn’t communicate what I wanted to well. Again, it went well enough. But I want to become a better communicator.

There’s a two or three minute gap/silence near the end because of the powerpoint I had put together. I had thrown up a number of slides with passages from the Psalms that speak of delighting in Christ. Each one was up on the screen for 15 seconds. It is to illustrate a point. It was awkward time, and it was purposed to be so – slide after slide after slide, no music, no one talking. Just Scripture.

Anyway, here’s the audio:

http://paradox.antiochchurch.org/#/messages

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.

Parable.

This Friday I will be teaching at Paradox on the parable Jesus told in Matthew 13:33.  It’s my first time teaching here.  This is the first of seven occasions when I will be teaching.  I’ll be posting the manuscript as soon as I’m finished.  Today’s been a long day of focus, diligence, and study on the passage, its context, and its implications on our lives.  I’m very, very excited about God’s Word and the hugeness of what He is teaching in this text.  I am nervous about speaking, mostly because I’m generally uncomfortable with formal speech and structure.  I much prefer dialogue, conversation, and discussion.  Again, the manuscript will be posted here in its entirety on Friday.  Stay tuned!

The Fifteenth of June.

I wish that I could introduce you to Antioch and the interns.  We have some pretty incredible people here.  Maybe I’ll start a summer-long project of interviewing some of the interns and staff so that you can get to know them.  That would be a great idea.  As long as I have time.  I’m pretty pressed for time.

Lately my project has been web design for the Paradox website.  The colors are great, but not attention-grabbing.  So there’s a lot of color configuration, Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files swimming back and forth between my computer, the church’s media/graphics computer, and email.  I’d take pictures, but they wouldn’t be that exciting.  The web design isn’t a huge project, but it is time-consuming and requires a great deal of detail.  I’ll be working with another intern or two to finish up the project, and run it by my ministry focus leader, Matt Smith.

Our host family has been great – we’re putting on an Intern Host Family Appreciation Banquet for all the families with whom we are staying.  They’ve been awesome.  Our host parents just finished The Dirty Half, a half-marathon they’ve been training for.  They finished in 2hr.1min.  We were really proud.  Jake – the oldest of the boys – is learning how to solve a Rubix cube and is getting better and better at it, and as often as I am home, he’s asking what to do next.  He and his brother Travis were working hard yesterday weeding the planters and garden.  After some encouragement to wipe their not-so-enthusiastic frowns off their faces, and after a few more hours of weeding, we rewarded their hard work with a trip to the local pool.  It was freezing when we walked back.

It’s been a brisky 50-60 degrees for the most part here in Bend, which I think is unacceptable for mid-June weather.  It should be hotter.  I wake up cold.  I’m not complaining; it’s just unusual.

Anyhow, this Saturday the interns are putting on a fundraiser to raise support for us to participate in Family Camp with Antioch.  Mostly, we would be helping while there, but we are raising support via car washes in two locations in order to pay for the expense it is to have us go.  To make it more fun, it has been declared a competition between the two intern teams, which, for competitive-natured people, is incentive enough.

This week, and through next week I will also be working on message preparation for Paradox on June 25th, after which we will have a community “Night Flight” (glow-in-the-dark frisbee football).  Pray for all of this, if you could.  For message guidelines, I am to choose a parable of Jesus and tie its message into the idea of the kingdom of God and what it means to be a kingdom citizen.  I’ve just started, and will be posting progress in order to include you all in the verbal (written) process.  I will be speaking/teaching at Paradox again on July 16th and August 6th.  I have yet to set dates for the other four times I will be speaking/teaching this summer.  As for this Friday, though, I am helping to lead worship at Paradox.

The first week of July, I will be working to put together a worship packet for the interns.  We will be spending July 8th in meditative solitude, spending time learning to hear the voice of God, to rest in him, to bring even the thinnest threads of our lives and lay them at his feet in prayer, and just take the time to focus fully and wholeheartedly on him.  I will be creating a series of stages each intern can journey through in a Christ-centered process of worshipping God holistically – in cognition, affect, and behavior.  It will be a week or so process of preparing the heart in the days prior to solitude, amplifying our sensitivity to the movement of God throughout solitude, and reflecting internally and externally after solitude.  In every way, I want to work to the best of my ability to help create that environment and atmosphere of the soul most receptive to what God would have us learning.  I pray and hope that he would teach each of us powerfully and that we would embrace – be it ever so pleasurable or painful – him and all that he gives.

Please continue to pray as you have been praying for me, for Antioch, and for Bend!  Thank you all.

Thy Kingdom Come.

Paradox is a ministry to college students and young adults in Bend, Oregon as an offshoot of Antioch Church.  We meet at The Kilns – a bookstore/cafe focused on social justice issues and Christian worldview formation.

Here’s what’s up with Paradox.

par·a·dox [par-uh-doks] - noun.
1.  a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

Those of us who have been “churched” throughout our lives have seen the tendency of American Christianity to polarize ideas and beliefs about what it means to follow Christ, placing in opposition to one another concepts that are not meant to conflict, though they appear to do so.  For example: God’s sovereignty vs. man’s free will; law vs. grace; God’s transcendence vs. God’s immanence; God’s immanent return vs. our expectation, etc.  The truth, however, can be misconstrued when we hold so tightly to human understanding that we swing like pendulums to one extreme or the other, possibly demonizing the opposite camp in the process.  It is important to understand that God works through paradox: ideas and doctrines that may seem to oppose one another may, in fact, only point out that we must hold these ideas in tension, accepting that we cannot always categorize and understand everything.  Biblical paradox is his instrument for humbling our haughty minds.  It is scary to think about something that is greater than our understanding – those things we simply cannot condense into a neat and tidy package to wrap our heads around.  Some things refuse to be boxed in.

God refuses to be boxed in.

And so to those who have grown up in the church, Paradox aims to teach and provide an environment in which we may wrestle through difficult ideas, embracing the fact that we will not know everything while still seeking to understand as much as is possible.

Bend is hardly a “churched” town, known for its plurality and counter-conservative ideas.  And so Paradox is largely a place for these people to come and learn about Jesus apart from their “churchy” expectations.  At Paradox, we acknowledge that the world – society and mankind and all of creation – is not presently as it was created to be.  The created order has been ravaged and raped by sin and fallen nature, and not just man – nature suffers too.  Jesus Christ declares himself to be Lord over all.  Colossians 1 says of Jesus:

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 himself to all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

The common misconception is that Christ died to reconcile himself to us.  Period.  The end.  But if we only affirmed that, we would be missing an enormously beautiful part of his mission: to reconcile and redeem all things. If this is true, then it demands a radical worldview change.  It means God has everything to do with everything.  Everything we once might have considered to be meaningless or irrelevant has a purpose and relevance that we never could have imagined.  Is it too much of a stretch to ask what God has to do with the coffee in your mug, or the bricks in the walls your home, or the shirt on your back?  What does God have to do with it?

If God really does want to reconcile all things to himself, then nothing is irrelevant.  He has everything to do with everything.  He has everything to do with that Starbucks Americano you’re buying.  Because frankly, some coffee is bought and traded using slave labor and unjust wages.  And Jesus isn’t about slave labor.  And he isn’t about underhanded dealing.  He isn’t about neglecting human rights, because he values people enough to come and to die for them.  He isn’t about destroying our world with over-industrialization, because he values nature enough to inspire Paul, the writer of Colossians, to communicate Jesus’ care for all things.

All parts of culture, in every culture, in some way is a reflection of the values of God, whether those values are slightly or severely distorted.  It is the joy and responsibility of the believer to be agents of redemption in this world; I believe in the priesthood of every believer (1 Peter 2:9).  Priests, in the Old Testament, were the ambassadors between God and the people of God.  Now we are priests, through our great High Priest, Jesus, and we are ambassadors between God and the rest of the world – all of the world, whether man or nature, spiritual or material things, in heaven or on earth.  The people of Bend care tremendously about social justice issues and fair trade and human rights.  Our love for Christ and our love for his lordship over everything compels us to seek out the redemption of all things in his name, including social justice and fair trade and human rights.  Bend is a town full of people who – in ways the church has failed to do – love many things that God loves, except for the wrong reasons.  There is a Christ-centered way of thinking about and participating in social justice, in fair trade, and in human rights.

Paradox exists to expose Jesus’ heart at the core of each of these things.  Because his heart is there, ours should be, too.

Call it a stretch.  Call it environmentalism or social justice or “crazy wacko liberal agenda.”  Call it whatever you like, but maybe Jesus’ reign reaches farther than we give him credit for.  Maybe it’s nothing short of holistic redemption.  There is a way to hold these values in tension with the values of Christ; there is a Christ-centered way to think about and do everything.  It is the church – in Bend or elsewhere – who must bear the image of Christ and exemplify what that looks like.  It should look like the kingdom of God here on earth.

Paradox should look like the kingdom of God here on earth.

Jesus, thy kingdom come.  And may we seek out opportunities to be a part of your work here.  We want to value you, and all the things you value – in that order.  Come and renew our minds, conform us to your image, transform us into Christ-like priests and culture-redeeming agents here in Bend and anywhere we identify ourselves with your Son’s name and mission.  We love you.  Amen.

Paradox / The Kilns

The Kilns - promoting The Justice Conference in February

The Kilns is a bookstore and coffeeshop, and is where we hold Paradox on Friday nights.

It is actually in a garage - there's a garage door you can walk through to get into the bookstore.

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.

LOVE WINS.

Ben, the youth pastor I work with here in Chicago, just gave the youth group his last official lesson with them.  It was a really sad night.  It’s been so hard for the students.  And that means a lot.  Ben has been an incredible example of what it means to develop deep, rich relationships with the people God has placed in his life, to be an instrument used by God to change the ‘religious stereotype’.  He loves all of the students, and they adore him.

We were reading from 1 Corinthians 13 and from there, Ben encouraged us – pleaded with us – to love God and love people.  I can be trained and skilled in communication, I can prepare the best lesson plans and the best messages and teach from the passages that people love to hear, I can have the best musicians and songs picked for worship, and I can have the best youth room and resources and everything at my fingertips; but let me make this clear: it means nothing if you haven’t shown them you love them.  The students listen to Ben not because he is an excellent communicator; he is an excellent communicator because he has built an unbelievable foundation of love in each relationship in the youth group.

I wish you could meet him.  You would know what I mean.

I’m going to carry what he has taught in his life for the rest of mine.  To love people – wherever they are, whoever they are – is the heart of God, because that’s how he loved us.  This is my heart in ministry.  This is my heart in Oregon.  I am going out to meet people where they are, just as they are, and I want to love them in every way possible, because love wins.  There is no more powerful force in the world.

Ben’s legacy in the lives of his students has been effective, lasting, powerful, meaningful, transforming, healing, and filled with hope because his entire ministry, his life, his call was grounded in love.  Love wins. Love wins. Love wins.