Seed Team Foundations

Once, when I was a teenager, my dad decided to make some additions to the driveway to our home.  I remember the tricky aspects of mixing concrete, keeping it fluid, pouring it in a marked off area, and carefully smoothing the surface.

A lot of work goes into a smooth driveway, and there are plenty of mistakes that can be made along the way.  It would have been pretty ugly if I’d have been in charge.  But dad pulled it off pretty well.

If you’re going to build (or park) on a surface, you want it to be well done.  The same is true with anything important that’s being built.  “By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care” (1 Corinthians 3:10).  These are the apostle Paul’s words to the church in ancient Corinth.

If you are part of The Vine right now (or if you’re interested in what’s happening), then you are concrete being poured into a specific mold.  As we’ve mentioned before, that concrete mixture is a group of people who are learning to follow Jesus and to love our neighbours.  These are the dual emphasees of discipleship & mission.  Mixed together, they’re a powerful force.  The mold we’re being poured into is a community of people who practice the balanced lifestyle of Up, In, and Out.

If all that sounds a little sticky, you might be interested in this Sunday’s Seed Team meeting.  The Seed Team is the group joining together to chase after this vision of building The Vine.  These meetings spell out the nuts and bolts of that vision.  We welcome you to come and see what it’s all about!  Contact Aaron for more info.

Moving on Up

We’re on the move!  The Vine is moving toward it’s very first missional community (MC).  At our Vine Connect last Saturday night we experienced the feel of a group of 20 to 50 people exploring the Upward dimension of missional community life.  This was more of a ”taster” or trial of what this aspect of MC life is like.  In practice, we may move toward more of an organic feel of meeting together as we continue on.

If Vine Connects paint a picture of a future missional community, our Seed Team meetings deal with the actual brush strokes of how our MC will form.  If you’re interested in being a part of this new beginning, join us on May 27th.

On your spiritual journey towards God, in what ways have you had meaningful connections with Him?  Were these experiences on your own or with a group?  How can you imagine a group of people encouraging each other to experience a closer connection with God?

Vine Connect

This weekend on May 12th The Vine will host our third monthly Vine Connect event.  Vine Connect is a great opportunity to come hear more about The Vine’s vision and hopes for the future.  We believe that God is calling us to be a movement of individuals and families following Jesus as he works to transform and renew people and places in Vancouver.

This month we will spend our time examining the “Upward” dimension of life in The Vine (click here or here to read more about our practices of Up, In, and Out in our Missional Communities).  We believe that all of us are created in the image of God, and that true transformation and renewal is found in renewed relationship with God through Jesus.  At The Vine we are committed to walking together as we each journey to God, and this weekend we will practice that through worship and prayer.

This month’s Vine Connect will take place at The Lion’s Den on Commercial Drive (map). We will begin at 5:00 pm with a potluck meal.  Bring some food to share, and bring a friend!

 

What Does Spiritual Journey Really Mean?

Cliches.  It’s hard to avoid them.  One cliche that I’d like to talk about today is “the spiritual journey.”

Something about the terms “spiritual” and “journey” connect more deeply with people of my generation than they have in prior generations and likely in future generations.  There’s something that feels better about using these words, especially in comparision to saying something like, “I’m progressing through the tenets of religious doctrine in the Christian faith.”  That’s about as ugly as I can make it sound off the top of my head.

So what do we mean by “spiritual journey” and why does it connect deeply with us?

When I once asked a collegue if he was religious he replied, “Not religious, but I’d like to think I’m a spiritual person.”  So spiritual and religious don’t mean the same thing in modern usage.  Spiritual is a personal connection with what we cannot see.  We thirst for spirituality, for something beyond ourselves.  It can feel New Age’y’ or orthodox Christian – it’s a flexible expression.  We can mold it somewhat into what we’d like for it to be.

What about “journey”?  Journey implies growth.  There’s a sense of mystery to journey.  We don’t have it all figured out yet, but then, neither does anyone else.  Journey implies progress and a destination.  We sense we are headed for something great.  It also may imply grace to some of us.  If we are early in the journey it’s ok if we get off the path occassionally, as long as we return eventually.

It’s ok if we wrestle with certain issues for a while since spirituality is a journey rather than a destination.  That’s the beauty of combining the words.  This beautiful unseen reality that we long for can be tasted in steps.  One taste doesn’t imply that we’ve experienced all of it.  There’s more and deeper experiences around the next turn.

I think much of what we embrace in these words represent good things.  But we need to guard against the tendency in our generation to be our own compass when it comes to what “spiritual journey” is all about.  The relative “good for you, not for me” mentality that pervades our generation is skin-deep and ignorant of the vast amount of collected wisdom in humanity.  For the follower of Jesus, “spiritual journey” is filled with meaning and significance as we hear the words of Jesus and the spiritual tradition remembered in Scripture.  We have a Compass for our journey, we have a Guide for our journey, we have a Companion for our journey.

Galations 5:25 says, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (TNIV).  We have a spiritual/invisible guide who helps us on this journey.  We can picture ourselves on the path like a child trying to walk alongside a parent.  We certainly experience the journey ourselves – as something new and amazing, but we’re not alone.  For all of us wanting to reach out for what is beautiful, excellent, and extraordinary in life – it can be found by grasping hold of the hand of Jesus and walking where he takes you.

What are your thoughts about the phrase “spiritual journey”?  Does it connect with you?  What does it mean to you?  Do you prefer another phrase to describe your experience with God?  What do you think the next cliche will be?

An Easter Rhythm

I want to finish this short set of blogs on healthy rhythms by focusing on the journey from Good Friday to Easter that Jesus took and that many people celebrated this past weekend.  This is the ultimate rhythm of life and death and new life.

It’s a rhythm that’s celebrated in different ways by religions throughout history as the seasons come and go.  And this time of year we visually see “death” turn to “life” when trees begin to sprout leaves, and plants and flowers shoot up in the soil.  This represents the cyclical nature of life and our experience of it.  In some ways, to view life as a cyclical rhythm is at odds with Western Christianity which views life on a timeline with a beginning, middle, and an end – a linear concept of time.  In other words, Christianity believes that life (& the world) is headed somewhere.  Whereas, some other worldviews believe that life is repetitive and endless.  Eastern thought, which highlights karma and reincarnation, is often more cyclical.

In the west of the Western world (e.g., Vancouver), we’re a bit mixed up by the convergence of Eastern and Western thought.  The line and the cirlce have blended in our heads in strange and contradictory ways to form zig zaggy lines of confusion.  But I think this confusion may actually help us with today’s rhythm, because the rhythm of death to life (Good Friday to Easter) is both linear and cyclical.  Let me explain.

Jesus only died one time.  And he’ll never die again.  That death happened in history at a certain point in time that can be validated with more surety than most historical events of 2000 years ago.  The apostle Paul wrote that this was a death to sin, and the follower of Jesus can join in this once and for all death to all sin and brokenness in their lives and in the world.  See Romans 6:1-14.  Paul connects this death to the Christian act of baptism, in which the follower of Jesus acts out the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Just as the death is a one time event, so is the new life.  And so there can be a linear nature to the Good Friday/Easter experience that we can trace in the historical timeline of our life.  “When were you saved?  When were you baptized?”  These types of questions the follower of Jesus can answer as a part of their linear story.

However, the experience of the Good Friday to Easter journey is more than a one-time event.  The follower of Jesus is told to “take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).  We’re told to be “living sacrifices” (Romans 12:1-2) who carry around the death of Jesus (2 Corinthians 4: 7-12).  There is a daily death that the follower of Jesus faces.  To carry a cross is not a one time event.  You don’t lift it up for a moment, say “thank you Jesus,” and then drop it on the ground.  The rhythm from death to new life is a daily occurance, an hourly occurance, a moment by moment surrendering of the soul to God.

And the new life is a daily, an hourly, a moment to moment inflow of the Spirit of God making us new.  Each time we take up the cross and follow Jesus we don’t lose life, we’re given more and more of the resurrection life that God’s breaking & bringing into the world through Jesus.  We truly come alive, we come into our own – who we were made to be, as we let God take the death out of us and fill us with new life.

That last bit is somewhat cryptic, I know.  What does that look like?  It’s as simple as this really:  Someone close to me does something to hurt me.  I respond with angry words or the cold shoulder.  I want to keep this emotional debt in my back pocket so I can take it out if necessary.  There’s a twitching feeling in my heart that something’s not right.  I’d like to hold on to my hurt but I feel the Spirit of God in me saying to forgive.  I don’t feel like forgiving.  I acknowledge my feelings to God.  I see a picture in my head of Jesus forgiving me from the cross.  This pierces my heart.  I decide to forgive this other person.  I go to them, apologize for my angry words, express the pain I felt through their actions.  Reconciliation takes place.  The relationship is stronger.  Life grows.  The seed of death planted in me through the hurt dies.*

Whether that example relates or not, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this rhythm.  Do you see this rhythm from death to life in your own experience?  Do you feel that the experience is linear, circular, or both?

 

*What I’m trying to illustrate in this example is how the Spirit of God plays a role in bringing new life into situations of brokenness.  Obviously reconciliation can happen without moments of prayer (without even an awareness of God), but the difference is that Christians are not on their own in dealing with the death that invades them.  Without the power of Christ, death wins in the end.  But in Christ, death is defeated.

Another Rhythm – The Law of Undulation

Today I want to delve into a rhythm that connects closely to Jesus experience before and during his crucifixion (appropriate for this week, right?!).  The rhythm that I notice can be described as a movement between spiritual highs and lows.  That is, there are times we feel very close to God and times we feel very distant from Him.  In this situation I’m not imagining we feel distant because of guilt over something we’ve done (I almost always feel this way after consciously doing something I know to be wrong).  But right now I’m talking about the times when we don’t feel close to God regardless of our recent moral behavior.

In Jesus’ case, the pain he experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane (see Matthew 26-27) and at the cross seems related to feeling distant from the Father.  Jesus’ cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matthew 27:46b, NLT) is the most obvious reference to this feeling.  I know that this exclamation is a quote of Psalm 22, which ends in hope and praise, and that Jesus was quite aware of that he would eventually be vindicated and rise from the dead.  But I think these words are a true sentiment of how Jesus actually felt concerning his connection with Father God at that moment.  He felt abandoned.

At other times in Jesus life it is easy to imagine the closeness He felt toward the Father.  For example, when he raises Lazarus from the dead he says, “Father, thank you for hearing me.  You always hear me, but I said it out loud for the sake of all these people standing here, so that they will believe you sent me” (John 11:41-42, NLT).  Here, Jesus was entirely confident of his connection with Father God.

This swing from feeling connected with God to feeling distant is a normal rhythm in our relationship with Him.  But so often when I experience this swing or hear others experiencing it, we think it has to do with our own spiritual performance.  If I’m close to God I must be doing something good.  If I’m distant I rummage through the things I’ve done wrong to figure out why God is mad at me.  Rarely do I reflect that these rhythms come and go, and that maybe God allows them for a purpose.

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis refers to this rhythm as the “law of Undulation.”* God wants us to be close to Him, and allows this closeness by His grace (it’s up to Him as to whether we feel His presence).  But at times He purposefully withdraws so that we will experience what it’s like without Him.  At this stage of our relationship these times are necessary for our growth.  In the times of distance we realize our need for Him, our brokenness, and that we haven’t “arrived” at spiritual perfection.  It’s like the parent who allows the child to take steps on her own, knowing she will inevitably fall.  The fall is a necessary part of the growth.  Learning to pursue relationship with God (and remaining faithful to this relationship) when we feel distant is part of our spiritual development and maturing.

Well, we’ve only really scratched the surface on this topic but maybe we’ve opened it up enough to begin a discussion.  How do you view this rhythm of connection & disconnection between you and God?  Do you think God allows the “down” times in our relationship or do you think we cause them or both?  What about the times of closeness with God?

*See chapter 8 in The Screwtape Letters.  If you read this chapter you will find a much better description of this rhythm (given from the demonic vantage-point!) than what I have shared.  This blog should have just said, “Read this chapter and get back to me…”  If you’ve never read The Screwtape Letters then go immediately to your local bookstore, buy it, and spend the next three hours reading it… please.

Workin’ Hard or Hardly Workin’

Some quotes never get old, as long as they’re said in a Scottish accent.

Recently I sat around with a group from The Vine and almost all of us were feeling pretty busy & slightly tired.  I think it would actually be weird to find a group in North America where that wasn’t the norm.  Even when we’re ‘hardly workin’ it seems that we can still find enough stuff to do to feel busy.

Now, this isn’t going to be one of those “you shouldn’t be so busy” finger-pointing blogs.  (Cause when you point one finger, you’ve got four others….  yeah, yeah).  It’s really tough to not be busy in our culture, so pretending like we can snap our fingers and become desert monks all of the sudden isn’t reality.  Instead, I’d like us to return to the concept of healthy rhythms of life.

If we look at the life of Jesus, there are certainly busy moments in his life.  Luke 4:31-44 is one great example of both a busy moment and Jesus’ refusal to let busyness define his life.  We see a rhythm to his life between being productive and resting in God’s presence.*

It’s important to begin by realizing that “rest” is valuable to God.  If we don’t value rest we’ll always feel guilty for experiencing it.  In Genesis we see that God rested from his work on the 7th day.  A whole day without work.  Just enjoying what He’s made.  When God gives the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel, a day of rest – Sabbath – makes the cut.  Think about that.  For those of us who grew up thinking that being a Christian was all about following rules – did you ever think that resting was in His top ten?

God values both productivity and rest.  We see Jesus living a life that values both these things.  So how can we develop this rhythm of life?  Well, it’s not by snapping our fingers.  It’s probably more like working out (not a very restful analogy, I know!).  My point is that it takes time to develop a habit of rest in your life.  The first time you set aside time to rest you’re bound to feel a bit guilty.  Or maybe you find yourself getting busy during your rest time without meaning to.  Or possibly you just feel anxious about not being productive.  It’s like going to the gym and you realize you can’t run more than five minutes on the treadmill without fainting.  What sustains you through those first less successful moments of rest is the confidence that rest really is important and valuable – to God and to you.

There’s a lot more that could be said, but we’ll leave it here for today.  As we approach Easter we’re examining the healthy rhythms that show up in the life of Jesus.  What other rhythms do you think are healthy?

 

* I’ve learned much about this particular rhythm from Building A Discipling Culture by Mike Breen & Steve Cockram.  I draw the Biblical references to rest straight from their chapter called “Fruitful Living.”