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.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Giving, Blessings, and Abundance
I am posting this approximately 4 months after I originally wrote it. This begs the question of: why now? Answer: I just wasn't ready to put this out there yet, it didn't seem like the right time.
Now, I feel it is the "right time". It speaks to why I am at Journey and working towards ordination. It speaks to those that might feel that Journey has lost something as we have struggled to get our Warehouse remodel completed. It speaks to being in the desert and how our faith nourishes us. It speaks to abundance that is present, even when we don't know or believe it!
I sit here thinking about the talk that my wife Stephanie and I will give this Sunday to our fledgling little faith community about giving. How do you communicate in terms that reach each of those folks sitting out there? How can you tell them how blessed we all are if they don't already know it.
Do you tell them the story of being in a horrific boating accident and having one of the EMS responders pull a sheet over your head. How, for what seemed like hours, you ponder the idea that you are dead and trying to decide if it is true. Then thinking how does one decide if you have never been dead. Ultimately you decide to yell, "I'm not dead yet!" to see what happens. Do you tell them that from that day forward you decided to live every day like it was your last and how blessed those days have been. How that moment led to working at all levels of Habitat for Humanity. To seeing miracles in people lives through the selfless giving of volunteers. Some of which had almost nothing but the desire to help their fellow man.
Do I tell them that I believe that I am blessed with abundance even though we went through bankruptcy last year? That we lost our house because the city of Pearland decided to build a major road right behind our house. How do I make them understand that even with this, we are blessed.
How else would we have come back to Austin, to have our beautiful son Ryan, to help start Journey, to be with our aging parents, to start the path towards ordination? How would my wife have started her own Music Therapy practice and touch the lives of so many people in need?
The answer is that God has immersed us in abundance. Let's be clear that we are talking about far more than money! In our case, money is a small part of God's abundance. Abundance is the time he gives me to lead the Warehouse remodel, the bountiful time to spend with our kids, the time to work with non-profits working in our community, the gift he gives Stephanie to work with traumatically brain-injured patients who learn to walk or talk again and regain some semblence of a normal life, the talent to play her flute and bring joy to so many people.
So are we the only ones that are this blessed? Of course not! Everyone has been blessed in many ways and can bring those God given talents and blessings to help others. To be the servant of those around us and thus to be a leader in our servitude. To remove our expectations and fear and to truly join God in his amazing works being done all around us. When we do this, we have truly embraced his abundance. Without need, there is no fear. Without fear, there is the room to embrace each other - Love. God knows this and is just waiting for us to join him. I am all in, how about you?
Blessings and good night!
Now, I feel it is the "right time". It speaks to why I am at Journey and working towards ordination. It speaks to those that might feel that Journey has lost something as we have struggled to get our Warehouse remodel completed. It speaks to being in the desert and how our faith nourishes us. It speaks to abundance that is present, even when we don't know or believe it!
I sit here thinking about the talk that my wife Stephanie and I will give this Sunday to our fledgling little faith community about giving. How do you communicate in terms that reach each of those folks sitting out there? How can you tell them how blessed we all are if they don't already know it.
Do you tell them the story of being in a horrific boating accident and having one of the EMS responders pull a sheet over your head. How, for what seemed like hours, you ponder the idea that you are dead and trying to decide if it is true. Then thinking how does one decide if you have never been dead. Ultimately you decide to yell, "I'm not dead yet!" to see what happens. Do you tell them that from that day forward you decided to live every day like it was your last and how blessed those days have been. How that moment led to working at all levels of Habitat for Humanity. To seeing miracles in people lives through the selfless giving of volunteers. Some of which had almost nothing but the desire to help their fellow man.
Do I tell them that I believe that I am blessed with abundance even though we went through bankruptcy last year? That we lost our house because the city of Pearland decided to build a major road right behind our house. How do I make them understand that even with this, we are blessed.
How else would we have come back to Austin, to have our beautiful son Ryan, to help start Journey, to be with our aging parents, to start the path towards ordination? How would my wife have started her own Music Therapy practice and touch the lives of so many people in need?
The answer is that God has immersed us in abundance. Let's be clear that we are talking about far more than money! In our case, money is a small part of God's abundance. Abundance is the time he gives me to lead the Warehouse remodel, the bountiful time to spend with our kids, the time to work with non-profits working in our community, the gift he gives Stephanie to work with traumatically brain-injured patients who learn to walk or talk again and regain some semblence of a normal life, the talent to play her flute and bring joy to so many people.
So are we the only ones that are this blessed? Of course not! Everyone has been blessed in many ways and can bring those God given talents and blessings to help others. To be the servant of those around us and thus to be a leader in our servitude. To remove our expectations and fear and to truly join God in his amazing works being done all around us. When we do this, we have truly embraced his abundance. Without need, there is no fear. Without fear, there is the room to embrace each other - Love. God knows this and is just waiting for us to join him. I am all in, how about you?
Blessings and good night!
Thursday, July 27, 2006
TIme to get blogging
Ok, so I know that I said that I was going to write myself to an answer a couple of weeks ago and I haven't made a single entry since then. I could blame it on the deep level of thought that I was achieving driving back and forth to Houston to do business or I could blame it on my wife's family reunion taking up a huge amount of time, but I won't do that.
I am just going to say that everything happens in perfection and the perfect time to start writing again is right now. That’s my story and I am sticking to it! Ok, so here we go.
I left off last time talking about how I seem to have this thing in my head that I just can't get rid of. The "thing" is an ongoing dialogue about how the business side of my brain is trying to integrate or adapt to the faith side. They have done it before and they have just forgotten some of the incredible experiences that I had 5 - 10 years ago at Austin Habitat for Humanity.
So you ask, what was it you experienced? I am glad you asked. I repeatedly saw God's hand at work. We would be banging our head against the wall about money, volunteers, time, schedule, etc and would finally give it to God. What do you know, but the right thing that needed to happen would and we could move forward. I think you could boil it down to this "If you try to will it to happen it won't and just when you think it won't happen and give it to God, it will".
This is where the faith comes in. We were looking for very specific results instead of having faith that God would provide the abundance we needed. This is exactly where my business brain goes crazy. In fact, this is where most of my business friends of faith get out of the boat. They (and me from time to time) just find it excruciatingly hard to wait. Waiting means a lot of things when you really look at it:
1. How do you wait when the plan and schedule say you are going to have X done by a certain date. Answer: Maybe you shouldn’t have the schedule say that.
2. How do you run a business, church, anything based on the concept that one does what one can and continues to listen to God to see how he is working in the organization. Answer: The problem here is that God doesn't publish a Microsoft Project Plan and a PowerPoint as an overview to his plan. We have to have the faith and patience to watch it unfold. Man is that a pain in the ass for us that have grown up in corporate America.
3. Does that mean we don’t plan at all? Of course not, we have to plan and execute with the expectation that things will change and we have to just roll with the abundance. Note that I didn’t say punches. I am choosing to think that God is going to pull is in the right direction versus shove us.
Now we have something to chew on. This was one of those stream-of-consciousness entries that has only had a cursory review for spelling and grammer. I am going to avoid editing this thing to death and just see where it goes. At the end, I may have arrived somewhere 180 degrees from here.
With blessings and abundance to all, good night!
I am just going to say that everything happens in perfection and the perfect time to start writing again is right now. That’s my story and I am sticking to it! Ok, so here we go.
I left off last time talking about how I seem to have this thing in my head that I just can't get rid of. The "thing" is an ongoing dialogue about how the business side of my brain is trying to integrate or adapt to the faith side. They have done it before and they have just forgotten some of the incredible experiences that I had 5 - 10 years ago at Austin Habitat for Humanity.
So you ask, what was it you experienced? I am glad you asked. I repeatedly saw God's hand at work. We would be banging our head against the wall about money, volunteers, time, schedule, etc and would finally give it to God. What do you know, but the right thing that needed to happen would and we could move forward. I think you could boil it down to this "If you try to will it to happen it won't and just when you think it won't happen and give it to God, it will".
This is where the faith comes in. We were looking for very specific results instead of having faith that God would provide the abundance we needed. This is exactly where my business brain goes crazy. In fact, this is where most of my business friends of faith get out of the boat. They (and me from time to time) just find it excruciatingly hard to wait. Waiting means a lot of things when you really look at it:
1. How do you wait when the plan and schedule say you are going to have X done by a certain date. Answer: Maybe you shouldn’t have the schedule say that.
2. How do you run a business, church, anything based on the concept that one does what one can and continues to listen to God to see how he is working in the organization. Answer: The problem here is that God doesn't publish a Microsoft Project Plan and a PowerPoint as an overview to his plan. We have to have the faith and patience to watch it unfold. Man is that a pain in the ass for us that have grown up in corporate America.
3. Does that mean we don’t plan at all? Of course not, we have to plan and execute with the expectation that things will change and we have to just roll with the abundance. Note that I didn’t say punches. I am choosing to think that God is going to pull is in the right direction versus shove us.
Now we have something to chew on. This was one of those stream-of-consciousness entries that has only had a cursory review for spelling and grammer. I am going to avoid editing this thing to death and just see where it goes. At the end, I may have arrived somewhere 180 degrees from here.
With blessings and abundance to all, good night!
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Faith in business and business in faith
I have not written a while for a number of reasons, but most importantly because I just had so many thoughts and feelings that I just could not seem to organize into a rational, well organized thought. Primarily, this has been focused around how faith works in the business place and conversely how business works in the faith place.
So the only way I can come up with to resolve this is to write myself to that place of well organized thought or at least try. I see so many people struggling with this and dearly want to dig into it and see where God takes us and what he/she reveals. I hope that you will join me as we explore how this works in real time at Journey IFC.
Blessings!
So the only way I can come up with to resolve this is to write myself to that place of well organized thought or at least try. I see so many people struggling with this and dearly want to dig into it and see where God takes us and what he/she reveals. I hope that you will join me as we explore how this works in real time at Journey IFC.
Blessings!
Monday, April 24, 2006
Tom Kimmel
Wow, what a Sunday. I have not cried like that in a long time, especially in public. Tom Kimmel just absolutely blew me away. God is a speaking through that man of immense talent.
Of course this is after Rick absolutely knocks the cover off the ball in his Bible Study.
No deep thoughts today, just a lot of hard work on our new house. This gives me time to reflect on where I am and where I am going. Its all good!
Tomorrow is another day with meetings, clients that don't want to step-up, blah, blah, blah. The point will be to see where God is working in all this. He is and it is just hard to see sometimes in my business.
Later
Of course this is after Rick absolutely knocks the cover off the ball in his Bible Study.
No deep thoughts today, just a lot of hard work on our new house. This gives me time to reflect on where I am and where I am going. Its all good!
Tomorrow is another day with meetings, clients that don't want to step-up, blah, blah, blah. The point will be to see where God is working in all this. He is and it is just hard to see sometimes in my business.
Later
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Laughter - "God's lessons from a 1 year old"
I was playing with my 1 year old last night and we started laughing. We laughed and laughed and laughed for 20 minutes or more. It was absolutely contagious, even to the point that we would just look at one another and just start laughing. It was a glorious moment.
Later I would contemplate that 20 minutes as I was doing some thinking (discerning) about my journey to ordination. I thought about the purity of a 1 year olds laugh and how "in the moment" that child is. They have no expectations, no worries, no inner dialogue (ego) talking to them - just pure bliss. They are simply reacting to a stimulus in the simplest and purest way.
I thought about how at that moment, I had turned off all my adult noise - other thoughts simply melted away. I was focused for 20 minutes on just being in each moment laughing with my son. I was the most free that I think I have been in a long time. It brought to extraordinary levels my understanding of being in the moment with whomever you are with - being present to share God's gift of another.
I often am not present in the moment. God, through my son, had provided the most incredible lesson. One that I have tried to learn and practice many times, but do not do well - to be in the moment, focused, centered, present. To get that lesson from a 1 year old. A child who only knows the moment. What an incredible teacher he is! What a gift! What abundance as I am blessed beyond compare with teachers all around me.
So, who is the next teacher and what is the next lesson? Last night my teacher was my 1 year old, Ryan. Last week it was my friend Blair. Today, it might be a homeless person playing the guitar for change. Who has God blessed you with as a teacher today? Be present in each moment and you might just be suprised!
Later I would contemplate that 20 minutes as I was doing some thinking (discerning) about my journey to ordination. I thought about the purity of a 1 year olds laugh and how "in the moment" that child is. They have no expectations, no worries, no inner dialogue (ego) talking to them - just pure bliss. They are simply reacting to a stimulus in the simplest and purest way.
I thought about how at that moment, I had turned off all my adult noise - other thoughts simply melted away. I was focused for 20 minutes on just being in each moment laughing with my son. I was the most free that I think I have been in a long time. It brought to extraordinary levels my understanding of being in the moment with whomever you are with - being present to share God's gift of another.
I often am not present in the moment. God, through my son, had provided the most incredible lesson. One that I have tried to learn and practice many times, but do not do well - to be in the moment, focused, centered, present. To get that lesson from a 1 year old. A child who only knows the moment. What an incredible teacher he is! What a gift! What abundance as I am blessed beyond compare with teachers all around me.
So, who is the next teacher and what is the next lesson? Last night my teacher was my 1 year old, Ryan. Last week it was my friend Blair. Today, it might be a homeless person playing the guitar for change. Who has God blessed you with as a teacher today? Be present in each moment and you might just be suprised!
Monday, February 13, 2006
Abundance
I was reminded during the last couple of weeks that we are surrounded by abundance. It showed up in so many ways as to leave me in awe. It was the amazing conversation about foregiveness with our friend Blair. It was the off-handed question to a contractor that will save us thousands of dollars. It was the time spent with my 1 year old son who wanted to play peek-a-boo.
All of these things are abundance. It is not all about monetary abundance (read material wealth). It can be as simple as time with a loved one or as complex as the interaction of 5 people leading to just the right person showing up in your life at the moment you need them. If one opens oneself to this and does not set expectations around the outcome, it is incredible who or what will come into your life. I have seen this occur so many times that I know that it will happen in perfection.
Now, before anybody starts thinking that I have all this figured out and should be writing the next bestseller, let me tell you that I "forget" to trust this elemental truth all the time. My human (ego) need to feel like I am in control takes over. In fact the need to control rises in direct proportion to seriousness of the circumstances. I internalize the situation until I am about to burst and then when everything appears "lost", I give it back to God as my last desperate act. Until then I say God has it, but really I have a death grip on all of it.
This brings me back to abundance again. When I let go, the abundance that God already had me cloaked in is obvious. When I remove expectations, I see the abundance that is all around me. When I quiet my internal dialogue and slow down my busy life, abundance is there. When you truly open yourself up to God's abundance, abundance that is around you ALL the time, life becomes this amazing journey. You never know who or what will show up next. You just know that it will!
With blessings to all, good night and good luck!
All of these things are abundance. It is not all about monetary abundance (read material wealth). It can be as simple as time with a loved one or as complex as the interaction of 5 people leading to just the right person showing up in your life at the moment you need them. If one opens oneself to this and does not set expectations around the outcome, it is incredible who or what will come into your life. I have seen this occur so many times that I know that it will happen in perfection.
Now, before anybody starts thinking that I have all this figured out and should be writing the next bestseller, let me tell you that I "forget" to trust this elemental truth all the time. My human (ego) need to feel like I am in control takes over. In fact the need to control rises in direct proportion to seriousness of the circumstances. I internalize the situation until I am about to burst and then when everything appears "lost", I give it back to God as my last desperate act. Until then I say God has it, but really I have a death grip on all of it.
This brings me back to abundance again. When I let go, the abundance that God already had me cloaked in is obvious. When I remove expectations, I see the abundance that is all around me. When I quiet my internal dialogue and slow down my busy life, abundance is there. When you truly open yourself up to God's abundance, abundance that is around you ALL the time, life becomes this amazing journey. You never know who or what will show up next. You just know that it will!
With blessings to all, good night and good luck!
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