The first session started with Creation and the topic of Creativity. Second session we move into the Fall and our own brokenness. Dave Gibbons, author of Monkey and the Fish and pastor of Newsong church, was spot on.
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Stumps and Holy Seed
Each generation has a different starting point for the gospel conversation.
Each generation culture changes and therefore language changes.
I think the starting point in every generation is pain.
The church has defined success by size of church and the strength of the budget. Right now, 80% of our budgets go to staff and buildings. What if we could turn that around. What if we spent 80% our our money on the poor in the city?
What kind of platform would that give us in the city for the gospel conversation?
What if we were measuring less people in poverty? Less people heading into divorce? More people being loved on, the elderly and the orphan?
If every church in Orange county would care for one orphan, we could eradicate the foster care system.
When the eastern world sees how we treat our elderly, they wonder if we are barbarians.
Isaiah 6
1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory."4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"
And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
How many times have we heard this preached in terms of going to the world?
It usually stops at verse 8. Have you seen what is after these verses? He actually give Isaiah the message to preach. “You will hear my words, but you will not understand. You will see what I do and not understand it.”
Not a popular message.
How long to preach it? “Do not stop until Israel remains a stump. But it will be s stump that will grow again.”
When there is personal revelation of your weakness it releases more fully the power of the Holy Spirit.
If we don’t talk about the stump and pain, we will have problems. We will see consumerism continue to propagate in our churches and context. If we are prophetic in our pain, the seed is planted that will grow.
Think about how we do ministry placement. We evaluate their SHAPE and then we tell them where they can serve in our church. Do we really think they are all suppose to serve in our church?
What about if we just listen to the narrative of their life story. Those assessment tools are just windows to see their story. The story of their life is what matters. If we look at those windows as the end, we will miss the story. The story is what shows us their ministry.
Spiritual formation is about listening to their story and helping them see where the Holy Spirit is speaking and intersecting. Spiritual formation can not have the end goal of simply plugging them into “our system.”
You customize according to their story.
What do we do? Ideas for application.
1. Lets reassess our assessment process
2. Make their story central to the assessment
3. Customize their path according to that narrative. Be willing to look outside your local church for resources' and opportunity.
4. Lets develop a theology of suffering. We typically ask, “What makes people comfortable?” in the attractional model. We also need to ask, ,”What makes people uncomfortable?” The disequilibrium is the seed for something Holy to grow in them.
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