Share. Pray. Meditate.

Today we enjoyed a hike up Tumolo. There were three different movements we went through as three different lessons. They were John 17′s prayer of Jesus to his Father just before he’s arrested in Gethsemane. It’s called the High Priestly Prayer. It’s beautiful. And it’s so rich. I really enjoyed reading through it and studying it and sharing it with the others who came with me. The day looked like meeting and talking through a part of Jesus’ prayer, and then hiking and solitude and reading. This allows for us to hear God’s word and have space and time to think through it and listen to God.

Well, I’ve been trying to copy and paste the outline into here as text, but WordPress isn’t letting me because of the outline formatting involved in making a Word document outline. So here’s a screen-print image:

There’s amazing depth here in the prayer Jesus prays to his Father. It is as if we listen in on a divine conversation. We hear the heart of Jesus. We see what he cares about, what he asks for and prays for. And from it, we can gather so much. There is more that I said today that fills in between “points” that I wish I had the time to write out. But ask me about it sometime, and I’d be more than happy to share it with you. It’s far easier to explain vocally than to write it all out – I belabor the writing process searching for the perfect word to embody what I am attempting to communicate. So it would take some time.

As of tonight, we officially have two days left in Bend.

Wow.

I don’t know what to do with that. It’s gone by so quickly. I stared for a while tonight at the stars, realizing that before coming to Bend, I hadn’t seen the Big Dipper in some time, and it’s likely I won’t be seeing many stars in Chicago. There’s far too much light pollution to see them. And there are no snow-capped mountains to see or fresh earth and pine to smell. I’ll miss it.

I am excited to return to Chicago, though. I love Chicago this time of year – it’s my favorite time of year there. It helps that my sister and brother-in-law will be in Chicago this year as well. I’m going to love spending time with them. And I’m very, very excited for this year on a new dorm floor as an RA (Resident Assistant) – there’s so much I’m looking forward to and there’s so much I’m nervous about. Things I’m anxious for in both positive and negative ways. Returning to things I miss about college life and things I loved leaving behind.

I’m thinking back over this summer and I’m thinking through what I’ve learned. And there’s so much. I don’t quite know how they’ll manifest themselves this coming year in my life and how they’ll continue to shape the way my life plays out, but I’m glad for them. God teaches in strange ways. God teaches in unexpected ways. And he teaches unexpected lessons. Again, I wish I could write it all out. If you’d like, you can check out my personal blog here, where I’ve written some of my personal thoughts and things that I’ve been learning or thinking about:

http://museandmystery.wordpress.com

I’ll be posting pictures soon of our recent hiking. We climbed the 3rd highest mountain in Oregon – South Sister, at 10,400 FT. It was a spiritual experience. If you’ve never climbed a mountain, I’d encourage you to plan it. We saw people of all ages up there, summitting the mountain and looking out at the majestic creation. Unlike anything else, nature has a way of making us feel small. And rightly so. Sometimes it takes climbing a ten thousand foot mountain to put me back in perspective, to remind me that my world is not the whole world, to convince me that my God is bigger than me.

He is majestic. And he is glorious.

I’ll be posting my next two lessons (tomorrow and Monday) very soon. I’m so excited about this message in Luke. Completely humbling and frankly, hurtful. It hurts to see radiant love for Jesus when it isn’t our own. It is worth celebrating, it is joyous and beautiful and lovely, but it should evoke a sense of ache in us as well. I hope you’ll love this next message.

Again, I’ll be posting more pictures soon. For now, you can watch a video one of the interns put together to promote the Antioch Internship Experience. This video doesn’t capture the essence of the internship, mostly the events. There will be another video posted with interviews (of which I am a part) on what we think of the internship and what it looks like from our perspectives.

Antioch Internship Promo Video: http://vimeo.com/13921795

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!

My Heart.

I am only two weeks away from completing my internship. It’s funny, because many times in life, we don’t realize what our season is teaching us until we’re looking back on it. God’s been good, and I think I’m beginning to see already how this internship has changed and shaped me.

One would think that during the course of a ministry internship, you’d learn to give of yourself. To sacrifice yourself on behalf of those around you. To serve those you are in ministry with.

I think this internship has taught me differently.

I have, indeed, been learning to give myself; but to God, not people. I’ve been learning to sacrifice, but to sacrifice social interaction for solitude. I’ve been learning to serve, but to serve God with my whole heart.

This internship has been very much about stopping, and stepping back.

I am an extremely relational person. And I’m prone to make idols of relationships. I’m prone to set them on pedestals and worship them with uncontested amounts of time. Time is how I show affection. It’s a very big way that I show love to those I care about. But I’ve marginalized God.

I know that he’s with me wherever I go. I know that I can communicate and talk to him wherever I am, under any circumstances whatsoever. But I’ve lost the art of being alone with him. It’s a scary thing to be left alone with God, once you really understand what that means.

There’s a book that some of the other interns went through in their Solitude Internship. It’s called Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen. Ironic, isn’t it? A book on solitude with a title like that. The interesting thing is, Nouwen argues that we can never really invest as fully or completely or richly in creating and participating in community until we’ve processed through identity. And identity discovery can be a lonely journey, because no one can walk it for you. We are best known by God. And so if we are to seek identity, where else would we look?

This fall, I will be a Resident Assistant (RA) of the 18th floor of Culbertson Hall at Moody. I will be expected to pour myself into the lives of each of the guys on my floor – praying for them and growing relationships, being vulnerable and available, establishing community and camaraderie, and creating space and environment and atmosphere in which these guys can wrestle with God and learn from each other. But it is wise to understand that I cannot offer them any part of myself that I have not allowed God to teach. And I can only do that if I am committed to spending time alone with him, in solitude and silence, in prayer and aloneness.

I am deeply, deeply grateful to each and every one of you who have been praying and supporting me faithfully in prayer and for providing generously in your finances to make this internship opportunity, this life-changing experience possible. You have been participants in what God is teaching me here. You have left an eternal legacy. You have made your mark on my life that will show forever.

Soon, I will be completing my big project for the summer, and it will be a retreat/hike in practicing solitude and silence, and exploring what it means to be alone with God, even with people around. Interesting thing is, you don’t have to be alone to practice solitude. Anyway, I am excited about it, because it is something that God’s been teaching me, and I think that’s the best way to teach – out of what God is teaching you.

Stay tuned and check back for another update really soon!  More to come on solitude, the Justice Conference, climbing Mt. Thielsen, and more message preparation!

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.

Support Progress & Update.

Thanks to all of you who have been so generous in supporting my ministry as an intern here at Antioch Church all the way out here in Oregon.  It’s been such a blessing so far.  The people here in Bend have already been so good to us and we’re already making great friends.  Please continue to pray for everyone here – for the internships that will be beginning this Tuesday, for the church leaders, for Antioch, and for the people of Bend.  Pray that our eyes would be opened to where God is moving and working and healing and teaching.  Pray that we wouldn’t get in the way and that we would instead join in the work that he is already doing.  He is establishing his kingdom.  And it is glorious.

I want to keep you all posted on how funds are going – you all have been amazing and have helped to support me with a current total of $500 – that’s incredible.  I haven’t heard back from many friends and family yet, and I’m excited to see how God provides through each of you to help continue to support me and my internship here in Bend, OR.  Again, I need to raise a total of $2,000 for this entire summer’s internship in Bend.  I’m so grateful for your participation with me.  And I’m so grateful that you’ve become a part of what God is doing here.  That’s amazing.  Every blessing he pours into me here, he is pouring over you.  I hope that you will continue to support me and be a part of everything going on here.  I will be keeping you posted often, complete with stories, names and pictures!

I love you all.  And I love that God is using each of you here in Bend.  With gratitude,

Tony

HOST FAMILY.

Just got an email from Brandon and Erin at Antioch letting all the interns know that each of us has been paired with a host family that we’ll be staying with throughout the summer.  This is really cool.  I think that this kind hospitality and generosity is so important, and we are all so grateful!  It’s amazing.  So thank you, host family!

I should be receiving a call or email from the family at any time.  I’m looking forward to hearing from them and getting to know them this summer.  I think they’ve got to be some pretty awesome folk to open their home to a college student or two for a whole summer – that’s a big deal!  Throughout my time in Oregon, I want to demonstrate to my host family and other host families, as well as Antioch Church as a whole, that we love them and are more than blessed to serve alongside them.  I’m looking forward to helping out in any way they need: from painting a house to scrubbing dishes.

I am an intern at Antioch to serve – to join with another part of the body of Christ, his glorious bride, and to learn how I can best be poured out on behalf of them.  This is what it means to be part of the church, part of the body.  Service is not a bunch of ceremonies or meaningless movements performed once a week, but an ongoing, sacrificial, love-filled desire to build up the object of God’s love.  God delights in his bride.  How could I not enjoy that which God finds joy in?  And so I will serve in joy.  Antioch has already eagerly served us by planning and providing 24 internships for 24 interns, host families to house us, prayer support and encouragement, and one-on-one mentorships each of us will have throughout the summer.  We will not only be pouring ourselves out; we will be constantly being filled.

Once again, thank you for being a part of serving me and my needs, for allowing God to provide through you and your resources to build up the body of Christ.  Thank you for your prayers; continue to pray!  Pray for my host family, that God would really bless them for their over-the-top hospitality.  Pray for me, that I would be effective and creative in how I can serve them this summer.  Pray that God would continue to provide financial support this summer – I can’t do it without his provision and without people like you supporting me.  Pray that I would be a learner, that I would not think that I have more to offer than I do.  Pray for compassion and humility.    Pray also for Bend, Oregon – that we would collectively, as a church, be ready and willing and able to reach out and meet people where they are, not where we think they should be.  Pray that we would show our love for them completely and fully, that we would be filled and encouraged, and that we would never tire of doing the work of the gospel: it is love and it is hope and it is redemption.  It is Jesus.