dwell missional church blog burlington vt
dwellArchives
- August 2010
- July 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
twitterFeed
dwellTags
Community: 2010
I realize there's been a blog shortage of late, so here are excerpts from the writings of two other dwellers, Jim Hoag and Trevor Rushford. Both are bits about community, and both are about what community might mean for us in 2010:
First, Jim Hoag:
Part of true Christian vision, especially in this coming year, is to see Christ-transformed people transformed into a people, and so transform the world. Many evangelicals have missed that middle term. For some reason much of the the church was not seen as a foretaste of a new society; but rather as a club for the new individual. Yet we were made for relationships where, as believers, we could welcome the "whosoever" and become deeply engaged and shaped by a loving, social reality called the church. Here would be the entering wedge of the Kingdom of God into larger society.
I no longer want to see people choosing to go it alone, choosing a worldly, cavalier "freedom" that masquerades as liberty but actually isolates them from the full provision of God's grace. Instead, this year, I see a group of people gathering to encourage each other in the common task of seeing God's kingdom embodied and embedded in their work, in their families, in their towns, in their recreation; in the "midst". This gathering is ekklesia; it is biblical community, a foretaste of the new heaven and new earth. By grace this community accepts people where they are but by that very same grace, encourages them not to remain as they are. (Without getting too complicated, this evolves as people are identified in community and realize who they are in that context). And this is powerful because its power is centered on living out the Gospel. It will be relevant to its world because it lives the life of the kingdom in the world, not apart from it. Let 2010 bear witness to the growth, increase, influence and impact of true, genuine, biblical community.
And Trevor:
2010 and my main focus: A Relational Community - Not just a community.
I want to focus on a relational community where I actually care about my neighbors and not just have them. I want to be more involved with everyone in my life. I want them to see me for me for the first time in my life. Sure, they've seen the broken and messed up me for so long, that the real me maybe a bit of a shock to them. With this new found love for God and Jesus, it scares some people in different ways and it even scares me. I mean, I hated religion and God up to about a year ago and hear I am professing my undying love for him. I'm worlds apart from myself already and it's overwhelming.
So what and how am I going to obtain my goals for 2010? I have set out a clear blue print of what I want to do this year and all the events I have planned out and I left time for the unplanned, the spontaneous events that will most certainly come up. There are no real guidelines per say on what I'm trying to accomplish, I guess I just want relational stories, memorable stories, and a kinship with my fellow brothers and sisters. And why wouldn't I want that? That's what Jesus wanted and achieved on an enormous level, and that's a part of what his legacy has been all along.
I have always had a lot of people in my life and some real strong relationships along the way and they were the real deal. I want to achieve these relationships through Jesus now. With out having to knock down my walls to get through to someone else's walls.
Happy new year, everyone.
So this is Adventmas
It's weird.
I've never really used the word "Advent." Never had a reason to.
If you didn't grow up Catholic or maybe Lutheran or something, you probably don't use it either. It's "Christmas" in the evangelical world. Christmas. Sure, there might be an Advent calendar or an Advent wreath, but those are just traditions, odd ones at that, and the real show, the real thing worth getting excited about is Christmas.
But I'm excited about the word Advent this year, and I've been using it a lot, especially when I talk at church and even when I pray. And there are a couple of reasons for this.
Here's Reason #1. It's different. That's lame, I know, but I like the word and I'm using the word first and foremost because it's different. And so using a different word makes me think about the season differently. And that's good. I'm viewing the season through a new lens.
A church out in Portland came up with this thing called Advent Conspiracy which is all about viewing the Christmas, I mean Advent, season a little differently. At Dwell, we've gotten excited about this mainly because part of our mission as a community is to engage those in deepest need, just as Jesus has engaged with humanity's deepest need; and AC fits that part of our mission, like a glove. Christmas is about giving? Then certainly it is about giving even outside of family and community lines to those on the highways and in the hedges of life.
Next Sunday, we'll donate the entire offering to help fund a clean-water well in the developing world (because nothing is more necessary than clean water) and to meet needs at the Jean's orphanage in Haiti. The minimum we will donate is a thousand dollars. Can you get some money in the box next week to put it over a grand?
And here's Reason #2. This one's easy. I love Christmas so much because I love Jesus so much. And Advent reminds me, whenever I say it, that Christmas is so wonderful because Jesus is so wonderful. Let me explain...
"Advent" is from the Latin "adventus" which means "coming"; Advent is the season when the Church celebrates the first coming of Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. It is a season in which we relive the anticipation of men and angels leading up to that day in Bethlehem when a Savior was born, a King in a nasty barn, bundled up in a feeding trough. And we relive it because we want to remember and not forget - we don't want to become numb to the fact that the world lay hopeless and enslaved and oppressed and exiled and dark before light and love and hope burst forth in the birth of this baby; that no one had seen God, and for 400 years no one had heard God, and then suddenly God was HERE, God with US, God become flesh, moving into our neighborhood!
How incredible this is! How incredible that God became man to identify with me, to identify with me all the way down to the gutter of life, all in order to rescue me from the slavery of my sin and myself, to redeem the world from the effects of all sin, to bring in a new kingdom of justice and peace.
Reliving this is remembering the meaning of gift: that Jesus emptied himself of all that was due him as the Son of God to live the life I could not live, die the death I should have died, and thereby give me life now and forever by his sheer grace; that he broke down the walls to seek and to save the lost and create a whole new society of reconciled reconcilers who now live to make him known by doing the things he did.
And that is why I love Christmas. That is why I love Christmas carols and Christmas trees and Christmas presents and Christmas stockings and Christmas cookies and Christmas breakfast, because all of it is celebration of and representation of The Gift.
Advent means that it's all about Jesus. All about the fact that he came. And that he came to us.
So this year, for me, Christmas is Advent.
Or maybe, Adventmas.
Merry Adventmas.
At the Table with Jesus
My son Zach preached a stunning sermon at church yesterday. He exposited Luke 14, including Luke 14:8-22 and Jesus' banquet table for "the poor and the maimed, the lame and the blind." This is a story about a revolutionary table, set up intentionally for the disenfranchised, those of the back alleys, the highways and hedges - those on the outside looking in. After the sermon we were all moved and for me, I woke up this morning still thinking about it. As I went through my ritual of reading, including posts from other blogs, I came across an article by John Frye that not only affirmed what Zach had spoken but added a "Yes and Amen" to it. I've included some excerpts:
The Aims of Jesus: Gutsy Table Fellowship
I want to focus on Jesus' habit of table fellowship with sinners. The religious avoided at all costs table fellowship with the irreligious. It was considered immoral to be at table with sinners. But Jesus' meal-time practice shattered all religious and social order. His blatant fellowship made a powerful impression and ignited some of the fiercest opposition. This was eating, mind you.
But it was different than even John the Baptist's method. Jesus maintained revolutionary contact and communion with sinners. John required repentance/ conversion first, then communion. Jesus radically (what a pastor!) reversed the order: communion first, then conversion! What was Jesus doing? He fitted his practice to His proclamation. The kingdom of God is here and whoever wants to can enter it...now. All who were considered unblessed (unfit) were now considered blessed: the poor, the tax-collectors, the social riff-raff and maginalized. How can the words of Jesus take on incarnate shape? At His table! Jesus considered his table fellowship a foretaste of the great banquet where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will dine.
Amazing Grace...How Sweet the Taste!
Jesus believed that welcoming grace had inherent power to generate repentance/conversion. Certainly Zacchaeus is Exhibit A. The grace of God named Jesus initiated communion with Zacchaeus and we know the result. Jesus' mission valued reconciliation both with God and with man. Jesus lived that reconciliation in grace. Were Pharisees and the religious elite welcomed to Jesus' table? Yes, of course; it was a table of grace. Yet the elite, for ethnic, moral and religious reasons refused the table and considered Jesus a blasphemous, rebellious trouble-maker. Oh, had they known.
So What?
Well, many have turned evangelicalism into a new form of Pharisaism by demanding repentance first and then, only then, is communion (at the table) legitimate. How we can do this in the face of Jesus' message and meal-time habits is difficult to fathom...
This Christmas, maybe all of us can set up some sort of "table", a revolutionary table, set up intentionally for the disenfranchised, those of the back alleys, the highways and hedges; those on the outside looking in.
[You can check out more of Jim's stuff at his blog, MissionNow.]
Dwell/ing North
For as long as Dwell has been in existence, we have consistently gathered together in homes for friendship and spiritual conversation. We've just felt, instinctively maybe, that this is how community works - not just in a building once a week, but day to day, house to house, coffee shop to coffee shop.
As our Sunday gathering has grown, God has given us a vision for dwell/ings - a collection of smaller weekly gatherings that act as both a community enhancement for folks who join us on Sundays and a missional opportunity for our friends and neighbors outside of the church. For a while, we had a Tuesday dwell/ing going on at Border's bookstore downtown, and that was fun; and there was another one on Wednesday happening at our old Sunday gathering spot, Kids Alive.
But by God's grace, things are expanding.
Starting this month, the dwell/ings number three, two of which are in Burlington, and one of which is actually up NORTH - in Milton. And there's a reason for that. The reason is because this summer a guy named Trevor decided that he would follow Jesus, that he would leave behind the old self and embrace the new self in Christ because, really, that's who he was always meant to be. He got baptized. He and his wife Sunny came into covenant. And they live, with little Gavin and Chloe, in Milton.
Because the kingdom of God is present and real and growing, Trevor was talking all about Jesus and Dwell with his friend Jac, who told her friend Harold at work who happened to be a follower of Jesus, too. Harold and his awesome wife Nicole came to Dwell and soon came into covenant. Harold and Nicole live in Milton, too.
Now, Dwell/ing North is my dwell/ing, so I'm a little partial. It's amazing. It's incredible. Each week we eat food (a lot), laugh (a lot), and chat about what we've been reading in Don Miller's latest; we pray for each other and encourage one another and talk about how to build a better story and redeem our city and redeem the world.
But the point is that whether you live in BTV or up North, you are welcome to join us in doing life together, Tuesday and Wednesday nights, the way Jesus and the early church did. It's a bro-down and a sis-down that is nothing less than beautiful because it's all a part of this wonderful thing called the kingdom of God.
[Follow Zach and Trevor on Twitter]