Reflection: On Modeling Missions

As Christians, we recognize our call to work alongside God and one another to do Kingdom work.  As Baptists, we take much pride in the strength and power of our missions organizations and church missions projects.  But, as parents, do you model a missions lifestyle at home for your children?  I am talking outside of your church activities, youth mission trips, and annual missions giving.  In your comings and goings, are you missional? 

Let's define missional.  Missional describes a person or a group of people who have decided to form their lifestyle in a way that intentionally joins with God in his mission in the world.  So, sometimes, yes, this involves doing mission work.  But not always.  Being missional transforms every aspect of life - it determines how we interact with our co-workers and classmates, how we conduct ourselves on social media, how we make a life with our neighbors, and how we raise our children.  

Now, we will not tell you to be missional and then leave you to figure it out on your own.  Just was we expect you to model a missional lifestyle for your family, we hope to model it for you.  We hope to provide opportunities for you and your children to experience working alongside God in his mission in the world.  And, we hope that we are able to equip you and your children to have discussions on matters of faith and mission with lasting effects.  

This summer, through our middle school missions program, we are offering our first family missions project in conjunction with Love Wins Ministries.    

Love Wins Ministries describes themselves in this way:

Our mission is to demonstrate and promote God’s love for the marginalized through personal relationships, education and support. Love Wins Ministries shares unconditional love and friendship with the homeless and poor population of Raleigh, North Carolina. We focus on relationships, not outcomes – just like you do with your friendships. 

If the people we work with desire change in their life, we will help with that however we can. And if they desire no change at all, we will honor that as well. No matter what, they will be loved, respected and treated as an equal. Because they are. 

We want to build relationships that cross cultural and societal barriers. It is not that complicated: We love people – period. No agenda, no strings attached. People that society has left behind. People who wear dirty clothes. People who beg for money on the side of the road. People who are not welcome in most church buildings. People the city wishes would disappear. People made, we believe,  in the very image of God.

Every Sunday, the Love Wins community gathers together at 3:00p.m. for worship in their office space in the annex of Hillyer Memorial Christian Church downtown.  This community is comprised of ministers, interns, addicts, the lost, the forgotten, and the lonely.  This is a church of people who recognize their deep need for the love of God, and we are so blessed to be able to serve them.  

What I am asking each family to do is this:  Show up on Sunday afternoon on July 21 here at church at 3:00p.m. with one potluck-style dish to bring along.  We are not going to participate in the worship service, but we are going to be humbly preparing a Sabbath feast for our friends who live outside.  This will be Love Wins first ever dinner on the grounds!  

As the church memebers line up to go through the buffet, so too, will we.  We will spread out and eat with people whom we have never met.  We will share table fellowship - telling stories, laughing, and listening - all the while living the gospel of Christ.  

In this experience, it is my hope that we will be able to follow the example of Christ by loving people where they are.  I pray that you and your family will be transformed by being invited to extend mercy by truly listening and sharing yourselves with others.  

Our purpose here is to express with our lives the mission of God - not to make lists of people to help and things to do.  But, to invite others to experience the good news of Jesus Christ just by knowing us and for us to experience the same by knowing them.

Brochures are in the mail with more info!

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: A post on fashion, self-worth, and sex ed

Parents, let's have a conversation.  How do you teach your children about respecting the Image-of-God-ness in others and in themselves when the prevailing narrative of our culture teaches anything but?  

Today, I watched a video that helped confirm something that I already knew - the way we dress directly affects the way people understand us and treat us.  But also, the way other people dress directly affects how we understand and treat them - we make snap judgements, and our minds are made up all from an image.  

So, let's talk about this.  Where do we draw the line?  How do we talk to our children about issues of image, self-worth, and respecting others?  Is the culture's message something to fight, or are there simply bigger fish to fry?

A few points for our conversation:

   Our culture's prevailing narrative: 
      Consume. Consume. Consume.
      Sex sells.
      Less is more (in terms of fabric yardage.  Certainly not in terms of accruing stuff.)
      The end justifies the means.  Other people are just stepping stones to our ultimate fulfillment - their feelings are just collateral damage.

      *We could add so much more in terms of harmful narrative, but I'll stop here for the purposes of this post.

   Our faith's narrative:
      Genesis 1:26-27 All people bear God's Image.  
      1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16  The Living God dwells within us.
      Matthew 25:31-46  The way we treat people is the way we treat God.

As a parent raising both a son and a daughter, I often think about how I will teach my children to respect both themselves and others.  I worry that my son will lose sight of the personhood of the girls he meets and get to a point in his life when he only sees them as objects to possess.  I worry that my daughter will find her self-worth in the eyes of the boys who give her attention for the way she looks and dresses.  Now, I know that my son may fall prey to finding self-worth in the eyes of another, and my daughter may objectify boys based on their looks.  But, generally this is how our culture raises our children to think.  

So, how are you raising your children?

This post is intentionally open-ended because I want us to discuss.  I want to learn from you, and I want you to learn from each other.  

At the bottom of this post, there is a place for your comments.  Please remain respectful of each person's comments.  Let's have a good, fruitful, and informed conversation together.

Senior Retreat 2013

Boy, do we love our people!

Congratulations class of 2013!

Reflection: On Seeking Wisdom

Recently, I have spent some time studying what is know as the wisdom literature of the Bible.  Thus far, I have read through and studied the book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes.  I have Job, Psalms, and Song of Songs to go.  And, if I get really adventurous, I might even break open the inter-testamental books of Wisdom and Sirach.

In 1 Kings 3, we read that when Solomon was made king, he did not ask the Lord for long life or wealth, but he recognized his limitations and instead asked for wisdom - a discerning heart to govern and the ability to distinguish between right and wrong.  Because Solomon sought out the wisdom of God and set out to walk in the ways of the Lord and obey his commands, God not only gave him wisdom, but he blessed him beyond measure.

Though scholars today believe that the authors of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are unknown, according to rabbinic tradition Solomon was the author of each.  In these books we find wise sayings and good advice, but the thread that underlies it all is an emphasis on our dependance on God and a simplicity in our living.  Though life and all of its joys and sorrows may be fleeting, God remains faithful and constant.

As we seek to live lives faithful to our God, we can learn from these books of wisdom.  In ordering our lives and raising our families, we are called to lives of dependence on and trust in God's faithfulness.  We are called to a simplicity that recognizes that the only thing in life that is not fleeting is the relationship we have through Jesus Christ.

An Article to Offer Some Insight

Andy sent me an article earlier today by one of the quintessential youth guys, Doug Fields.  He has been loving and serving young people for longer than I have been alive; and with all of that experience under his belt, he's gained a lot of perspective into the world teenagers face day in and day out.  

For those of us who have been teenagers and who have come out on the other side, we often times have difficulty empathizing with our teens when they face pressure and anxiety.  We were teens.  We made it through.  So, why can't they?  What's so different now as compared with our experience? 

Check out his article on Common Pressures Teens Face.

Reflection: Identity

In our development from childhood to adulthood, there is a reciprocal relationship between understanding and living into our identity and our ability to move from dependent to interdependent beings that pushes us forward in our development.  From the time we begin to form sentences, we show our will for independence.  Listen to any two year old, and you will here “I do it myself!”  We have this idea that what makes us truly human and truly valuable is this ability to do everything for ourselves.  (Isn’t that how sin entered the world?)  This is the struggle of adolescence.  At the root of all arguments between parent and child is the child’s will to gain independence and the parent’s hesitance to let go.  In the same way, at the root of all sin is the child’s will to be independent (choosing his or her own will over God’s) and the Father’s perfect presence through it all.  We defiantly declare to God and to the world, “I do it myself!”  (Can it be any clearer how much like petulant children we sound when we sin?) 

In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul explains that in Christ we have a brand new identity.  We are reconciled to God; however, living into this reconciliation does not come through our ability to do anything on our own.  It comes solely by relying on (depending on) the sinless One who took on our sin.  We must understand that we cannot do it alone because we were never intended to do it alone.  Once we understand that we do not define our own identity, but that our identity is Christ, then we become whole in him.  The goal is not independence, but it is dependence on Christ and interdependence with his Church. 

So, where are you on this spectrum?  Are you dependent on God and interdependent with his people?  Or, are you in the adolescent fight for your life, struggling for independence? 

May you be reconciled to God and come to know peace through your identity in Christ.