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

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

ONE WEEK.

One week from today, I leave for Oregon.  As the internship gets closer, I’m starting to feel both anxious and excited.  The internship is going to be amazing; hard work isn’t so difficult with great people.  And this is what I love.  I love to see believers coming together to enjoy being with one another, to enjoy the union that it is to be part of/with the body of Christ: to really and truly be excited about that.  When we gather together and really love each other in the ways that we are created to give and receive love, edifying and encouraging the rest of the body as if it were our own, that is when we most truly bear the image of God – the imago dei. We look like Jesus!  That should be exciting!  And I’m very, very excited to meet a whole new part of Christ’s body and to revel in its beauty.

Jesus, you are amazing and your bride is beautiful.

I pray that I will recall and use the ministry training I’ve received these past three years with excellence, that I would not take for granted all that I’ve been privileged to study, and that I would make the most of the teaching and wisdom and training has been entrusted to me.

I want to empower the body so that others may also go and do ministry wherever they are.  I believe that Christ is not bound by the walls of a church building, nor restrained in worship to a time of singing on Sunday, nor limited in his all-encompassing power and plan to redeem the world to himself and crown himself King.  He is sovereign over our greatest mistakes and his will is perfectly effective – not despite our deficiency, but – with our deficiency.  He is amazing, and his body – the church, his glorious bride – is here on earth to bear witness to the coming of a kingdom far greater than any has ever seen.  We are that community. And I hope that wherever we are, we – together – seem to others to bear a remarkably uncanny resemblance to a place we have not been, but have always longed for.

I hope that we bear the image of Christ.

I’m excited to be a part of this.