Life2gether

Ten years ago I taught 6th graders at Grace Christian School in Deephaven, Minnesota.  I loved it.  Pouring my life into young people was (and still is) a passion of mine.  After all those years, I recently heard from one of my former students.  It was so encouraging to hear about what God is doing in her life and how she remembers 6th grade as the year she started making a habit of reading the Bible on her own.  She is now a junior at Bethel University in Minnesota with a burden to share her faith in Christ.  I was so blessed to read this article and to be a small part of the story God is writing in her life.

So, if you’re a teacher, be encouraged.  You’re making a difference.  Many times you won’t get to see the fruit of your labor, but God is at work!  BTW … if you’re a former 6th grade student of mine, I’d love to hear from you!

Sea Parable from ilovepinatas on Vimeo.

I was intrigued by this video.  I think it captures the reality that as churches get bigger they have a tendency to become comfortable.  They can get sidetracked and forget why they started in the first place.  It reminded me of the tagline of my blog.  Life Together  — SO THAT OTHERS MAY LIVE.  Our community is not for community’s sake.  It’s for mission.  I borrowed the phrase (so others may live) from the coastguard rescue swimmers.  What a fitting picture for those of us who have been rescued by Christ and sent out like Christ to seek and to save that which was lost. 

(HT: Church of the Cross)

A few days ago I wrote this post and it triggered some good dialogue with a friend of mine about the gospel and community.  This particular section stood out.  It was written by Chad Nuss who planted Christos Church in Jeffersontown, KY.

Church community consists of people that are very different, who sin against each other, who don’t like each other from time to time, who do all kinds of bad, hypocritical things–yet they stick together because the call to Christian community is to learn how to die to ourselves for the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of the church, for the sake of community, and for the sake of the glory of God.

Our enjoyment of community does not primarily come from how much we like each other, but from how much we are being rescued from destroying each other by the Gospel! The overflow of joy in the Gospel is joy in each other because we can look at each other and announce the Gospel to each other–the very Gospel that forgives us of sin and helps very different people with very different backgrounds with very different sinful tendencies with very different agendas, frustrations, and preferences come together around a common Savior.

We must be careful that we don’t get fired up and invite people to our community because of how awesome our community is–that is idolatry. We invite people to our community because of how awesome the Savior of the community is and what he is doing to enable our diverse community to gradually die to ourselves and become more and more authentic.

In his follow up post to 5 Dangers Facing Over-Churched Kids, Tony Kummer gives 9 strategies for reaching them. Here they are:

1. Empower them to teach
2. Teach for heart change
3. Use creative story-telling
4. Pray for every child
5. Teach the bad news
6. Model repentance
7. Make it relevant
8. Go deeper
9. Get them on mission

See how he fleshes each of these points out here … I think point #6 is particularly important and I’ll copy what he says about it below:

Model Repentance: With over-churched kids, we can’t pretend that Christians are always the good guys. They see behind our Sunday morning smiles and know that we’re not perfect people. When we are honest about our failings, and confess our sins, it points them to the Gospel. When teaching, use examples of Christian repentance and be transparent about your own struggles. This is a key to parenting, but it’s also a great strategy for kids ministry.

Yesterday my car started over-heating on the highway.  I was with a good friend of mine and we quickly pulled over at the nearest exit and prayed for a place to stop.  God led us to a Valvoline where I found out that my car had to be towed.  Little did I know God was ready to teach me about community from a most unlikely source.  

He was a scruffy, cigarette-smoking, 48 year-old country boy with a deep Kentucky drawal.  As we got into his tow truck, we started asking him questions.  It wasn’t long before he told us about how he was a member of the “Vannin Club.”  Yep, you heard it right.  The Vannin Club.  We told him we had never heard of such a thing.  And he was more than excited to tell us all about it.  In fact, he gave me the offical Vannin’ website and here’s what it says:

For those of you new to vanning, or who have somehow stumbled across us, vanning is a culture unlike anything else you may have ever dealt with.  Vanners are like a big family, they will travel for hours, even days to see each other on a regular basis. They watch out for each other, they celebrate together, and sometimes… they mourn together. Vanners are a diverse bunch brought together by their common love for the sport of vanning. Some people like to just camp out of their vans, while other prefer to make their van into something more them. Sometimes that is just curtains and a bed, for others its something they put their all into, chopping, gull wings, tubbing,..It’s amazing what you can do with a van. Whatever level of vanning you may enjoy, you do it because you want to. Vanning is also a very social event, we do some wild and crazy things, and consume more than our fair share of alcohol.   

There you have it.  Vanners are “like a big family … they watch out for each other, celebrate together, and sometimes even mourn together… a diverse group brought together by their common love for the sport of vanning.”  Wow.  Makes you want to be a vanner!  So as we thumped along in the front of his tow truck, this guy kept jabbering about his Vannin’ Club and the community he experienced there.  He rambled on and on about how much he loved it.  We just sat and listened.

Finally it was time to get out.  We shook his greasy hand, told him thanks, and said good-bye.  But he wasn’t done.   He actually turned to us, looked at us in the eye, and asked us to come to his next “Vanning Club” get-together.  We laughed out loud … but he was totally serious.  And as he rode off, I turned to my friend and said, “Weird.  He just invited us to his church, didn’t he?!”

You see, for this 48 year-old, buck-toothed, cigarette-smoking Kentucky hick, vannin club is where he’s found community.  He couldn’t help but talk about it, and in the end, invite us to be a part of it.

Everyone is looking for community.  Some find it in the strangest of places.  But I learned something from this simple tow truck driver.  He found community and was eager to talk about it and invite others into it.   Am I?  After all, I’m part of a community too.  A community centered on something that will last forever.  A community centered on a Savior who bled and died on my behalf.  All other kinds of community are only faint pictures of the real thing our hearts were made for.

And to think God used a tow truck driver to teach me all of that.

If you’re like me, you’ve shared the “Romans Road” with lots of people. Beginning with our sin in Rom. 3:23 and ending with our need to confess Jesus in Rom. 10:9, I’ve walked down this road many times, with many different people–especially kids.  Last night, as I was reading through the book of Mark, I was reminded of something John Dickson once said [and I paraphrase],

There’s a reason why the Gospels are called the Gospels.  They tell the gospel of Jesus Christ.  And so we must remember in our evangelism to point people to the gospel of Jesus Christ to find the person of Jesus Christ.  After all, we give our life to a person, not an idea.

How true.  I started thinking about how many times I’ve shared “the gospel” with very little mention of Jesus himself.  It’s like the story of Jesus and all the events leading up to his crucifixion and resurrection are assumed.  The trouble is many children (and adults!) don’t have a clue about the Jesus we mention on our last stop on the Romans Road.  We kind of throw him in there as the Savior and Lord to give your life to with very little knowledge about who he really is.  But people need to know the Jesus they are bowing their knee to.  They need to acknowledge his greatness and admit their unworthiness before they are ready to ask for his forgiveness and trust him as King.  How does that happen?  By seeing Jesus in the Scriptures.

To put it simply, we cannot graduate from the gospels when sharing our faith with others.  We need to walk down the road to Calvary a little more than we do.   After all, where else but the gospels can we get to know Jesus more personally and then learn how to share him more clearly with others?

Tullian Tchividjian’s book, Unfashionable, has been a challenging read for me this summer.  I’ve been chewing on what it means to be an agent of renewal — to join God in his work of renewing all things.  I wonder what would happen if we took this seriously — to become missionaries who bring good news and good deeds to broken, hurting people.  Tullian writes:

The mission of the church is spiritual and physical, individual and cultural.  God wants us to involve ourselves in the rehabilitation of hearts and houses, souls and society.  We’re to care about the renewal of both people and the environment.  The requires word and deed, proclamation and demonstration.  God is renewing human hearts and recreating all things through his church.  This is our mission to the world (p. 62). 

Brent Thomas:

[Our] Community Groups are made up of three spheres, “Communion,” “Community” and “Mission.” We first saw this diagram in Hugh Halter and Matt Smay’s book The Tangible Kingdom, and it made a lot of sense to us. Halter and Smay define “communion” as our connection with God; worship, both personal and corporate. Community is life together and mission is being focused outward, on others. Our Community Groups aim to be the intersection of all three, the “sweet spot.” It is when all three of these spheres intersect, that Halter and Smay say the kingdom becomes “tangible” for people. 

Community Groups are meant to be a context in which we can aim for the intersection of each sphere, where communion, community and mission so inform our lives that the kingdom becomes tangible. This means that they are not just small-group bible studies. They are that, but they are more. They are not just social gatherings. They are that, but they are more. They are not just service projects. They are that, but they are more. Community Groups at Church of the Cross are small families of learning, serving missionaries where we learn to live everyday life with Gospel intentionality.

I assume most of you are familiar with the Two Ways to Live tract/online presentation of  the gospel.  And some of you know about the kid’s version, Who Will Be King? 

Recently I’ve developed a PowerPoint presentation that incorporates both the Kids Version with The Bridge Illustration (adapted from St. Peter’s Barge Church in London).  Whether you work with kids or adults, I think you’ll find this PP to be a helpful resource. 

Just write me a comment below, and I’ll email it to you ASAP.

Steve Timmis and Tim Chester, from their helpful book, Gospel-Centred Church:

“Effective gospel ministry is long term, low key and relational.”

• Long term — credibility and integrity … demonstrated over a long period of time
• Low – key — work that’s going on quietly, quite ordinary but w/gospel intentionality
• Relational — this is the heart of the gospel, sharing not only the gospel, but our very lives