Community is Critical
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Have you ever been to a social event where you didn’t know anyone? It can be a little awkward can’t it? Or, it can be a little adventurous…Who will you meet? What can you learn? What interesting people are here that you would never otherwise have the opportunity to connect with?
A number of years ago I found myself in this very scenario. I was working with a client in Atlantic Canada whom I had spoken to on the phone a few times, but never met prior to this encounter. We spent the day together as I trained his staff and that evening he invited me to a surprise birthday party for a close friend of his.
I initially declined because I figured I would feel out of place, and people would wonder who the new guy was in the corner and why he crashed the party. He explained to me that there would be over 100 people at the party and I would fit right in. This changed things, so I figured it would be a great opportunity to meet and party with some friendly eastern Canadians.
So, that evening I found myself amidst scores of partiers enjoying live music, great food and beverage, and who were there to celebrate the life of their dear friend who, by the stories shared by many in attendance, had spent his 50 years making other people’s lives better. I felt honored and privileged to witness the community this man had built by caring for others.
It made me think, who would be at a party like this for me? Have I invested my life in a way that has created community and made other people’s lives better?
I ended up chatting with a certain man for an extended period of time. It turns out he was a very well known and influential politician. He has enjoyed a long and significant career in provincial politics having served as Minister of Finance, Minister of Education and other powerful positions of authority.
We talked about community, change, the political process and politics in general. I judged him to be a man of high moral value and one who truly wants to work for the good of society. I asked him a specific question,
“How do you maintain your vision and motivation to create positive political change in the midst of oftentimes ruthless, vicious, unfair and selfish political opposition?”
His answer caught my attention…
“By surrounding myself with like-minded, good people who will stand together in the midst of the opposition reminding me why we are doing this”, he replied.
Wow – so simple, yet so profound. I immediately saw how this was relevant, not just to those in politics, but to all of us. I would call what he was talking about a “band of brothers”, or a community of allies. Sadly, most men feel like “abandoned brothers” and not part of a band of brothers.
But you know something? We can’t expect community to somehow magically form and then invite us in with open arms. No, we must create community. We must take the initiative to make community happen. We must choose to reach out and connect with other men.
We must choose to meet together regularly, cultivating deep, open and honest relationships as allies in this adventure called the Kingdom of God. Like Clint Eastwood said, “A man alone is easy prey.” Similar to my new political friend, we are the targets of ruthless, vicious, unfair and selfish opposition that we can not withstand alone – we need each other. We must walk together as one in a community of allies.
Have you chosen to surround yourself with like-minded, good men who will walk with you in the midst of spiritual opposition and remind you why we are doing this? If you have not, it is never too late. Community is critical and it must be created.
Take the initiative and create a community of allies to help keep you envisioned and engaged in this adventure of walking with Jesus. We are not meant to walk alone. We must be united in community, walking together as one.
John17:11, 21, 22, 23
“I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world and I and coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name – the name you gave me – so that they may be one as we are one…that all of them may be one…I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one; I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity…”
Proverbs 27:17
“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”
Acts 2:44
“All the believers were together and had everything in common.”
Give Me Your Backpack
After graduating from UBC with a Commerce and PE degree, Anne and I got married, went to Bible School and then moved to Winnipeg to be with my brother and the church in Winnipeg.
I worked in business as an Account Executive, but had always believed that I was to teach. So, after a few years I resigned my position and went back to university to get an Education degree.
This marked the beginning of a very profound period in my life.
While at the University of Manitoba getting my Education degree I started a prayer and Bible study group with Christians in the faculty. During one of those meetings I had my first vision.
I saw myself hiking up a mountain wearing a great big backpack. I came to a fork in the path. One path went straight up the mountain, and the other went down into the valley.
However, it wasn’t the paths that caught my attention – it was Jesus.
Jesus stood at the fork in the path holding a climbing rope and a climbing axe. He held them out to me and said,
“Give me your backpack, all you need are these.”
My first thought was, “I can’t give you my backpack. Everything I need for this trip is in there.”
The vision ended.
As I began to unpack the vision, the Lord helped me to understand what He was saying. The rope represented the Word of God. The climbing axe represented the Holy Spirit. The back pack represented all the things I believed I needed to accomplish during my life in order for me to be considered “successful”.
What did I think I needed to accomplish in order to be a success?
A beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood. Nice vehicles. Meaningful work. A good income. Enough money to give away lots. Cool family holidays. A boat. World mission travel. A good reputation in the community. Influence and favour in the community. A ministry that makes a difference for the Kingdom.
The Lord was calling me to lay all of these hopes and dreams down and walk with Him – relying on His Word and the Holy Spirit.
It took me two years to come to the point of surrender. At the time I was teaching in a private Christian school making $2,000/month. We were raising a family on one income, and none of my hopes and dreams seemed remotely possible.
Jesus had to be enough.
The vision was clearly an invitation to surrender my life fully to Jesus. I thought I had done that decades earlier. I certainly had given my life to Christ years before, but now I was being invited to really “put my money where my mouth was” and surrender everything to Him – to transition from making Him Savior, to making Him Lord.
I had to decide whether or not He was enough. Was I willing to trust Him with my life? Was I willing to build my life on God’s Truth – His Word – and to receive my life from the Holy Spirit?
Or, was I going to try to do life on my terms? Was it God’s will my way, or God’s will God’s way? I had to choose to trust in His great goodness and His good greatness. Could I trust Him with all my hopes and dreams?
It was an agonizing decision. I knew ultimately that I needed to surrender completely, but the weight of it was a stark reality in the midst of my current work situation.
I believe this “fork in the path” is one that each of us must come to. Will we trust God with everything? Is Jesus enough?
The answer of course is “yes” – He is enough. However, the fulcrum of our faith is our willingness to surrender our will to His. “Not my will, but yours be done”. Wholehearted ongoing surrender is the mark of a Christ follower.
Jesus is inviting you to give Him your backpack. What’s in it? Will you give it to Jesus? Is He enough for you?
Matthew 16:24-26
“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?’”
Philippians 3:7, 8
“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.”
John 6:67-69
“’You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Jesus asked the twelve. Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.’”
Get Your Priorities Straight
“Who’s the f’n new guy?”
Ah, that would be me.
Do you remember Sesame Street? They had a feature on the show where they would show 3 items/objects. Two of the objects would be similar or related somehow and one of them would be totally out of place. For example: a bed, a chaise lounge and a carrot.
The song that went along with it was, “One of these things is not like the others. Two of these things are kinda the same. One of these things is not like the others. Now it’s time to play our game.”
Well at this particular moment I was definitely the one thing that was not like the others…
It was the summer of 1980 and I was working on a special student landscape crew for the North Vancouver School Board. We were all grade 12 students from schools in North Van. We were all kinda the same.
However, the regular school board crew, comprised of full time maintenance guys, needed some help on a big job at Argyle School. So, my boss sent me to work with “the adults”. Being a fairly sheltered upper middle class kid I had never really met these kind of guys before.
To put it kindly, they were “rough”. Their favourite word was “f’n” – in all its glory. Quite frankly, I had never really heard that word much before. In fact, it was never uttered in our home. What struck me though, was the ability of these guys to weave a tapestry of profanity on whatever subject they decided to expound upon.
The topics they most enjoyed yattering about were, of course, women and motorcycles. Again, I’d never really heard women talked about like that before. This was a vacabulational education I really did not want to receive. Sadly though, I was sentenced to work with these guys for a week. I would indeed receive a cross-cultural experience I had never imagined I ever would, nor one I desired.
My memory of the week was spent minding my own business working alongside this group of 3 biker buddies laying sod on a new soccer field. Pick up a roll of sod, lay it down, roll it out, and kick it into place, over and over and over again. I tried to be pleasant and engage with them as best I could, but I was pretty shell-shocked by the F Bombs they kept dropping – amongst many other unmentionables.
I’ll never forget one particular relational scenario described in great detail by one of the guys. He was talking about an argument he had with his “f’n old lady”. She wasn’t happy with some of his behaviour so he had to set her straight…
“So I says to her, ‘Hey, you f’n don’t get it – first comes my f’n friends, then comes my f’n bike, then comes f’n you. And if you f’n don’t like it you can f’n leave.’ So she f’n left.”
I almost burst out in guffaws of laughter. Valuing my life though, I did not. My respect for his “old lady” definitely went up that day.
He had a clear understanding of his priorities, but he did not have his priorities straight.
How about you, do you have your priorities straight?
Our priorities need to be the following:
- God
- Wife (if you are married)
- Children (if you have kids)
Our first priority needs to be our relationship with God no matter what our station is in life. He’s the source of everything in our lives. He’s life. He’s our wellspring of living water.
If you’re married, the best gift you can give your wife is a great relationship with the Lord.
Our relationship with our wife needs to our second priority, right behind Jesus. The best gift we can give to our children is a good marriage – and that’s only possible when we’re making God #1.
What are you putting in front of your relationship with the Lord?
Anything we put in front of the Lord is idolatry, and that does not lead to life. What do you need to surrender to God?
Let’s get our priorities straight.
Exodus 20:3
“You shall have no other gods before me.”
Luke 14:26
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.
Luke 16:13
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
Jeremiah 2:13
“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
Colossians 3:5
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”
Stop Going To Church
Yup, you heard me correctly. Stop going to church!
It’s actually impossible to go to church. Church is not something we attend, it is something we are.
Jesus came to birth the church. He came to call forth a people who would be the body of Christ, the people of God, a Kingdom of priests to God, ambassadors of the Kingdom, the family of God, the army of God – the Church.
The church is not a building. Where the church gathers can be called a church building, but it’s completely unbiblical language to refer to the building as the church. Equally as unbiblical is referring to the gathering of God’s people as church.
“Go to church.”, is a phrase you will never see in scripture because it is unbiblical.
We gather together as the church, we don’t go to church. Our language betrays our belief and also informs our belief. If we’re going to truly get hold of God’s heart for us and for the world though us we need to choose biblical language.
The church is an organism. It is not an organization. The church is the body of believers who have chosen to surrender to the Lordship of Christ and carry His call as ambassadors of His government to this world.
The church is the hope of the world. The church carries the word of God to this world. We’re sons and daughters of our God, His family, partnering with Him in the work of His kingdom coming and His will being done on earth as it is in Heaven.
The church has been given the glory of God on earth. We are commissioned to bring the constitution of the Kingdom in the authority of Christ to a fallen, broken and imprisoned world to see them set free and born again as beloved children of our Heavenly Father – living in His righteous, peace and joy.
As Peter told us in 1 Peter 2:9,
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
We need to stop attending church and start being the church. We need to recognize who we are and who we’re called to be. We have to understand our spiritual DNA and the purpose for which Jesus died and rose from the dead.
Our North American mindset is so individualistic. We read scripture through the lens of “me” instead of “us”, “I” instead of “we”. God’s heart is for a body of believers who will be the body of Christ on earth – it’s about us, not me.
It’s about us being the church. We’re born again to be the family of God. You can’t attend ‘family’. You have a family, you’re part of a family. Your family gets together, and sometimes your family has meetings. Your family does life together.
The church is no different: we do life together. We’re all part of the church. The church gets together. The church cares for each other. The church cares for others. The church has meetings.
Following Jesus is a team game, not an individual sport. Jesus came to launch a team called the church. To follow Him is to be part of the team, and we all have a unique position of the team.
Jesus didn’t come to call spectators – He called players. We’re not called to sit in the stands and watch someone else play the game. We’re born again to be on the field playing the game as part of God’s team.
It’s time for us to understand we can’t attend church, we must be the church. Let’s get out of the stands and get on the field. Let’s gather together as the church in the church building to encourage and equip one another to magnificently “…declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. “ Let’s come together to give, not just receive. Let’s be the church for each other.
Stop going to church, but rather let’s gather together as the church so we can be equipped to be the church.
Matthew 16:18b
“…I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
Revelation 5:10
“You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.”
2 Corinthians 6:16
“For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’”
Ephesians 4:11, 12
“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up”
Hebrews 10: 24, 25
“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Be Kind, Rewind.
Ah, yes. Do you remember?
There are a number of you who read the title to this article and knew exactly what I was referring to. And, there are a number of you, who are of a younger demographic cohort, who have no idea what the title is all about.
Way back in late 1970’s the first VCR was introduced to the consumer market. VCR stands for Video Cassette Recorder. A VCR played videos – which were taped copies of movies or shows you could watch on your TV. Initially there were two formats: VHS and Beta. VHS won the battle of the video formats and took over the market.
When VCRs first came out you would go down to your friendly neighbourhood video store to rent videos. Very few people actually owned a VCR so you would rent the VCR as well.
I remember coming home from the video store near our house lugging a big black suitcase with the VCR inside. I would open it up on the red shag rug in our family room and then hook up the wires to our 27” Electrohome console TV. Which, of course, had no remote control. To flip through the channels you had to sit on the floor within arm’s length of the TV turning the knob through both channels if you had an antenna, and a handful of channels if you had cable.
However, this magical device known as a VCR opened up a whole new world of entertainment. Sure, we were used to music coming on tapes – 8-tracks and then cassettes – but now we could get movies. Yes! My love of movies began to grow and flourish.
Then one day my dad came home with what would revolutionize my leisure life – our very own VCR! No more renting, no more $200 deposit, no more lugging home a massive suitcase of electronics. Now I could watch videos whenever I wanted.
Before we amassed our own video collection we’d still make regular trips down to the video store to rent video cassettes. Every video cassette had a start and a finish – a beginning and an end. When you watched the video you’d finish up at the end of the tape. Then, of course you would need to rewind the video back to the beginning.
Many consumers would neglect to rewind the video cassette, so rental stores would place a sticker on the video,
“Be kind, rewind.”
I was reminded recently of this message, and how relevant it is for our lives.
What relationships do you need to rewind? What issues do you need to rewind?
Is there someone in your life you’ve been holding something against? It may be something small. It may be something significant. It may involve forgiveness. Or, it may simply be shifting your perception of someone.
To rewind a relationship is to take it back to the pre-offense, or the pre-ticked-off stage.
There are 2 ways we can rewind a relationship: 1. Forgive someone, or 2. Extend grace to someone.
We need to forgive someone when they’ve done something to hurt us. Perhaps they said or did something they shouldn’t have, or they didn’t say or didn’t do something they should have. To forgive is to let them out of your prison of resentment and bitterness. And, it sets you free from the prison as well.
Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself because the resentment will kill you, not them.
However, oftentimes what a strained relationship needs is to extend grace to a person who said or did something that negatively impacted your relationship. No forgiveness is actually needed, it’s a simple reset. Just believe the best about someone, let it go and move on.
Have grace for them.
Knowing we’re all broken and unintentionally hurt others, means that we all need to be adept at “rewinding” relationships. We must choose to be kind and rewind. It may involve a “courageous carefrontation”, or it may involve saying nothing.
Who do you need to forgive? What do you need to let go? Where do you need to believe the best about someone and move on?
Be kind, rewind.
Colossians 3:12-14
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
2 Thessalonians 3:18
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.”
Hebrews 12:15
“See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”
1 Peter 4:8
“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”