Portrait of Jesus

Journey IFC is this amazing place where God is truly working and people of all ages, genders, races, ..... are trying to figure out what it means to Love God with all their Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength and to love their neighbor as they love themselves. It is in this insanity that I am working towards ordination.

I wrote this little intro to remind myself why I am here. It has been 6+ months since I wrote in this blog and that is far too long by 6 months and some days. What can I say, writer's block and warehouse renovation stress eliminated any desire to write.

So what compel's me to pickup the computer, log into Blogger.com, and start writing tonight. It is the portrait of Jesus that our community has adopted as our calling. It isn't anything fancy, just incredibly real. It goes something like this:

We are Radically Inclusive
We embrace Imperfection
We are a safe community
We follow Jusus
We ask, listen to, and obey God

It is this powerful portrait or picture of Jesus that brings me back to blogging. It has me thinking, feeling, wanting, striving, praying, and so many other things that I can't explain them all. It has me re-energized in my call to ordination and God's work in this world.

Why?

Because I have seen first hand how a group of people that are commited to loving God, loving each other, loving themselves, and loving their neighbors can begin to change the world. It takes time, of course, but so does anything worthwhile. It takes time because we are imperfect. We doubt. We doubt ourselves, our leaders, our religious institutions, we double almost everything.

But in our doubt, we want to believe. We want to have faith. We want to have hope. We long to have God in our life. It is in Jesus that we have God's answer to our doubt, faith, and hope.

Even when I see church leaders do things in the name of God and/or their denominational structure, I know that God is working in this world. I have seen during my ordination how God and structure can be twisted by mainstream denominations. First hand, I have seen how a denomination that will go unnammed removed the accredidation of one of its Pastors because he was operating outside of their jurisdiction. He is absolutely doing God's work in this world in an emerging church. He was given a PhD at one of the denominations colleges after writing about Emerging Churches. Imagine the gaul of this pastor to go out and actually do what he had been awarded a doctorate for.

This though is not where the heavy lifting of the church future is happening. It is happening at the emerging churches that are having to find a balance between stucture, funding, and faith where their is little guidance and few templates. It is in this space that Journey IFC has been praying, working, building, and learning.

Through writing corporate by-laws, elections, Shepherds, IRS Form 1023 submittals, Warehouse Remodel, and a leadership Retreat, the growth and maturation of the communities' understanding of its vision, mission, and calling have been amazing. It hasn't been easy. God is absolutely still working hard on teaching the lesson of abundance and faith in finances.

Yet, it is in the portait of Jesus listed above that I see how far we have come and why. It is in this portait, that I see clearly the differences and similarities of our faith community with the standard denominations. I can see the challenges we face as we continue to answer God's calling in the world.

I can see these things because I was blessed to have participated in the structural work of our community. I have seen how in our early work that we were both trying to understand our vision/mission and organize a faith community. In our recent work, we have matured to the point of using our understanding of Jesus characteristics as our own template for praying, learning, listening, and finally acting when we believe we are clear about God's direction. Does this mean we are done.

No, we are better at the things we do, but not good at them. I think we will know that we are doing it well enough when God puts the next opportunity to learn and grow in front of us. But that is another day.

It is with this thought that I close tonight.

Blessings to all.