Thinking Naughty Thoughts

Have you ever had a naughty thought? Or course you have. Have you ever wished that someone could see your naughty thought? Probably not. Have you ever thought Naughty Thoughts about the church? Huh? Naughty thoughts about the church? That doesn't make sense.

But that is exactly what the book I just received from the Speakeasy blog program is encouraging and all about. Naughty thoughts about the church. The book is in fact entitled "Thinking Naughty Thoughts: on church and why I think we need to change" by Johan Van Der Merwe.

The author proceeds to walk the reader through 7 chapters of Naughty thoughts about such ideas and concepts as "do I need to belong to a local church", tithing, church buildings, sermons, and worship.

I have to say my first take when I received the book was one of disappointment, at least from the look of the book itself. You could tell that this book was self published. The type on the page was reminiscent of a typewriter page. Not graphics, no color, nothing. For those who have an eye for graphics and design, this might even cause someone to not even read the book. I noticed it, it bothered me a little but I still plunged into the world of naughty thoughts about church.

Most of the "naughty thoughts" didn't really offend, or bother me. Some of the thoughts were things that I have thought about, looked into, studied, and wrestled with. And so in a way, his naughty thoughts weren't all that naughty to me.

I think my one complaint about the book is best summed up by the title of the last chapter "Here I stand". It seems like, at least from my vantage point, (and it could be totally wrong) is that the author is caught up in western individualistic thinking when it comes to all of these thoughts. Especially in relation to being a part of a faith community/church. He said he "doesn't go to church" anymore, and I'm okay with that (as you can't really go to church anyway) but I wonder if he regular meets with a group of followers of Jesus to worship, pray, share, build community, and be a blessing in the world? If he does meet regularly with other followers of Jesus than great. I did like his definition of church "The church is a people sharing a common life and a common mission modeled on the example and empowered by the Spirit of Christ"

So other than the challenges of the design and the seemingly individualistic look at faith, I would say that it was overall a good read. Not great, but good. And if you are comfortable with having some naughty thoughts, than feel free to pick this book up. If you'd rather not have naughty thoughts, followed by naughty questions, than I would not pick this book up.

The Head of the Church

Below you'll find the text of our message along with our discussion questions from yesterday. We began the third part of our series entitled "How to be a Missionary without ever leaving Lancaster." So I would be interested in hearing your thoughts, comments, insights, questions, etc...

Today we enter the third part of our series entitled How to be a Missionary without ever leaving Lancaster. We begin talking about the third stage of being a missionary and in planting a missional church, that of structuring congregations. We have covered the first two stages in June and July, that of Engaging Culture, and Forming Community. And all of August we’ll be covering structuring congregations. Structuring congregations who are missionally engaged in their context, relationally engaged in building community, and discipleship-focused. We will also spend time dialoguing around major concepts and ideas of how a faith community should be structured because of their engagement with their local context, and because of their communal nature.

Today we are going to look at, what I believe, is a pivotal text, in this discussion about structuring a community of faith. This text is Colossians 1:15-20. We’ll be talking about the importance of Jesus in the life of the faith community, the role of Jesus (which all seems like a no-brainer…but sometimes, and this might be my baggage from being in youth ministry so long…that it seems like the church is no different than any other social club or group) in the faith community, and how we move beyond image to substance within our community.

So let’s look at Colossians 1:15-20, what it said to the early Christians in Colossae in the midst of the empire, and what it might say to us gathered together today in the midst of our own empire(s). Colossians 1:15-20 says, “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through 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.”

So the first thing you need to know is that most scholars believe that this text came from a poem or hymn in the early church that described what Christians believed about Jesus. Also if we look at the entire context of the letter to the church at Colossae we see that it is about shaping the imagination of the Christian community within the shadow of the empire. Within these lines of poetry, is one of the most subversive texts in all of the New Testament. Paul uses words that are a direct affront to Caesar and his claim to Lordship and Headship. You see in a worship populated by images of Caesar, who is taken to the be the son of God, a world in which the emperor’s preeminence over all things, bolstered by political structures, and is an empire that views Rome as the head of the world, and imposes compliance through force (mainly the threat of crucifixion), this poem, this text is nothing less than treasonous. You see in this 3 stanza poem, Paul subverts every major claim of the empire, turning them on their heads and proclaiming Christ (not Caesar) to be Creator, Redeemer, Savior and Lord of all creation, including the empire itself.

Paul starts off by saying that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. Now in a world in which images of the emperor we ubiquitous in the 1st Century as Corporate logos are in the 21st, Paul was again saying that Jesus, not Caesar is God. The word image that Paul uses is the Greek word Eikon, from which we get the word Icon. It expresses 2 ideas. Likeness, as in the image on a coin or the reflection in a mirror. And manifestation, in the sense that God is fully revealed in Jesus. Paul doesn’t mean that Jesus was merely similar to the father. If so he would have used another word, the Greek word homoioma, which speaks of merely of similar appearance. The stronger word here proves that Paul knew Jesus was God, just as God the Father is God. It means that Jesus is the very stamp of God the Father. That in Christ, the unknowable God has become known. If you want to know what God looks like, look at Jesus. He is the image. He is the flesh of God in the world. He is the reflection of God.

Then Paul calls Jesus, the firstborn over all Creation. This doesn’t mean that he is a created being. Jesus is the author over all Creation. Paul is using another word that to the Jewish listener, would point to the Messiahship of Jesus, and not to Caesar. Ancient Rabbis used firstborn as a messianic title. “God said as I made Jacob a first born, so also I will make King Messiah a first born”

Paul then continues in his referencing of the creation account in Genesis 1. “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Jesus was present when the world came to be. Just look at John 1, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” The word meaning Jesus. Jesus was present in Genesis 1. Again, Paul’s idea that in Jesus everything was created and that he holds all things together, directly challenges the notion and the idea that Caesar was God and Caesar held everything together and created all things. Not only was Jesus the image of God, the firstborn of all Creation, he was and is in a very real way, the creator of all things.

Not only that, Paul then drops another bomb on the head of empirical Caesar worship. “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.” Jesus, not Caesar has supremacy. Not only in the church but in all of Creation. This concept that Jesus is the head of the church, is describing his relationship to us. Here head refers to his relationship and his role as source of the church, just as we talk about the head of a river, which is where the river starts. The church starts, continues, and ends with Jesus. Without Jesus being the head, there is no church. If something becomes the head of the church, than the church ceases to be church in the biblical sense. Whether that something is a person, an idea, a tradition, a denomination, or anything that would be put above Jesus.

Jesus is the head of the church because he is God in the flesh, because he is creator, and because he is Savior, Lord and Redeemer (again a direct affront to the claims that Caesar is Lord, Savior, Redeemer). Paul ends this part of his letter pointing to the fact that Jesus is head of the church because Jesus reconciled everything to himself through the blood shed on the cross. Jesus atoning work done on the cross is full and broad. As Paul says, “whether things on earth or things in heaven.” Jesus death on the cross isn’t just about making atonement for our sins, to set us right with him, so we can go to heaven when we die. That is a part of it, a small part. No, Jesus atoning sacrifice on the cross was about setting everything right. It was about the remaking, restoring, healing, and recreating of everything. Of setting to right all that went wrong in the Garden of Eden, and moving us back to that relationship again. When God walked in the cool of the garden with Adam and Eve. That Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, was doing what he did at the beginning of time, creating a new humanity, or I should say recreating a new humanity. One in which all things are set right, and that he is the head of all things, and not Caesar.

Now the questions become how do we live the gospel in our cultural context? What does it mean for us today that Jesus is the image of the invisible god? We may not have images of Caesar, but there are images of gods all around us. If the primary responsibility of Christian proclamation is to empower the community to imagine the world as if Christ, not the powers, were sovereign, what does that actually look like? How do we shape our collective imaginations as followers of Jesus in such a way that we are set free from the constructed imagination of the empire? How do we imagine a church where Jesus is head, and that Constantine is still not the emperor of our imagination? What does it mean to us that Jesus is the head of the church? How do we live into that reality in our time? We will get to that but I want to close with a poetic and updated reading of our text, which while long, I believe will help us flesh out and unpack what Paul might be saying to us today if he were to send a letter to us and how to live out the headship of Christ in our world.

In an image-saturated world a world of ubiquitous corporate logos permeating your consciousness a world of dehydrated and captive imaginations in which we are too numbed, satiated and co-opted to be able to dream of life otherwise a world in which the empire of global economic affluence has achieved the monopoly of our imaginations in this world Christ is the image of the invisible God in this world

driven by images with a vengeance Christ is the image par excellence the image above all other images the image that is not a facade the image that is not trying to sell you anything the image that refuses to co-opt you Christ is the image of the invisible God

the image of God a flesh and blood here and now in time and history with joys and sorrows image of who we are called to be image-bearers of this God

He is the source of a liberated imagination a sub-version of the empire because it all starts with him and it all ends with him everything all things whatever you can imagine visible and invisible mountains and atoms outer space, urban space, and cyberspace whether it be the Pentagon, Disneyland, Microsoft, or AT&T whether it be the institutionalized power structures of the state, the academy or the market all things have been created in him and through him

he is their source, their purpose, their goal even in their rebellion even in their idolatry he is the sovereign one their power and authority is derived at best parasitic at worse In the face of the empire in the face of presumptuous claims to sovereignty in the face of the imperial and idolatrous forces in our lives Christ is before all things he is sovereign in life

not the pimped dreams of the global market not the idolatrous forces of nationalism not the insatiable desires of a consumerist culture In the face of a disconnected world where home is a domain in cyberspace where neighborhood is a chat room where public space is a shopping mall where information technology promises a tuned in, reconnected world all things hold together in Christ

the creation is a deeply personal cosmos all cohering and interconnected in Jesus And this sovereignty takes on cultural flesh And this coherence of all things is socially embodied in the church against all odds against most of the evidence

In a "show me" culture where words alone don't cut it the church is the flesh and blood here and now in time and history with joys and sorrows embodiment of this Christ as a body politic around a common meal in alternative economic practices in radical service to the most vulnerable in refusal to the empire in love of this creation the church reimagines the world

in the image of the invisible God In the face of a disappointed world of betrayal a world in which all fixed points have proven illusory a world in which we are anchorless and adrift Christ is the foundation the origin the way the truth and the life

In the face of a culture of death a world of killing fields a world of the walking dead Christ is at the head of the resurrection parade transforming our tears of betrayal into tears of joy giving us dancing shoes for the resurrection party And this glittering joker who has danced in the dragon's jaws of death now dances with a dance that is full of nothing less than the fullness of God

this is the dance of the new creation this is the dance of life out of death and in this dance all that was broken all that was estranged all that was alienated all that was dislocated and disconnected is reconciled comes home is healed and is made whole

everything all things whatever you can imagine visible and invisible mountains and atoms outer space, urban space, and cyberspace every inch of creation every dimension of our lives all things are reconciled in him

And it all happens on a cross it all happens at a state execution where the governor did not commute the sentence it all happens at the hands of the empire that has captivated our imaginations it all happens through blood not through a power grab by the sovereign one it all happens in embraced pain for the sake of others it all happens on a cross arms outstretched in embrace and this is the image of the invisible God this is the body of Christ

Discussion Questions: 1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, push back, etc.. do you have regarding the text and the message? 2. What are some things that have taken the place, or possibly could take the place at the head of the church if not careful? How do we guard against other things becoming the head? 3. How can you and I live in such a way that we place Jesus at the head of the church, and also the head of our lives? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what are we going to do about it?

A New Space for Veritas

As I had mentioned a few weeks ago that Veritas was needing to move out of the Community Room on Prince. A space we used for 2 1/2 years to engage the art community, the music scene, hold numerous events, rented the space out, and grew our faith community there. But due to the owner wanting to redo the space as a apartment flat for her brother to live in, we needed to find another space. We took about a month and a half to look at various spaces, hold prayer gatherings, sent regular updates to our community, and had regular times of interactions and questions. So yesterday was the culmination of the process, when our gathered community prayed, and discerned God's leading. On the ballot were 2 options, 106 W. King Street and Mulberry Art Gallery. 106 W. King being a 24/7 space and Mulberry being Sunday only. On the ballot we had the community put a 0-10 by each place. 0 being not right for us and 10 being right for us. We pasted out the ballots, people filled it in, and then we collected it.

Once we totaled all the numbers together we came up with an 8.94 for 106 W. King Street and a 2.35 for Mulberry Art Gallery. So as of September 1 the below picture will be our new home for mission, discipleship, and community. I'm excited about this next phase of our journey and what God will do in and through our community and the space in which we'll be moving to.

How to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster Week 9

Below you'll find our message, discussion questions, as well as a commercial that I played during the message, and a copy of the song that our worship leader sang right before our discussion. We took a look at hospitality and it's connection with the life of a missionary/missional church plant. So I would love to hear how you are extending hospitality into your world.

So today we come to the end of the second part of our series “How to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster.” Over the last two months we have covered two stages of being a missionary/planting a missional church.

In June we covered the first stage, that of Engaging the Culture. We talked about blessing people, seeking the peace of the city, realizing that we are sent as Jesus was sent, that we can’t do it without the power of the Holy Spirit, that we are called to use our eyes, and ears before we engage (as we did by walking around the city and praying) and then going out and actually serving people within Lancaster city. (September 29 we’ll be serving alongside City Gate again. Just an FYI)

Then in the month of July we have been covering the second stage, that of Forming Community. We have talked about the early church, their communal life together, the fact that we can’t do it alone- we were actually designed to live communal lives, and that the early followers of Jesus understood community, property, everything as flowing from God, into them, and out of them. And so we are going to wrap up today talking about another important element in a missionaries life, as well as in the life of a missional church. That of Hospitality. We’ll be spending some time today talking about what hospitality is, the importance of it from an eastern culture mindset, and how hospitality plays into the life of a missionary and a missional community.

This concept of Hospitality is one that is all over the place in our world, and one that I believe the world is stealing our best lines, and frankly, sometimes doing a better job of it than the church. Take this video as a case in point.

Did you catch the only words in the entire commercial? “There's no greater act of hospitality than to embrace a stranger as one's own”. That is a line that should have come from us, and it does, but here it is promoting a Hotel Chain. These words fit beautifully in our Scripture texts for the morning as we look at the great act of hospitality and embracing a stranger as one’s own. The two Scriptures that we’ll look at together are Hebrews 13:1-2, and 1 Peter 4:9.

Hebrews 13:1-2 says, “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” So let’s start with this text. The first thing the author of the book of Hebrews says is that we need to keep loving one another as brothers and sisters. He places the root of hospitality in 2 places, in love and in seeing each other as brother and sister. I mentioned several times this month the question of “What if we saw each person we met as a brother, sister, mother, father, etc.. How would it change the way we interact with everyone we meet? How would it drive us into mission and blessing? And what role would hospitality then play when we saw people as brothers and sisters?” The author even uses the word philo (there are 4 different words used for love in the NT) when he says loving one another. Philo is brotherly friendship and affection. It is the love of deep friendship and partnership. There should always be plenty of this kind of love among Christians.

In fact, the Greek word for hospitality that is used is the New Testament is philoxenia which literally translates love for strangers. To be about the work of hospitality, at it’s root, is about love. Love of the stranger. Each time we are commanded to practice hospitality, God is literally commanding us to have and show love for others. And when we show hospitality and love for people, in a very real way we are showing love to Jesus. Just look at verse 2, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” It also reminds me of the parable of the Sheep and the Goats found in Matthew 25:31-46 in which the story is told that at the end of time God separates people into what he calls sheep and goats. The sheep are commended because they fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visited the sick, and those in prison. And in the text Jesus identifies himself as the one that was fed, clothed, thirsty quenched, and visited. He identified himself and identifies himself with the poor. And the amazing thing is that the sheep, who had done all these things, had not idea that in a very real way, when they were doing all these things to the least of them, that they were actually doing it for Jesus. And the goats were the opposite. They didn’t fed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visit the sick and in prison and therefore since they didn’t do these things, they didn’t do them to Jesus. Hospitality shown to the stranger, is hospitality to Jesus.

Hospitality is an important virtue, both in the ancient world and in ours as well. It is commanded of Christians all throughout the Scriptures, like 1 Peter 4:9 which says, “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.” You see the early church and the early Christians understood the importance of hospitality. They were known for their radical hospitality. Just think about our discussions last week when we looked at Acts 4:32-35. What we talked about last week connects in a very real way to our conversation this week about hospitality. Hospitality was one of the early Christians trademarks. It was so crucial and distinctive to the early Christians and early Church that a first century church manual called the Didache prescribed detailed regulations for the reception and accommodation of traveling Christians, especially clergy. Hospitality as vital to the growth, stability and daily life of the early church. So you see that hospitality was a very crucial part of the life of a disciple of Jesus. You see if you were traveling, it wasn’t like you could just pull into the local micro tel suites and get a room. In the ancient world, motels, where they did exist were notorious for being places of immorality. So it was imperative for traveling Christians to find open homes from other Christians. This was a simple and practical way to let brotherly and sisterly love continue.

So if hospitality means love of stranger, and the early church and Christians lived it out in such a way that it became a trademark that they were known by, where is the American church in this regard? How are we doing in the area of hospitality? Unfortunately, I believe biblical hospitality isn’t a high priority for most modern western Churches. Hospitality is becoming an almost forgotten Christian virtue in our style of life today. What would happen if the western church sought to reclaim the Christian virtue of hospitality? What would happen if the church was again known for the distinctive mark of hospitality? What about us at Veritas? What would we need to do to be known for being a people and a place of hospitality? What would happen if we took the New Testament call to show hospitality seriously? How would Jesus show up in that work? Here is what I believe when it comes to hospitality and what would happen if we reclaimed hospitality as a mark of a follower of Jesus. Sharing meals together on a regular basis is one of the most sacred practices we can engage in as believers. Missional hospitality is a tremendous opportunity to extend the Kingdom of God. We can literally eat our way into the Kingdom of God. If every Christian household regularly invited a stranger or a poor person into their home for a meal once a week, we would literally change the world by eating.

So let’s unpack what it might mean for you and I to live a life of missional hospitality. Let’s talk about the connection between this week and last. Let’s talk about what we might do together as Veritas to be a people and a place of hospitality. And let’s see what God is saying to us as individuals and as a community about missional hospitality.

Discussion Questions: 1. Share a time in which you were the one who extended community. What happened, how did it impact the person, and how did it ultimately impact you? 2. How might a lifestyle of Hospitality connect with our conversation from last week? 3. What might we do as a community, to reclaim hospitality as our trademark and not be the trademark of a hotel chain? How might you and I live out a lifestyle of Hospitality? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what are we going to do about it?

The Evangelicals You Don't Know

When you hear the term Evangelical, what comes to mind? For many people, when they hear the term evangelical they automatically think "Christians who hate people". Other things that come to mind when people hear Evangelical are things like Republican, Anti-Abortion, Anti-Gay, Pro-Military, and a host of other things that, unfortunately, look nothing like Jesus. Whether these views are accurate or not of Evangelicals, there is enough truth to these statements that make it plausible for people to hold these views. But there is a new evangelical movement afoot that is seeking to love the world, engage the culture, and be a blessing. I recently received the book "The Evangelicals You Don't Know" by Tom Krattenmaker through the SpeakEasy Blog program, in which the author investigates these new evangelicals and how they are seeking to define what it means to be an Evangelical in the world today, and to look more like Jesus.

In ten chapters Krattenmaker covers hot button issues like homosexuality, evangelism, abortion, America as "Christian" nation, withdrawing from culture, and the connection between evangelicals and the Republican party. In these ten chapters he introduces us to people, who he calls new evangelicals, who are breaking the mold of evangelical while still being an evangelical People like Gabe Lyons, Shane Claiborne, Greg Boyd, Donald Miller, David Kinneman, and Kevin Palau. He tells stories of how these new evangelicals are engaging the culture and being faithful to Jesus.

Probably my favorite part of the entire book came right at the beginning when the author introduces us to Season of Service, which happened in Portland, when thousands of churches came together to serve the city of Portland, giving 100,000 dollars to the city, and working with, the then, openly gay mayor of the city. I loved hearing the boundary breaking work that was being done in Portland, and seeing followers of Jesus loving, serving, and seeking the peace of the city of Portland.

So whatever you think of Evangelicals. Whatever words come to mind when you hear the term of Evangelical. Maybe you are an evangelical and are looking for a new way to be evangelical. Whatever your understandings, feelings, or position on evangelicals are, I would highly recommend reading "Evangelicals that you don't know." And being introduced some evangelicals who are doing some amazing work for the Kingdom.

How to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster Week 8

Below is the message and conversation from Week 8 of How to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster. This week we dealt with being Counter Cultural in community formation. Would love your thoughts, comments, questions, insights, etc...

The theme for today, as part of our conversation on the second stage of being a missionary/planting a missional church (which is community formation), is centered around two words. These two words can bring up lots of word images, thoughts, ideas, and feelings. The two words that we’ll be unpacking and applying to the Scriptures for this morning, are the words Counter Cultural. So just quickly, give me a word or two about what comes to mind when I say the word counter cultural.

The funny thing that I didn’t hear mentioned by anyone was the words Christians, or the early church. Somehow we never thing about followers of Jesus being counter cultural. We picture some radical, hippy-like person, protesting the armed forces, hugging trees, attacking the banking industry, and we thing also of places and events like the 60’s and Woodstock. But if we look at our Scripture this morning, we will see that the early Christians and the early church did community formation, discipleship, and mission in what would, even by today’s standards, be considered a radically counter cultural way.

So let’s turn to our Scripture today and see what it might have to say to us about how to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster, as well as about the tough work of Community Formation, which is a huger part of being a missionary/planting a missional church.

Let’s look at the New Testament book of Acts chapter 4:32-35. “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.”

Let’s look at a few of these verses and see why we can truly call the early Christians and the early Church counter cultural. Counter Cultural to the Roman Empire, the empire in which they found themselves in. And also counter cultural to the current culture that we find our selves in within the United States.

Verse 32 is pretty counter cultural, both to the culture at large, and even to the current American church. “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions were his own, but they shared everything they had.” This idea of one heart and mind, means that the early church, at least in Acts, and in this situation, they were united. They were unified. They were in complete accord. They were together, not just in the being physically with each other, but they were together in what the church was all about. It’s mission, if you will. But unity, in the early church, didn’t mean uniformity. As I mentioned the other week, the early church was the most radically inclusive place. They were the ones who would have men and women together, with children in their midst. You have slaves, and free. Jews and Gentiles. Rich and Poor. And any other social/racial structure that could divide people. But in the midst of all this inclusivity, and differences, the early church was radically counter cultural, because they were united.

In the midst of that unity, the way that they looked at their own possessions, was definitely counter cultural. They looked at their stuff in a communal way. Their possessions weren’t there own. They shared what they had. If someone had a home, they shared it (or sold it). If someone had money, they gave it. They were a communal group of people, even down to their possessions. I truly believe they believed that their possessions weren’t their possessions, but God’s possessions, given to them by God to steward them well, for God’s glory and for his Kingdom. They recognized God’s ownership of everything; it all belonged to God and to his people.

Think about how we in American react to this. Some people, when reading this scream, “That’s socialism. That’s like communism. That’s evil.” As if our consumer, market driven, capitalist America is more of a biblical, Christian “government.” But what would it be like if we, as followers of Jesus, truly lived in this way. What if people in our community, lived this way. What if we had a communal lawn mower and let not only Veritas people use it, but our neighbors as well? Why do we need 12 different lawn mowers for 12 different families? What would it say to the watching world when not only the followers of Jesus were united (I recently heard that there is 33,000 denominations), but also truly looked at their possessions as God’s and were willing to give, lend, sell, get rid of, bless others, these possessions? How would this grow the Kingdom and grow the community? But you say, this is impossible. That was then. This is now. There is no way that Acts 4 can be lived out in America in the 21st century. And I would first say you are probably right, unless we start where the early church started, with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Look at verse 33, “With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all.” The preceding verse as well as the next 2 following, I believe are predicated and rest on verse 33. Without the apostles centering their lives of Jesus, there would be no unity, sharing possessions, selling what they had and giving to anyone who had need. This type of behavior that the early church here in Acts was known for can’t be explained or rationalized away without the fact that something got a hold of them so strongly that everything else paled in comparison. That thing that led the early followers of Jesus to live such counter cultural lives, being unified, looking at possessions in a communal way, selling and giving things away, was that their entire lives were surrendered to the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lord’s. They weren’t just Christians who showed up once a week, to a building, to be a part of something, with totally unconnected other individual Christians. They were a communitas (a community on steroids, with a larger purpose that drove them), centered on Jesus and his mission. Being a counter cultural follower of Jesus, both then and now, means being rooted in the life, death, and resurrection and means living life in opposition to the radical individualism that plagues our American society. We need to see ourselves as connected. Connected to those early followers of Jesus, connected to follower of Jesus today, and also connected as humans, who are all made in the image of God. As I mentioned last week, what if we saw each person as our brother, sister, mother, or father. How would that make a difference in how we treat people, serve people, and love people?

And the last act of counter cultural life that we find in this text is found in verses 33b-45, “And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.” Can you imagine how counter cultural this community was then, and again, honestly how counter cultural this community would be today? Did you hear those 7 words, “there were no needy persons among them?” What would our community, at Veritas be like? What would the community of followers of Jesus be like? How would this counter cultural existence spill out from the lives of followers of Jesus into our community? Can you imagine how this type of community, would be attractive, and just draw people into it? That you knew that when things were at their worst, that you weren’t alone. That someone had your back, was pulling for you, and would literally sell what they had to make sure that you were going to be looked after, and taken care of. And we see that this type of community was attractive, and people came to know Jesus, because Jesus was being lived out in the flesh by these early followers of Jesus, who were living out this counter cultural life of discipleship, mission, and community.

How far have we come from those counter cultural days, when we don’t even consider being a follower of Jesus as counter cultural? We need to get back to the understanding that to follow Jesus, to live out the Kingdom, to be about the work of community, discipleship, and mission is the most radical, counter cultural thing a person could do, and give their life to. But how? How do we take this counter cultural message and put it on the ground and live it out in Lancaster 2,000 years after these early Christians? That is what we are going to unpack together.

1. What part of the text stood out to you the most as being the most counter cultural aspect of the early Christian community? Why? 2. Why don’t you think we see this kind of counter cultural community of Christ followers in our day and age? Is it even possible? If yes, than how (give us some ideas), and if no, why not? 3. How might we apply this counter cultural expression of community to our life together as Veritas? What is something that you might do this week to move toward this counter cultural life? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what are we going to do about it?

Future Space for Veritas

The other week, out of the blue, we were notified that we had 90 days left on our lease at the Community Room on Prince. A place that we had leased for what will be 2 1/2 years. This wasn't something that we were expecting, or something that we brought on ourselves. The owner of the building just had some new ideas of what to do with the space, so our lease ends in September. I've been through all kinds of emotions in losing this space. We have used it faithfully to engage the art and music community, hosted many events, rented it out numerous times, and grew our faith community in this space.

But one emotion that I have is excitement. I am truly excited to see where God will lead us next. I have spent the last few weeks praying, talking, looking, and searching for our community to use for our worship gatherings (and possibly more). I've looked at 24/7 spaces (mostly through websites like Craigslist) and also looked at 3 spaces that would be Sunday only. I'm excited to gather with our community this Sunday to talk, pray and discuss the possibilities of our next meeting place.

One possibility, which would only be a half a block from where we meet now, and would be a 24/7 space that we could use to continue our engagement with the arts and music scene, as well as rent it out for events, and use it for our worship gatherings, is at 106 W. King Street. I've visited this space and also have taken some people from Veritas to look at this space. I'm not sure if this is the space where we'll end up or not. But I am praying and seeking to discern if God is leading us this way or not.

But I thought I would show you the pictures of the space so you can see the potential that lies within. And I would love your thoughts, feedback, etc.. on this space (as well as other ideas) and also ideas of possible other ideas to use the space to engage the community.

How to be a Missionary without ever leaving Lancaster Week 7

Below you'll find the text and discussion questions from our conversation yesterday focusing on the second stage of being a missionary and planting a missional church, that of forming community. Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, insights, questions, etc...

Over the last several weeks we have been talking and unpacking what it means to be a missionary/missional community/missional church plant. We have talked about how to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster. We have been talking about this because I believe one of the biggest issues that the American church has, is the recognition that we, in fact, live in a missions context. The American church has for too long thought of itself as a sending entity and not a missions context. In fact other countries send more missionaries here than we send to other countries.

Now you might say well Lancaster isn’t like that. We have lots of churches, lots of Christian events, lots of Christian culture and so we aren’t in a missions context. Let me show you something that I showed back when we started this. This is a study done by the Barna Group listing the top 100 post Christian cities in America. Some of the listings won’t probably surprise you. Like the fact that out of the top 10 cities 8 of them are in the Northeast. But one thing may surprise you. You can’t really see it but Harrisburg/Lancaster/Lebanon/York, our missional context is 38th on the list, above cities like Austin, TX at 44, Salt Lake City at 62, and New Orleans at 70. So our context of Lancaster is definitely a missions context, and in fact wherever you go, no matter where you go, you are in a missions context, whether that is your neighborhood, your work, your school, maybe your own family, etc… And so how do we live as missionaries in our missional context? How do we plant a missional church in our missional context? That is the question that we have been addressing all summer and will continue to address throughout the rest of the summer.

As I mentioned last week, and as we see on the screen, that the first stage of being a missionary or planting a missional church is to engage the culture, and we spent all of June talking about what engaging the culture means, and also spent time engaging the culture by walking around Lancaster and serving 117 lunches 2 weeks ago.

Then this month we transition to the second stage of being a missionary or planting a missional church is to form community. This doesn’t mean that you have completed the first stage of engaging culture and that you don’t have to do it anymore. No this forming community stage is still very much a part of the missional flow, and as you form community, you still need to engage culture. In fact this Scripture that we will be talking about together is something that we need to bring in to the conversation of engaging culture, because as followers of Jesus, we need to see this missional flow not as individual Christians but a community of missional disciples of Jesus doing it together. So when we engage culture, we are forming community with those we are engaging, and we are forming community with those who are part of our community, who are engaging culture with us.

So let’s look at this Scripture that spells out this fact that we can’t go it alone. That two is in fact better than one. Let’s look at the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes chapter 4:9-12 which says, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”

What does this Scripture say to us about forming community within a missionary’s life? What does this Scripture say to us about forming community within a missional church? What does it say about engaging culture as well? Those are the questions that we’ll dialogue around this morning.

Let’s walk through the verses and see why two are better than one, but three is even better. But before we look at the verses, we need to understand a little bit about the context that these verses sit in. You see in the previous section, King Solomon, thought how even in an under the sun world, that living alone made life worse. And he continues in this same idea noting that 2 are better than 1 and he continues stating why this is true.

And so verse 9 we see the writer saying that two are better than one. And then the rest of the verses he lays just how this plays out in the real world. How it is better to have two than one. These 4 verses show us the great value of human relationship. Being in community, according to the writer, adds 4 things to your life.

First, life in community adds productivity. Look at the second half of verse 9, “because they have a good return for their labor.” Think about it. It makes total sense. Have you ever done something, like around the house like laying new floor, painting, etc…? How having more than 1 worker makes the work go better, go smoother, and go faster. And honestly it’s more fun to work on a project with other people. I can think of the time that I need to lay down new flooring in our house due to a leaking old dishwasher. Not being a great handyman, I knew that I needed help or it would look really bad, take forever, and really not be any fun. So I called my dad, my father-in-law, and my brother-in-law and together we laid the floor that is now in our house. So there was definitely better return for our work.

Secondly, two is better than one because when you need help, there is someone there. As verse 10 says, “If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.” That is the beauty of community. That when you hit the wall. When you are down and out. When you deal with a situation that you can’t handle alone, that is when true community steps up and is there for you. We can all probably remember situations where we were in a bad situation in our life, and someone was there to walk beside us, pray for us, love on us, and just be with us, and how it made all the difference. And we can all probably remember a time in our lives when we were all alone and had no one to help us up, to love us, to walk beside us. Bottom line, we need each other. Everybody needs someone.

Thirdly, the writer says that 2 is better than 1 because there is comfort in two. Verse 11 says, “Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?” We can bring comfort to each other in time of affliction, struggle, pain and loss. We can be a salve on a wound. To bring wholeness, healing, life, and warmth to each other’s lives as well as others in our world, that we have relationship with. Whether they know Jesus or not. That community extends beyond the border of our Christian community and extends to all people who have the image of God within them. So that in a very real way all people are our brother’s and sister’s. And we need to really see people in that light. And when we do, that will change the way we engage with people.

Lastly, the writer says that 2 is better than 1 because there is safety and security in 2. “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves” You can’t have your own back, you actually need someone else to have your back.

Who has your back? Who will help you when you are down? When you feel cold and alone who will come and help warm you up? We need to be that for each other and for the hurting world. A Talmud saying says it like this, “A man without a companion is like the left hand without the right.” So my prayer for us is that we would experience at Veritas the reality that two is better than one.

But we can’t forget that, as a community of Faith, centered on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, that we aren’t just two. In a real way we are three. Verse 12 puts it this way, “a cord of three strands is not easily broken.” That we can’t forget the most important ingredient in the life of a community of faith, that Jesus is in the midst and is the third strand.

You see this last verse is commonly understood that the third cord is God himself. And that a relationship intertwined with God is a threefold cord that is not quickly broken. The writer is making the statement that the strength of a 3-ply cord was proverbial in the ancient world. Think of it this way. Think of our relationship with each other as our favorite shape, a triangle. There are three sides to a triangle and at the top of the triangle is God, and at the bottom 2 sides are our relationship with each other. As we develop our relationship with God, the closer we get to God, we actually get closer to each other. That as Jesus so rightly put that loving God is intertwined with loving each other/neighbor. A Community, like Veritas, needs to realize that two is better than 1 but three is of utmost importance. We need to not just see community formation as between people, but that when we are a community of follower’s of Jesus, that Jesus is in the midst of our relationships. In the midst of relationships with each other but also in the midst of our relationship with each and every person that we encounter, no matter where they are in their spiritual journey.

But what does it look like for a community to be a cord of 3 strands? How can Veritas live in such a way that we are about the work of community formation, between people no matter where they are on their faith journey? And what is God saying to us about our missional lives together? Those are the questions that we’ll turn to now and spend some time unpacking together.

1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, push back, etc.. do you have regarding the Scripture and/or the message? 2. But what does it look like for a community to be a cord of 3 strands? 3. Give us some concrete next steps for you and our community when it comes to the hard work of community formation? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it?

How to be a Missionary without ever leaving Lancaster Week 6

Below you'll find our sermon for week 6 of our How to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster where we have transitioned from Engaging Culture (the first step in missional church planting/being a missionary) to Forming Community (the second step in missional church planting/being a missionary) Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, etc..

Today we make the first transition from the first part of our series entitled “How to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster, to the second part. During the month of June, we looked at the first part of being a missionary, or in planting a missional church/community, that of engaging culture. We spent time talking about being a blessing, out of Genesis 12:1-3. We spent talking about seeking the peace of the city, via Jeremiah 29:1-7. We talked about being sent as Jesus was sent, and rooting our sent lives in the Holy Spirit and how the spiritual disciplines of prayer, scripture reading, mediation, etc.. should drive us out into the world. Then two weeks ago we look at Paul’s missionary strategy in Athens as he walked around, carefully looking at their objects of worship. We then walked around our “Athens” of Lancaster city, and looked at objects of worship, and looked at where God is moving. And then finally last week we put engaging culture into practice by putting together 117 lunches, and giving them to people and praying for them.

So as I said we are transitioning from the first step of the missionary or missional flow to the second step of missional flow, that of Forming Community. So for the next 4 weeks we will be talking about community, the formation of community, the importance of community, the connection between engaging culture and community, and how to be in community with each other. We’ll also provide various events and activities that are geared at building community, and putting into practice what we have been talking about in June and July.

So today, as we enter into our discussion about forming community we’ll start with one of my favorite descriptions of the life of the early church. The description of how the early church did life together. This description of the early church’s communal life can be found in many places within the pages of the New Testament but especially in Acts 2:42-47.

Acts 2:42-47 says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

So let’s unpack this account of the early church and see what we might learn, experience and apply to our context here in Lancaster over 2,000 years later.

Community Formation, from a Christian perspective should be built upon by a few different foundational elements. Community shouldn’t be the end all, be all, stand alone foundation. It needs other things along side of it, in order to truly build biblical community. Verses 42-45 spell out what those other foundational pieces of biblical community are. In verse 42 we see the early Christian church building community through being devoted to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread (which means in the celebrating of the Lord’s Supper, the bread and the wine representing the body and blood of Jesus spilled out for the healing of the world and our lives), and finally to prayer. And in verse 45 we see that mission is an integral part of building biblical community. We talked a while back about the concept of communitas, which is community on steroids and is developed when a community is on mission together, whether that is a church, a business, or a football team. All too often, the Christian church can put mission and discipleship on opposite ends of the spectrum, but according to Acts 2, both are of utmost value and of utmost importance in the formation of community.

Now at the beginning of our time together we played a trailer for the upcoming movie Lone Ranger. At the time I didn’t make any comment on it as to why I was showing it and the connection between the movie and our theme for today. But there is definitely a connection. You see too often we try to do life (whether it is the Christian life or just life in general) as Lone Rangers. But God literally designed us to be in relationship with others. From birth we have been designed for human interaction and love. We wither and die without love, human touch, and interaction. You see over a 100 years ago in the states 99% of babies in orphanages died before they were 7 months old. They died not for lack of food, water, or from sickness. No they just wasted away a condition called “marasmus.” They died from lack of touch, and when that was realized the trend was totally reversed. We can’t be a Lone Ranger Christians trying to follow Jesus into his mission into his world. We need each other. We can’t be Lone Ranger individuals, we absolutely need to be doing life with other people. (as a side note, we will be launching again a Missional Community this fall that seeks to help develop Community, among discipleship and mission. And we want to start one, grow, train leaders, and send out people to start more missional communities, but for now we’ll start with one…most likely on Tuesday night’s at Laura’s)

Besides being committed to the apostles teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, to prayer, and to mission, what else helped the early church to form community that withstood the trials of the culture in which they lived? We see it in verse 46. “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,” They met everyday. But look where they met? Both in the temple and in homes. They were actively involved in each other’s lives, not just when they met at the temple, but each and every day and in their homes. They not only met to break bread and remember Jesus (in communion) but they met to break bread (to eat together). Community, to them, wasn’t just a once a week thing. Community wasn’t a program to attend once a week, or a community group to be a part of. Community to the early church was a 24/7/365 existence. Now I’m not saying that all of us need to be together all the time, but we should work to build community, not on just coming here on a Sunday, but we should be engaging with each other, and inviting our friends (engaging culture part) into our community formation times of eating together, praying together, sharing together, having fun together (seeing movies, running together, Mt. Biking together, etc…) and the list can go on and on.

And so what was the end result of the early church forming community around the three values, that we seek to also live by? It can be found in verse 47, “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” For the early church community formation wasn’t about the idea of us 4 and no more. They didn’t form community to make themselves comfortable, and to meet their own needs. Though their needs were met in the midst of the community formation work that was taking place all around the early church. No, the formation of community, and how the early church lived it out, was so rare, was so attractive, was found no places else, that it led to 3,000 people coming to a saving knowledge of Jesus. You see what you need to know is that the early Christian community was the only community that was inclusive. They included men and women, and had children in their midst. They include slaves and free. Jews and Gentiles. The rich and the poor. And probably any other social situation that you could think of and differences throughout. But they were still able to love each other and that they formed a community that caught the attention of all the people, earned them favor with all the people (as it says in verse 46) and led many to become disciples of Jesus.

So now the question becomes, can we in the 21st century live out such community formation that was found in the early church? Can we be devoted to the apostles teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, to prayer, and to continue His mission in the world? If not, why not? If so, how? How can Veritas be a place that is reminiscent of the early church and it’s radical inclusiveness? What things can we do as a community, to build, form, and live out community (and not forgetting the engaging culture part of the missional flow)? It is to those questions that we’ll be unpacking together.

1. What questions, comments, insights, push back, thoughts, etc.. do you have regarding the message and/or the Scripture?

2. Do you think it is possible to live out Acts 2:42-47 in our context in the 21st century? If yes, how (concrete ideas). If not, why not?

3. From your standpoint, is the current American church like the inclusive early church? If no, why not? How can Veritas be an inclusive community (all the while holding onto the values that the early church lived out)?

4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it?

How to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster Week 3

This past Sunday we talked about Engaging Culture by Living Sent. So feel free to read this and the questions that we dialogued around and let me know your thoughts, questions, etc...

So today we continue our series entitled “How to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster.” We are doing this series all summer long, divided into 3 parts. 3 parts of what I would call missionary flow, strategy or how to plant a missional church.

Over this month of June we are covering the 1st part of the missional flow, that of engaging culture. In July we’ll cover the 2nd part of the missional flow, that of forming community. And finally the last piece of the missional flow, strategy for planting a missional church is to structure congregation.

As I said the month of June we have been dialoguing around the concept of engaging culture and what that looks like. The first week of June we talked about engaging culture by being a blessing in the world. That the call of Abram’s life to be a great nation, to be blessed so that they would bless the rest of the nations carries on to us today, as followers of Jesus. Last week we talked about Jeremiah 29:1-7 and God’s call to the people who were in exile in Babylon to take seriously the Creational Mandate (plant, build houses, marry, and have kids) because they were going to be in exile for a long time. And not only to watch out for themselves but also to seek the peace, the shalom, the wholeness of the city in which they were exiled. To want their best and to work for their best. And God’s call for us as a community is to seek the peace, the shalom, the wholeness of Lancaster.

Today we are talking about a core foundational part of Engaging Culture, this word that you might have heard before, being missional. We will talk about what that actually means, where it gets it’s foundation from, and what it looks like.

So let’s talk about being missional as an integral, almost indispensable part of what it means to engage culture. First of all the word missional is just another word for being sent. It’s the call on every follower of Jesus to live life sent like a missionary into the various spheres of life that you and I live in, like our neighborhoods, work, recreation, home life, etc… But why live a sent life? Why live missionally? And how do we live a sent, missional life?

All those questions I believe are addressed in a text in Scripture, John 20:21-22 which says, “Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

So the first thing we see about being sent, is that Jesus was sent first from God the Father, who is a sending and sent God. You see this commission, this model for missional, sent living, is rooted in God, rooted in Jesus, who we see as being the ultimate sent one, and only through the power of the Holy Spirit. You see it isn’t like Jesus would say, hey guys I’m sending you, but I’ll just hang back here and not be about my Father’s mission. No, in fact from the very beginning of his earthly existence, Jesus was missional. Jesus was sent. You see it in the Message version of Scripture in John 1:14 which says, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.” He moved into our neighbor. He was sent to earth to show us, in flesh and blood, what God is like. To show us who God is. To show us God. To take on flesh and blood and live a missional sent life. You see just as God is a sending God, Jesus was a sent one. As it said, Like Father, like son.” So again when we want to know what missional actually looks like, lived out in the flesh, all we have to do is to look at the incarnation. To look at Jesus.

Think about it. How many times have we heard the concept, “Do as I say, and not as I do?” All of us sometimes say one thing and do another. But here Jesus is sending us, because he himself was sent. He wasn’t just saying that he was sent, and he was sending us. He actually was sent and he actually was sending. After all, in a very real way, Jesus was the first missionary. He took on flesh and blood, moved into the neighborhood, became one of us. Jesus engaged the culture in a very real way. Like Philippians 2:5-8 says, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” He again, is our model for what it means to engage the culture by living a sent life.

Now before you say, “Well that was Jesus, and I am no Jesus”, you need to look at the next part of verse 21 which says, “I am sending you.” You see Jesus was sent into the world to set things to right, by his life, death, and resurrection. And now Jesus gives his disciples (including us) a mission to continue his work on this earth. The tagline of the denomination that Veritas is a part of reflects this very idea, of moving forward with the mission of Jesus. The tagline of the Church of the Brethren is, “Continuing the work of Jesus. Simply, Peaceful, Together.” And so now we are called to continue and move forward the mission of Jesus, setting things to right in this world. Doesn’t it say something to you that Jesus’ plan to continue his work falls on us, weak, fragile, struggling, doubting, believing, faithful, faithless, hopeful, hopeless, disciples of Jesus (much like the 1st 12 he spoke these words to). There is not plan B…in fact we are plan B. He said it himself, in John 14:12, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

Now you might be saying, how in the world am I supposed to carry on the mission of Jesus, let alone do even greater things? And that is where verse 22 is totally crucial to this missional, sent, engaging culture conversation that we are having. In fact all too often, if we are honest, sometimes this is the part that is sorely needed within the missional conversation. So often we just want people to get out there. Get out and bless people. Get out and engage the culture. Get out there and seek the peace of the city. And we totally forget that unless verse 22 is included, missional either becomes an idol, legalism, or something that none of us want to do in our flesh.

Verse 22 says, “And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Jesus knew that his commissioning, his sending the disciples, and by nature, us as well, would not be possible without the Holy Spirit. In this text, the Holy Spirit would show up less than 50 days later at Pentecost, and would drive them out into the world to continue the work, the mission of Jesus. We desperately need the Holy Spirit when it comes to living sent and missional lives. We need the Holy Spirit to guide us, speak to us, help us desire Kingdom life, and to discern things. One of the questions that we need to wrestle with together and wrestle with the Holy Spirit is this question, “To whom am I sent?” As well as the question that goes beyond just the individual, “To whom are we sent?” When we ask those questions, we need to slow down and wait for his answer. We need to slow down, to pray, to read Scripture, to worship, to meditate, to seek God’s face both individually and corporately, or else we will either just run ahead of Jesus into our own ideas, or we will burn out following after the God of mission, or we will run the other way away from mission because our flesh totally fights against this way of life. This missional sent life.

But what does this missional sent life look like? To Whom are you and I sent? How do we engage with the Holy Spirit in order to lead us into the missional Kingdom life that he calls us to? Those are the questions that get at what it looks like when the rubber hits the road so to speak in our missional sent life. And those are the questions that we will unpack together.

1. What are your thoughts, comments, insights, questions, push back, etc.. do you have regarding the Scripture and/or the message? 2. How do you and I engage the Holy Spirit in order to lead us into the missional Kingdom life that he calls us to? 3. To whom are you sent? To whom are we sent? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what are we going to do about it? 5. Homework: Instead of doing something (like the last two) I want you to spend time this week praying, seeking God, asking the Holy Spirit who whom am I sent? Maybe prayer walk around your neighborhood. Maybe spend time journaling. And then act on whatever the Holy Spirit reveals to you.

How to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster Week 2

Below is the text from our second week of our summer series entitled "How to be a Missionary without ever leaving Lancaster." This past week we look at Jeremiah 29:1-7 and had some great dialogue around concepts like exile, bringing peace to the city, and living out the Creational mandate which is referred to in Jeremiah 29:4-6. So read the text, the discussion questions, and I would love to hear your thoughts, comments, etc...

Today we continue our discussion on our series “How to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster” Last week we talked about our series and how to be a missionary community is a 3 part strategy of Engaging Culture, Forming Community, Structuring Congregation. And so June we’ll be talking about Engaging Culture. July we’ll be talking about Forming Community. And August we’ll be talking about Structuring Congregation.

So last week we began our conversation on Engaging Culture by looking at our context of Lancaster, PA. Remember, if you were here, this study done by Barna showing that our mission context of Lancaster is #38 on the list of top 100 PostChristian cities. (this will come in handy later on in this message). We also talked about Genesis 12:1-3 and the call of Abram to leaving the safe, secure, and to risk, trust, and follow God’s call. And God’s call on his life, his descendant’s lives, and ultimately our calling as well, was and is to be a blessing in the world.

Today we are going to look at Engaging the Culture by seeking the peace of the city. To do that we’ll be looking at Jeremiah 29:1-7. Jeremiah 29:1-7 says, “This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. (This was after King Jehoiachin and the queen mother, the court officials and the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the skilled workers and the artisans had gone into exile from Jerusalem.) He entrusted the letter to Elasah son of Shaphan and to Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. It said: This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” So the first thing we see in this text is that this is the content of a letter sent from Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon in 597 BC. You see the people of Jerusalem were carried into exile into Babylon by the Babylonian empire. And so here they were, the people of God in a foreign land, and totally unsure of how to live in the midst of exile, where there was no temple, no maps to show them the way, and where the culture was significantly different than the culture that they were used to being surrounded with. And so in the midst of this exile, Jeremiah sends the exiles a letter showing them what God’s call on their lives needed to be in the midst of living in exile.

Now believe it or not, in a very real way, we are also in exile. All the maps that we were used to, as a church, have been blown away. We are living in the midst of a rapidly changing culture moving to a postmodern and postChristian culture. Again look at the results of the Barna study, and you’ll see we are moving rapidly towards where Europe currently is. And so this text, this letter sent from Jeremiah to the exiles in Jerusalem, I believe is a radically relevant text for how the church in 21st Century America needs to move forward. To live in the postmodern, postChristian exilic world. But what does that look like? Both for the exiles from Jerusalem and to us as exiles in America? Let’s look at verses 4-7.

Verses 4-7 says, “This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” So Jeremiah, in this letter, is going totally against the flow of every other prophet. People were led to believe through false prophets that they were to be brought out of captivity speedily. They were led to believe that they shouldn’t settle down, get comfortable, etc.. because this situation was temporary and God would quickly restore them back to their rightful place. But you see that wasn’t to be. Israel was put into exile because they didn’t care for the aliens, widows, and orphans. They didn’t care for the week and injured. They failed to practice, mercy and justice. They ground down the poor and needy. They engaged in the consumptive practices of the empire. And so these words were containing not only a way forward, but also an element of judgment. They were always called to be a blessing to the nations and to bring light to the Gentiles. Israel had not fulfilled this calling in it’s own land so they were now being required to fulfill this calling in the midst of exile. Now there are a few things that I noticed regarding what the exiles in Babylon were supposed to do while in exile. First of all the exiles were supposed to live out the vision and hope of Genesis, for the good of the empire itself. So in the face of the empire that would encourage them to deny their humanity, Jeremiah says, to do those things that God called you at the beginning of the story, those things linked to bearing the image of God. So Jeremiah calls the exiles to plant gardens, eat the good fruit they produce, be fruitful and multiply. Even in exile Israel is called to fulfill the creational mandate of Genesis 1:28-29 as well as the blessing mandate of Genesis 12:1-3.

The other thing that I noticed about the first part of this call of the Jewish people to live in Babylon as exiles, is all these things that God through the prophet Jeremiah is calling them to are thinks that ultimate take a long time. It just doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t plant gardens one day and eat their produce the next day. You don’t meet someone one day, get married to them the next day, and then have kids the next day. You don’t build a house in a day normally. The Jewish people in exile were hoping to short circuit the process, learn what God was supposed to teach them, and get back to the way things were before as fast as possible. They were looking for the silver bullet.

To me, I believe that this is again exactly where the church in the US is. We are in exile but we don’t want to be here. We want to get back to the way things were and do it as fast as possible. We want the days when “everyone went to church”. And so we look for the magic bullet that will help us grow, grow fast, and take us back to the way things “were”. But it won’t happen. As culture changes and get’s increasingly more postmodern and postChristian we need to do the things that Jeremiah calls the exiles to. We need to plant, build houses, move into the neighborhood, commit to the long term and most of all seek the peace of the city to which we are called.

Now verse 7 I believe is where the true rubber hits the road for the exiles. Verse 7 says, “Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” This is the call that is profoundly subversive- right up there with Matthew 5:44- “Pray for those who persecute you” This is the continuation of the call of Abram. That even as exiles in Babylon, even in the midst of “the enemy” the people of God are still called to living out Abram call, to be a blessing. You see Jeremiah doesn’t just stop with the call to live lives of wholeness that upbuilds only the community of exiles. No he extends this call outward. The exiles have a mission influenced by the call of Abram. (Genesis 12:1-3)

This is an unprecedented and unique concept not only in the ancient world, but also even in our day. To work towards and pray for the prosperity of one’s captors. God’s call through the Prophet Jeremiah was for this small vulnerable group of refugees to have a responsibility, a mission to the larger community in which they find themselves in. They are to work for it’s welfare. To work for it’s peace. It’s shalom (which is a word that means peace, wholeness, the world set right). In fact the Hebrew word Shalom is found a few times in Verse 7 in the words peace and also the word prosperity. As exiles they were to love, serve, pray, and work for the place where they we in exile. And in some way, shape, or form, their future, their status, their lives, were tied in with their “captors”. If Babylon prospered, they would.

Now we see how subversive and countercultural this truly is. To subvert the empire by working for it’s peace and prosperity. To subvert the empire by being a blessing to it. To build a faithful community and to live subject to a different rule and kingship, one where imperial might and power is used, not for itself, but for the feeding of hungry people, and to bind up wounds, not inflict more.

So the question now becomes what does Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon look like when written to the church of America in our own exile (especially when we don’t even think we are in exile)? What does it look like for you and I to live out the Creational mandate in our own missional context? And what does it look like to live out the call of Jeremiah 29:7 in our context today? What would it look like for Veritas to seek the peace and prosperity of Lancaster? Those are the questions that we’ll be looking at together.

1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, push back, etc.. do you have regarding the Scripture text and the message? 2. What does it look like for you and I to live out verses 4-6 in our mission context? To live out the Creational mandate? 3. What does it look like for us to seek the peace and the prosperity of Lancaster? Come up with a concrete idea of something that we can do that would help us seek the peace of Lancaster. 4. “Homework” assignment: Multiple Choice: A. do something that seeks to live out the creational mandate. B. do something that works towards the peace and prosperity of the city. C. Get a group of people from Veritas together to do either a or b or both.

How to be a Missionary without ever leaving Lancaster: Week 1

Here is the message and the discussion questions from our gathering yesterday as well as the "homework" that I gave everyone. Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, etc.. on these things...

Today we are starting our summer long series entitled “How to be a Missionary without ever leaving Lancaster.” Now before I get to far into where we are heading today, I wanted to give you a brief run down on where we are headed with this series, how it will be broken down, and some thoughts about why we are having a series called How to be a Missionary without ever leaving Lancaster.

We are building our series this summer around the concept of how a missionary or missionary community would seek to plant a faith community in a mission context (which believe it or not, we are in one..38 out of 100 postChristian cities.). The concept is what I would call a Missionary or Missional Flow (and is I believe our strategy on planting Veritas). This Missional Flow looks something like this…(show slide)

The first step in being a missionary or missionary/missional community is Engaging Culture. We won’t unpack what that means right now, but over the course of 4 weeks in June, we’ll talk about that. We’ll talk about Engaging Culture, as well as having some on the spot missionary experiences, some “take home” work to come back and report on, and on June 30 we’ll go out into the Lancaster community to serve. (looking for ideas of a non-profit that we could establish a relationship with and serve those 4 5th Sundays..ideas let me know)

As you can see the next step in being a missionary or missional community is to Form Community. So in the month of July we’ll be talking a great deal about what it means to form community, build relationships, and develop friendships. And we will also have some on the spot missionary experiences in forming community, some “take home” work to come back and report on, and many opportunities to build and form community all summer long with things like Long’s Park Summer Music Series nights, and our Community Dinners/Picnics on Tuesday night at Laura’s.

The “last step” (not that you do this and you are finished…it is actually a never ending strategy) is when you Structure Congregations. In the month of August we’ll spend time talking about what it means to be a community of Jesus followers. What it means to be church? About the important and non-negotiables. And ways to structure a community. We’ll also have times of conversation about Veritas and how to move our community forward into the next year, and how to structure our leadership, community, missional communities, etc…..

But today is our first day in the Engage Culture part of the “How to be a Missionary without ever leaving Lancaster”. Throughout June we’ll be looking at various ways of Engaging Culture, and things that we need to be about, when Engaging Culture. Today we are looking at Engaging Culture by BLESSING.

So let’s turn to a passage of Scripture that is fast becoming one of my favorite’s and see what it might have to say to us today about engaging culture by being a blessing. Genesis 12:1-3 says, “The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

The first thing we see in this text is God’s call to Abram, and by definition his call to the entire jewish people (even before there was a Jewish nation), and then the same call to those of us who are followers of Jesus. This call or covenant that the Lord gave to Abram has never been changed or rescinded so it is something that applies to us as followers of Jesus here in the 21st century. So the Lord’s call to Abram is a pretty challenging and risky call. The first thing he says is “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” So in other words leave everything that you have ever known. Leave your comfort zone. Leave your security, leave your family, leave everything. And if that wasn’t bad enough, God also says that he is supposed to go to a land that he will show him. It’s not like God said, leave your family, etc.. and go to Canaan. It probably should be more accurate to say “as you are going I will show you the land.” Abram didn’t have a map, a GPS, a smart phone with turn by turn directions, etc….to navigate where he was heading. All he had was God’s call and God’s direction. To trust God’s leading, put one foot in front of the other and continue to seek God’s face to know which way he was supposed to head. You see God was preparing Abram to truly be the first missional person, and the descendants of Abram (who later became Abraham) to be the first missional people. He was called to leave his homeland. That meant leaving the Tigris-Euphrates valley and to leave the security of civilization and to enter the unknown. The wilderness so to speak. And in much the same way, God is calling us to be a missional people who leave behind the comfortable, ordinary, every day to embrace risk, uncertainty, and the unknown. Before we can truly engage the culture we need to get outside of our own self and our own comfort zone and to listen to the spirit of God leading us to “a land that I will show you.”

So what happens with Abram arrives in the land that God was going to show him as he went? What is the strategy, the scheme, the plan so to speak for Abram? Verse 2 and 3 show us what is supposed to happen with Abram gets to the place that God will show him, ““I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Now remember that there was no nation. It was just Abram and his wife Sarai with no kids (because she was barren according to Genesis 11:30). So we see that God intended that this call on Abram’s life would surpass and transcend his life and move through his descendants and continue on through the years through Abraham’s descendants and to Jesus, and to the early church, and to anyone who has named the name of Jesus who has ever lived or will ever live. You see the call was his destiny, as well as Israel’s as well as ours. And the inspiring destiny is that Abraham and his descendants were somehow to be the means of God putting things to right, the spearhead of God’s rescue operation. Through Abraham and his family, God would and will bless the whole world. God’s original blessing on the whole world would be especially fulfilled by the lives of Abraham and his offspring. In various ways and degrees, these promises and vocation, to be a blessing to the entire world, were reaffirmed to Abram, to Isaac, to Jacob, and to Moses. It would also carry into the New Testament with Abraham’s physical descendants, the people of Israel, as well as Abraham’s spiritual descendants, gentile believers (which would include all of us). But most of all, this promise and calling to be a blessing to the world was fulfilled by the person, ministry, life, and work of Jesus, who is the greatest blessing the world has ever known.

Now something that we need to understand regarding God’s promise to bless Abraham is that this great status is not exclusive. He is not blessed to the exclusion of others, but rather, he is blessed in order to bless others. In fact, being blessed is elaborated on in the second part of verse 2, “I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.” The kind of blessing that Abram will receive is the blessing of being a blessing to others. Being blessed doesn’t mean that you get to keep it all to yourself. All too often however the people of Israel had a narrow and selfish concern for their own interests (not too different than us today) but the highest vision of the prophets was of a suffering servant of mankind. Many Israelites didn’t want a God who would be equally the God of all the nations of the earth. They wanted a God who would be partial to them. But here at the very beginning of the Scriptures, God is calling his people, through Abram, not to look for their own blessings, but to take their blessings and use them to bless others. When they lived as a blessing in the world, as well as lived in obedience to God and followed him only, things went well for the people of Israel. When they didn’t live as a blessing in the world, things didn’t go well.

I believe one of the greatest heresies, if you will, in religion (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc..) is a failure to take seriously these lines of poetry. When religions assume that their adherents are chosen only to be blessed, and forget that they are blessed to be a blessing, they distort their identity and they drift from God’s calling for them. When we as Christ followers see ourselves as blessed to the exclusion of others rather than for the benefit of others, we become part of the problem instead of part of the solution. And we see this again and again in the history of our world (crusades, etc...) and certainly in today’s world. And so as we enter the first part of our How to be a missionary without ever leaving Lancaster, we come to the conclusion that a missionary or missional community needs to take seriously the calling of Abram, and begin to own it as our own call as well. That in order to engage culture, one of the best ways is to simply be a blessing.

But what does that mean? What does it look like to be a blessing to people? Who is God laying on your heart to be a blessing and what will you do to be a blessing? That is where we will spend the rest of our time together discussing.

1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, etc.. do you have regarding the Scripture text and/or the message? 2. What would or does it look like to get out of your comfort zone and embrace risk and uncertainty in the midst of engaging culture? 3. In what ways can we as a community engage culture by blessing people? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what are we going to do about it? 5. “Homework”- Bless 3 people- preferably those who don’t know Jesus, that you know of in some tangible way and then come prepared to share what happened, what you did, etc…

Veritas- A Vision for Lancaster- Our Go Fund Me Funding Campaign

Yesterday while on Facebook I saw a friend who was posting about his plans to go to Ithaca, NY and be part of a 4-week primitive skills trainer certification program. To raise the needed funds to go through this program he was using a crowdfunding platform called Go Fund Me (which can be found online at www.gofundme.com)

As I had just sent out our newest fundraising letter, I thought I would put together our own Veritas Go Fund Me Funding Campaign. So the widget above is a link to our funding campaign. And the fundraising letter that we just sent out is below. So please take time to read the letter below, and if you feel led, then visit our Veritas: A Vision for Lancaster funding campaign site either by clicking on the widget above or visiting http://www.gofundme.com/Veritas

Thanks and God bless.

Dear Family and Friends, May 2013

Our Mission Field The other day I came across an article that was entitled, “The most Post-Christian cities in America.” You can see the article here: http://cities.barna.org/the-most-post-christian-cities-in-america/

I wasn’t surprised to see our Mission Field, Lancaster, PA (combined with Harrisburg, York and Lebanon) on the list. What I was surprised with however was its’ placement (#38). It was placed above cities like Austin, TX, Salt Lake City, UT, and Detroit, MI.

You see this article confirmed two things for me. First, it confirmed what we are finding in our mission in Lancaster, especially with younger generations. That even in Lancaster, PA which seems like a hot bed of Christian activity (some call us the Bible Belt of PA) that we are indeed feeling the effects of the postmodern, and post-Christian shifts that are taking place in our wider culture.

The second thing that this article confirmed in me was in the way in which we have chosen to go about planting Veritas, from the perspective of being missionaries in and to our own culture. This also means that planting in a Post-Christian setting as a missionary/missional community will by nature take longer than in other places that are less Post-Christian.

Our Missionary Strategy To engage our mission field with the Gospel of Jesus and the good news of the Kingdom of God, we use a three part “Missionary Flow” Strategy. We start with Engaging Culture, then Forming Community, and finally Structuring Congregations. Let me describe how we are implementing this Missionary Flow and then listen to people from our community who have been impacted by the mission and ministry of Veritas.

Strategy Part One: Engaging Culture Veritas has engaged the culture of Lancaster in both personal and corporate ways: • Personally my family and I reach out to our neighbors through various means including inviting people over for dinner, throwing various parties (including St. Patrick’s Day) and other events (like our Easter Egg Hunt, Driveway Movie Nights, Picnics, Hot Drinks at Halloween, etc…). • Others in our community are loving their neighbors by throwing parties themselves. They are also building relationships through work, school, and various other means. • Corporately we continue to hold 1st Friday Art Shows blessing local artists and tying into the 1st Friday art scene of Lancaster. We continue to hold 3rd Friday Music events creating space for upcoming musicians to share their talents with others. We were a venue for the Launch Music Conference and Festival. And we continue to discern other ways of engaging the culture of Lancaster (through the arts, music and acts of service)

Strategy Part Two: Forming Community There are several ways that we are seeking to do this as Veritas: • This summer we’ll host a weekly Picnic at Long’s Park during their Summer Concert series. We will be encouraging our community to invite their friends to hang out with us and we’ll build relationships with them. • Earlier this year we launched our first Missional Community which is a group of approximately 10-15 people who meet weekly in homes and meet in an UP/Discipleship, IN/Community, and OUT/Mission Monthly Rhythm. We will launch a second one this fall, most likely focusing on college students. • Our Veritas people are spending time together outside our Sunday gathering and starting to act more like a family than an “organization”.

Strategy Part Three: Structuring Congregation We are doing this in various ways. • We meet each and every Sunday morning. Our time includes relating as family, praying together, musical worship, sharing how we have been a blessing in the world, how we have done life together, and what God is teaching us. We also look at the Scriptures and apply them to our lives (individually and corporately) • We “take off” every 5th Sunday and use that time as a Service Sunday where we partner with a local non-profit and serve the Lancaster community. • Last week we did an open meeting where everyone brought something to share (Scriptures, what God is teaching them, leading in spontaneous prayer, etc..) And one of the coolest things happened when several of the community felt the call to go out on the streets and ask to pray for people that they met. Others stayed and prayed for them, while another two guys went to a coffeehouse and engaged in spiritual conversation with a person at the coffeehouse.

What God is doing in and through Veritas I wanted to include a few reflections from people within Veritas about what God is doing in and through Veritas in their lives.

“In Veritas, I have found a community that can be honest and a group of people who are all journeying together toward becoming more Christlike. The discussion format is really helpful, as I like to hear what God is doing in the lives of my fellow community members, and to talk over their questions, and mine. I feel like my faith has grown stronger as a result of working through tough questions and delving deeply into the Scriptures.”- Matt Wheeler- Veritas Member

“The quote, "doing life together," is an echoed thought at Veritas, I feel. Within this community, the concept of sharing and learning about God expresses itself in different mediums--whether that be musical worship, prayer, discussion, etc. There's a reason why I keep coming back: it inspires me to dig deeper in my own relationship with God, fellow followers of Jesus, and the world.”- Sammy Lang- Veritas Member

“Veritas has impacted my life by being there for me when I was not sure if I ever wanted to step foot into a group of Christians again. I've been going through a period of pain and disillusionment with the traditional church. For a while recently I had stopped going to any church, but God drew me to Veritas. When I first started visiting, I was too scared to open up on my own, but Ryan Braught kept inviting me out for coffee, built a relationship with me, and really listened to my thoughts and feelings. And when I started crying during communion, Kaytee Tipton was right there to hold me. With Veritas, I've been amazed by the realness of their Christlike love for me, even when I felt out of place, confused, and overwhelmed with pain. When my family wasn't there for me, Veritas has been a family for me. They let me be myself and they accepted me in spite of my mess, and they continue to point me to Jesus. I feel like God has definitely been using Veritas to keep me holding on to faith. I am so grateful to Ryan and everyone for loving me and helping me on my spiritual journey so far.”- David Maughan- Veritas Member

Mission Partners We are seeking to be a “Missional Community of Authentic Worshippers” living as missionaries to the Lancaster area. And you have seen what God is doing in the lives of those we are on mission with and for. But we can’t do this alone. We are looking for Mission Partners.

Will you make a personal investment during the coming year in the work that God is doing with spiritual seekers who have no relationship with Christ? We are looking for Mission Partners who will make a one time donation or who will commit to a monthly commitment. (We are praying for 2,000 dollars in monthly commitments). Will you help us be about the mission of the Gospel in Lancaster? You can make checks payable to “Veritas” and mail them to the address below. All gifts are tax deductible.

We are also looking for Mission Partners interested in prayerfully considering joining our core community of missional disciples. If you would be interested in learning more about this possibility, contact me at the contact information below.

We are also looking for Mission Partners willing to be people of prayer covering our Veritas mission and ministry in prayers. If you are interested in joining our prayer team, contact me at the contact information below.

Thank you in advance for partnering with Veritas as we continue to touch lives and bless the community-at-large.

In Christ,

Ryan and Kim Braught 852 Silver Spring Plaza Lancaster, PA 17601 717-285-1984 ryan@veritaspa.org www.veritaschurchpa.org

Post-Christian Lancaster Part 2

My last post I shared the above study that Barna Group put out that put my local context, Lancaster, PA (in with Harrisburg, Lebanon, and York) on the most Post Christian cities in America at number 38, above places like Austin, TX, Salt Lake City, UT, and Detroit, MI. I shared the fact that the ground underneath us is shifting, moving, and changing and that we are moving to a postmodern and postChristian world. Even Lancaster county, viewed by so many as a haven for all things Christian (Christian music, radio, theater, etc..) is definitely experiencing the same shift that is happening everywhere. Now I wouldn't say we are on the same scale as the Northeast and the Northwest, but we are definitely further along in this postmodern, postChristian shift than the south especially.

So this post I'd like to begin to walk you through the process and the strategy that we are using as we continue planting Veritas in Lancaster. I will take this blog post to walk you through the overarching idea as well as the first step within the strategy. The next two blog posts will be on the next 2 steps within the strategy.

First, a few statistics:

The United States is the largest English Speaking mission field in the world. The United States is also the 5th largest mission field in the world. The world's largest missionary-sending country has now become the world's largest missionary-receiving country.

With these statistics and the understanding that we are living in a more and more postChristian setting, we need to realize that we are living in a mission field. And since we live in a mission field context we should take our clues about how to do mission, ministry and church more from missions, then from other areas of church life.

Let me give you a scenario. Imagine with me that God has called you and some friends to start a church in a place where you had no prior relationships, and where the culture is ever increasingly postmodern and postChristian, and is weary of religion, especially of the Christendom variety. This place may be London, Portland, Denver, Amsterdam, or other places (maybe even Lancaster)

What strategy would you use to start a community? What would you talk about at your first meeting after landing on the ground, getting housing, and finding jobs? Where would you start?

I believe the place where you would start is from a posture of a missionary or in this case a missionary community. I believe that as we move more and more into a postmodern, postChristian world, we need to move away from a "church planting" posture and into the idea that we are missionaries.

So you and the group that you have gathered in this postmodern, postChristian city or place, realizes that you need to think, and act as a missionary team, not a church planting team. But what does that mean? How would you move forward together? You would start by going through a basic missionary flow.

The first phase of any mission must involve cultural engagement. But what does it mean to engage the culture? Does it mean evangelism? Does it mean signs and shouting? It honestly is about working to develop relationships and friendships. Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, in the book AND (where we got alot of these ideas) says this "Engaging Culture isn't as much about doing evangelism as it is incarnating the presence of Christ in every relationship we form. If we fail at engaging well and living as Christ would live among our neighbors and friends, we fail as missionaries and the culture doesn't see the visible beauty of the sent church."

So now the question is how is the Veritas community being a missionary community and starting our work/continuing our work. We are continuing to ask those questions including the question "to whom are we sent." But here are some ways that we are seeking to engage the culture.

1. 1st Friday Art Shows. Since our space in right on Art Gallery Row we have sought to connect to what is already happening on 1st Friday by becoming a part of 1st Friday by being an art gallery. We bring in local, upcoming, and emerging artists and give them a space to share their work.

2. 3rd Friday Music Events. 3rd Friday, though not as big as 1st Friday is all about music. And so our space becomes a music venue for local musicians as well as open mics for people to use their gifts. We have also been a venue for 2 years for the annual Launch Music Conference and Festival.

3. Being Good Neighbors. Kim and I are seeking to develop relationships with our neighbors by holding various events, or being a part of other events. We have hosted picnics, drive in movie nights, St. Patrick's Day party (my favorite) as well as helping with the End of the School year Ice Cream party, breakfast at the bus stop, and various other events and activities.

4. Long's Park. Every Summer the local park, Long's Park holds a weekly Summer Music Series that happens on Sunday night. This summer we are encouraging our missionary community to invite their friends and neighbors to join us as we eat, hang out, and listen to the bands for the night. We are doing this to combined mission (reaching out to friends, etc...) and community.

5. Other ideas: We have some other ideas of Engaging the Culture including serving at Celebrate Lancaster (an event in June), serving on 5th Sundays, doing Open Studio art gatherings, possibly chalk the block where we use sidewalk chalk to write positive words of affirmation on sidewalks, and some other ideas that we haven't thought of yet.

So we continue to engage the culture of Lancaster, building relationships, and loving those God sends our way. The next phase in Missionary Flow is where we'll head in the next blog post, that of forming community.

Body Building: Body Politics Week 6

Below is the text from yesterday's message along with our discussion questions.

So today we come to the end of our 6 week series called Body Politics looking at some key components in how a local body of Christ gathered together needs to function or “govern” themselves.

We’ve covered a lot of ground these last few weeks and my hope and prayer is that these times together have grounded our community in some foundational ways of doing life together that will help us as we move forward. That when things come up, conflicts happen, and various other opportunities and struggles, we can look back, remember what we talked about, and apply these things to our communal life together.

The first week we talked about a reconciliation process that is laid out in Matthew 18:15-17 and how often this process is misused, and is not about reconciliation but judgment and destroying relationships. But this is a process that we need to use to heal conflicts and brokenness. And the process that I want this community to apply in a loving Christ honoring way.

The second week we talked about the defining mark of a community of followers of Jesus, who live under the lordship and reign of King Jesus. That being the defining mark of love. That when someone looks into a Christian community there should be (though often isn’t) this thought that this community could only be understood in light of the love that we have for each other, and only in light of the love that comes from Christ into us, and then out of us into each other. The third week we had our open meeting where we spent time praying together, sharing what God has been teaching us, and then going out into the community to bless, pray and talk with people.

Two weeks ago we talked about the idea that the best way to build community is not by looking inward, but to be together as you look outward. To build what we talked about, communitas, which is community derived from a group of people who have a larger purpose or mission so to speak. That our community needs to be on mission together and then that is when true community (or communitas) happens.

And finally last week we talked about 2 metaphors for church, institution and family. We talked about the fact that we, as the body of Christ, need to live lives that look more like a redeemed family than an institution. Relationally driven versus function or programmatic driven. Or as some one said, family is what I can bring to the group; Institution is what I can get out of the group.

Today we wrap it up with what I feel is a crucial cog in the wheel of our body politics. The cog of body building, that each of us has a part to play in the building of this body of Christ Followers. That without each other, and the gifts that we bring, we are an incomplete body, severely lacking the parts that we need to grow, function, and develop properly.

Now I want you to stop for a moment and focus on the picture of Jesus that is on the screen right now. Do you notice anything unusual or interesting about this picture? What do you notice?

If you would look closely at this mosaic of a “picture of Jesus” you’ll notice little squares. Each little square in the wider picture is a smaller picture and those smaller pictures are people within the Veritas community (as many pictures of people that I could find). And that says it all. We make up the body of Christ and if I were to take one of you out of the picture, it would look like a very different picture and we would be missing a crucial part of the puzzle known as Veritas.

Let’s turn to a portion of Scripture that addresses this crucial idea that each of us is a part of the body of Christ (the body is another metaphor for church) and that we desperately need each other (our gifts, talents, relationships, etc…) to be fully who God is calling us to be. Let’s look at 1st Corinthians 12:12-27 which says, “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” As I mentioned before, the Apostle Paul is using a brilliant metaphor or illustration of the human body and relating it to the working of the community of followers of Jesus, living under the rule and reign of King Jesus. Even as every cell in a human body is linked by a common root (a common DNA code) at the same time the parts of the body look different, are treated different, work different, and accomplish different tasks. Even so, there is a great diversity in the body of Jesus, both in appearance and function but each member has a common root and a common goal. The body like unity of followers of Jesus is not a goal to be achieved but a fact of be recognized and lived out.

Paul then begins to look at various parts of the body and uses them to illustrate the point that each and every part of the physical human body is needed for the body to be healthy, living, active, and functioning properly. No part of the human body is more important or less important. Each has a role to do and is tied to the whole. And it is no different in the body of Christ. Every part is needed for the body of Christ to be healthy, living, active and functioning properly.

Paul effectively addresses those who believe they have nothing to offer (unpresentable parts, etc..) and those who believe they have everything to offer (eye, head). The fact is everybody has something but nobody has everything. The body (physical or spiritual) must have different parts and gifts for it would not work together effectively as a body. And in the body of Christ, not only is diversity acceptable, it is needed and essential.

The Apostle Paul, in using the metaphor of the body, says much about body politics. The parts of the body work together. The ears and eyes don’t serve themselves but the whole body. The hands do not feed and defend themselves but the whole body. The heart does not only supply blood to itself, but serves the whole body. Sometimes there is a part of the body that only lives to serve itself. It doesn’t contribute anything to the rest of the body and everything it gets it uses and feeds and grows itself. It’s called cancer.

If you are a follower of Jesus than you are a part of something greater than yourself today. You are a part of a local body of Christ, and also the worldwide body of Christ. And you are crucial to the life of the body, especially this local body of Christ. No matter whether your feel unimportant, or over-important. Whether you feel like you are excluded because you don’t believe you have any gifts, or if you are excluding others because you think they don’t have your gifts, Paul says it best at the end of what we read, “Now you are the body of Christ and each of you is a part of it.”

But what does it mean to be a part of the body of Christ? What part of the body are you and what can be your contribution to the body of Christ (locally especially but also globally)? How can we seek to include and help each part of our body live out the calling and purpose that they have been designed for? And what does this say to us gathered together as the body of Christ called Veritas? That is what we are going to spend some time unpacking together.

1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, etc… do you have regarding the message and the Scripture? 2. If you were a body part, what body part would you be and why? 3. You are part of the body of Christ. What part of the body of Christ are you and how can you use those gifts to help (contribute to) the body be healthy and growing? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what should we do about it?