Rob Wegner: Blog Archive

Jesus is Not a Decency Cop - What Do You Think?

The Verge Network website has officially launched.  This will sound over-dramatic, but as I opened up the page and looked at the content, my soul sang.  This is not a website for the faint of heart.  But if you long to be a Kingdom revolutionary, this is a place to be seriously convicted and intensely inspired.

Michael Stewart, the official trouble maker behind the Verge Network, asked me to host a blog conversation around any of the videos posted there. I picked this one by my buddy Alan Hirsch on the three-word-worldview, Jesus is Lord.  Currently, I have the privilege of working alongside Alan on a coaching initiative called Future Travelers.  Future Travelers is a co-hort of high profile churches here in the west that are determined to jump together from church as institution to church as movement. 

Here at GCC, over the next year, we're building weekend series around each of the mDNA (Missional DNA) outlined in Alan's book, The Forgotten Ways.  "Jesus Is Lord" is first and central.  Our current series, How to Wreck Your Life, is the embodiment of that message.  God's Spirit is creating quite a stir.  So, take the next six minutes to come back to Center and watch this video.  Then, I'll pitch a couple questions to start the conversation.

Alan Hirsch: Jesus Is Lord [VERGE video] from Verge Network on Vimeo.

Alan said, "He is not a decency cop. He is Lord.  He will challenge our idols."

Here at GCC, we've been talking about how when we make a good thing an ultimate thing, it is transformed into a god thing that competes for the throne of our hearts.  

What do you think are the most prevalent idols in our culture?

What do you think are the most prevalent idols in the church?

 Alan said, "The closer we get to Jesus the more dangerous he is to our middle class sensibilities."

 What are the "middle class sensibilities" that need to be threatened by Jesus?

Alan says, “The church of Laodecia is the church in America…”

 So, what will it take for the church in America to find it’s First Love again? 

Alright pick any question and sound off. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

 

 

Is He Worth It?

We are seeing amazing signs of life during our current series, How to Wreck Your Life.  In my 18 years at GCC, I’ve never heard so many stories of deep life-change in such a short amount of time.  Our online participation has tripled.  Usually we average around 1500 views of a service. Week one of the series is at 4500 views.

The How To Wreck Your Life series is about three words: Jesus is Lord.

Polytheism was the context for the early church. The early followers of Jesus were surrounded by the Greco-Roman pantheon of gods (Venus, Aphrodite, Artemis, Apollo, etc.).   The names have changed today, but we’re still dealing with the same situation.  Every culture has it’s own idols. Every culture has it’s own priesthood. Every culture has it’s own shrines.  When we take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing, it becomes a god thing.

Every heart has a throne, a place of maximum influence. No throne sits empty.

The American pantheon of gods includes love, sex, family, consumerism, power, success, money, and the list goes on.

In Roman theology, Caesar was a manifestation of a god that claimed total allegiance. Once a year, everyone in the Roman Empire had to appear before magistrates to burn incense to the deity of Caesar and literally confess out loud: “Caesar is Lord!”  Once you had done that, you could move on and worship any other god you liked.  Rome would let you keep your gods when they conquered you as long as you were willing to acknowledge that Caesar was lord over them. The effect was to unify the religions of the empire and bind them to the state.

The early church refused this claim of the Lordship of Caesar. Jesus was not another god in the pantheon of gods in Rome. The claim “Jesus is Lord” was a highly subversive political claim that eventual lead to the martyrdom of countless numbers of the early followers of Jesus.

Jesus is Lord excludes all other claims to loyalty.

Jesus is Lord is a three world worldview.

The question we left with last weekend was this - “Is Jesus worth it?” I’m asking all of us to wrestling with that question this week, “Is Jesus worth that kind of loyalty, allegiance, and surrender? Is Jesus and Jesus alone worthy of the place of maximum influence in my life?”

I provided a list of about hundred scriptures from the New Testament, each a portal that opens up into the vastness of who Jesus is. Would you take time this week to open some of those doors? I provided a daily prayer journey into the Lordship of Jesus. Would you take time each day to pray into His Lordship?

Download that resource here. If a particular passage or prayer captures you, I’d love to hear about your insight.  Drop a comment!

It’s Not a Project, It’s a Movement

I received another email that I just had to post.  This one’s from Angela Byrant, member of GCC and instructor of Human Services at Bethel College.

I wanted to share a great story of celebration about Monroe Circle Community Center (MC3). Last night as I was teaching Intro to Human Services in the Adult College at Bethel I spoke about MC3 as an excellent example of community transformation while honoring the community in need.

Our textbook lays out steps for collaborating with the community for true impacting change, as opposed to simply imposing your own ideas about what people need - hence the natural flow into the story of MC3. After sharing the amazing ripple effect within that community people were excited, passionate, reflective. Then, one of my amazing students, Patricia (in her 50's), speaks out and shares she has lived in Monroe Circle and gives testimonial to her love for Son City Kids and MC3 and how she's witnessed God's outpouring help them reclaim their value and potential.

She spoke with such joy and gratitude for GCC and the intentionality of being part of their community even before the Center came to be.

She said it was evident how much GCC cared, truly cared for people. It wasn't a project, it was a movement of caring people - walking with them as they rediscovered their value.

I love this!!!

Last semester I used this example in the same area of the text and low and behold there was another student , Yolanda, who shared her experience growing up in Monroe Circle and how she's felt the impact of MC3 in a positive way.

I also have James  in my class who works at the Prison Reentry Facility where GCC has weekend services.  He also helps bring those young men to MC3 on Friday nights for Prison Transition ministry.  It's been powerful as well to hear his observation of how the men are responding to both experiences. God is truly at work through all of you!! Thank you for continually being diligent in listening to God's guidance and your faithful obedience.

People truly matter and because of you all they get to experience that for real!

Keep bringing up there down here!

Angela

Way to go, people of GCC. 

Some thoughts on movement.

Everyone longs to be a part of a movement, but virtually no one is fired up about assimilation into a religious institution.

When you read about the first century Jesus movement, you’ll notice that they actually bypassed the primary government and religious institutions of their day. In fact, ultimately they were opposed by the leaders of these institutions.

Don’t misunderstand-I don’t think Jesus is uniformly against the church as institution as we see it today. He loves the church in every expression. But I also don’t think he ever intended church as institution to be the primary vehicle for his revolution. He designed the church to be a movement. The church institution as we know it didn’t even take shape until about 300 years after the resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus and his early followers started at the margins of society, inviting ordinary men and woman to join up and lead. In Jesus they confronted a vision of God, a vision for what humanity could be and a vision for this planet that was so revolutionary that it demanded a whole-life response.

They didn’t have any buildings. They high- jacked public squares and synagogues. They met underground in homes and catacombs.

They didn’t have any mass media. Hand to hand, heart to heart, mind to mind the Message was passed through hushed whispers and bold declarations.

They had no official titles or positions. There was no external institutional power by which to influence people. Their only power source for influence was internal.

What they offered was not an institution. Instead, quite simply, they offered their very lives, lives of integrity and service. They showed through their own examples how to live in the way of Jesus.

Now, it’s our turn. Where have you seen church as movement? 

Mini-van on a Mission

Jesus believes in the power of smallness.

Over and over again, Jesus brings us back to beauty of small interventions: a towel and basin, a cup of cold water, a little bit of fish and a few loaves, the smallest seed and a little bit of leaven.

Sometimes, I think we are looking for the big moment, where we will have this HUGE impact. Everyone will notice and our names will be up in lights. The reality is the measure of our impact is not found in the BIG moments, but the SMALL ones. It’s the accumulation of small, intentional, strategic interventions that God will take and use to make a huge impact.

Jesus believes in the immensity of smallness.

When these small interventions are implemented, these little choices when applied to our lives and the world, collectively through the power of God, result in big changes.

A received an email from a friend of mine yesterday.  Richard and his wife Nancy, lead all of our teams that serve at the Hope Rescue Mission.  Here’s a story of small interventions accumulating into a big impact.

During the summer of 2005, Nancy wanted to give our 1996 Camry to her sister who was in need of a car. When we bought that Camry, Nancy really wanted a mini-van but we didn't find one that we liked so we got another Camry.

Well - now that we're car shopping again, the idea of a mini-van came up again and I knew that this time we'd get a mini-van although I had my reservations - did we really one? It'd be helpful for when we took food to Hope for our monthly meals, but outside of that, why have one for just two people? Also, the price of gas was soaring - up to $2.50 a gallon then - and I wasn't sold on getting one. But since Nancy wanted it, we got one. The most expensive vehicle we will ever buy!!!

I continued to have doubts about having such a vehicle, but I thought maybe God had a plan for it - and He did.

In August 2006 I contacted Hope about taking residents to GCC and from the start I had some people come with me. One of the first people got baptized that September at the Life Action Ranch lake. For the next few years nearly every Sunday I had at least one person and at times a van-full of people going to GCC for the 9:30 service.

But during late 2009 things died off - I had an occasional person and then none - and after awhile, I stopped going down to Hope Sunday morning to get people. I suppose God's plan had ended for this.
But this past spring, I got an email from a lady who works at Hope asking if I still came to get people - so I started again and now each week have several people eagerly come along. They have a true passion for GCC and how the messages are changing their lives. A few came to know about GCC by going over to Monroe Circle Community Center and so they wanted to try us out - and they loved it!!

A second ministry also happened - this one more of a surprise. One of our Chinese students wanted to come to GCC and so we would take Jingjing Guan to GCC in 2007-8. That worked out well and we enjoyed doing this. But I realized that there might be more that we could do to help out our international students. We later got a couple more Asian students - both in my class - and we did a few things with them the following year, but became more involved with them during the summer. Then during the fall of 2009, two Korean students came here and met up with one of the Asian students and we took them to Walmart the morning after they arrived on campus. That started a relationship with them and we did more things with them - one was a regular attending GCC last fall. Last summer we were quite involved helping out the Asian students. We never planned on this ministry - but God opened the door for it - and without our mini-van we wouldn't be able to take several Asian students to the store or movie or whatever. We have really enjoyed serving them. Most are not Christians and we pray that they see Christ in us. Maybe the seeds are being planted and someday they will desire to know Christ.

It's exciting to see how God sets something in motion that we initially have no idea about. We serve an amazing God whose ways are so much better than our own.

 

That’s one mini-van on a mission!    I love how Jesus can take anything we offer - and if we are willing to give ourselves along with it - take that thing and unleash his Life and Mission through it.

What apparently small and insignificant thing do you have in your hand today to offer?  How could Jesus’ mission flow through it and through you?  If you have a small interventions story to offer, I’d love to hear about it!