CCDA day 2, the P.M – how great God art and the purpose of waiting on baking bread.

continuing with thoughts and reflections from my time at the 2013 CCDA conference in New Orleans:

the evening started with a rendition of that powerful hymn ‘How Great Thou Art’ and what was so powerful about it was that the band completely held back [what? a worship band not taking centre stage?] and so it was just a room of 1000 plus people lifting their voices to God and just felt like such a thick and worshipful Presence in that room – really set a great tone for the evening.

then a lady called Laura came up and spoke about the sabbath and it was really great.

she began by speaking about she found herself often in a place of fear and of anxiety  and of burnout… she’d be crying out to God, “God, when do I get to soar like an eagle? Walk and not be weary? When do I get to run and not grow faint?

And God responded with, “I gave you the sabbath, what else do you want?”

Exodus 20.8-10:

8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

It is important to remember that it is a commandment. And not one of those we like to put a spin on as in ‘had a place in the Old Testament but we don’t have to do it any more cos Jesus abolished it’ – this is one of the ten that we all hold fast to.

The majority of the remaining commandments begin with the words, ‘Thou shalt not…’ but this one begins with the word ‘Remember’ and then promotes something that we should be doing… The message of ‘Remember’ echoes Psalm 46.10 of ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ Stop. Keep this.

Some of us need to start by stopping.

Had to think about what God meant when He said, ‘Remember.’

# The Lord gave you the sabbath – were you expecting something else?

The first thing I heard was, “Laura, you are not indispensible.” WHAT? REALLY?

# We give in to the deception.

Did God ever say to anyone in the Bible, ‘This command. It isn’t for you. You’re too important. Please keep working.’

No, He didn’t. And not even to Jesus.

# God has shown me through this how so often I am bowing down… but not to Him, to others or other things…

# I need to remember this – that if I never produce anything else for the rest of my life, God will not love me any less.

# And if I made the most excellent thing, or accomplished the biggest successful looking thing, He won’t love me any more.

STOPPING HELPED ME REALISE

[1] The world already has a Saviour [and big newsflash – it’s not me!]

[2] Let me Love you. That’s what I heard God saying to me. Let Love love you. Because that is what it does. That is what He does.

  # I created you a rest

  # I didn’t create you to do, I created you to be!

[3] I realised that God was calling me to Real Love  – love that wasn’t a quickie devotion

Rather Love that was like pulling up a chair in God’s kitchen and waiting for the bread to bake. 

Not for a particular reason. Just to visit some.

[4] Call to remember that God is God and I am not.

# Jesus was the first one who knew how to stop.

WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE IF YOU HAD THE COURAGE TO STOP?

– then we had a minute of silence… to listen to God…

Let the body of Christ be the body of Christ – let us encourage one another, hold each other accountable, life up each other’s arms. Love one another.

And it was good.

How is your sabbathing going?

[For snippets from the next morning of the conference, click here]

CCDA conference in New Orleans, 2013: Cultivate the soul… day 2, the A.M.

Okay, so wanted to share some more sound bytes from the CCDA Conference i am currently attending in New Orleans…

highlights of day 2 so far was really just connection with people before and after sessions – old friends, new friends and even old friends of new friends… someone spoke out on the leadership panel this morning against the idea of people being called “human resources” but whatever the word or phrase they would like to use to describe the phenomenon, there is certainly an abundance of great resource contained in a lot of the humans i have met here… so just a wealth of experience and understanding and creativity and really trying to connect with a bunch of quality folks this week and hoping something will rub off somewhere.

after preaching about God being hot a few weeks ago [not really] i am learning to contextualise my speak now that i am among local foreigners and especially after lunch when i was telling the story of how i once took a third class train from Cape Town to Johannesburg in South Africa and it was so hectic that at one point this drug dealer in my cabin offered me protection… i meant that he would protect me from danger [not that he was offering me a condom, Erin!] and so always good to make sure people get what you’re offering them.

so fun times, good food, dangerously placed Starbucks, but it has good wi-fi so think of all the “money i am saving”

this morning’s worship time was again a powerful time – a very diverse crowd makes for diverse expressions of worship and although i’m sure we’d all love a lot more, it has been great to at least sing one song per session in a different language… this morning was Spanish and it was stunning.

DEVOTIONS WITH JOHN PERKINS AND COACH GORDON 

Looking at the message to the church in Ephesus from Revelations 2 the message was pretty simple but powerful.

Mark 1.35 – Jesus got up early to go and pray – and as much as all the pastory and leadery types [myself included] nod vigorously when this is spoken, we can not hear enough cos i will bet you there is a considerable number of people in that hall [me included] who could do with ‘being still and knowing’ a lot more regularly and intently. So encouragement and gentle challenge to deepen your walk with God by spending time with Him. Help me, God.

The idea that Jesus had no Lone Ranger mentality – the interesting note that the only time we see Jesus alone once He has started His ministry is when He went off to spend time with His Father. Rest of the time He surrounded Himself with people. The idea that ministry is done in the context of community. And if you are out there doing it on your own, you are more that likely doing it wrong [easy clues are when you refer to what you are doing as “my ministry” or “my church” or perhaps when the ministry website is your name dot com?]

The idea that WORD plus DEED is the theological understanding [building on last night – PROCLAMATION plus DEMONSTRATION]

# be close to God

# be in community with others

# know your mission [proclaim the word of God. demonstrate it]

Powerful statement by John Perkins that “This is the first generation that values diversity” and I suspect that for the most part he is probably right [to a much greater extent than previous generations at least]

LEADERSHIP PANEL OF LEADERY TYPES

Calling this ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ might sound offensive towards those participating on the panel, but i am not talking looks here – just that that phrase does justice to the overall of how i felt about the panel this morning being asked a bunch of questions relating to community development and then interacting on their answers. Some really good stuff, some random in-between stuff and a little bit of “uh-uh you didn’t.” But for the most part medium to good, with some gems.

# Someone reminded me of the Jewish proverb “May the dust of the rabbi be upon you,” the idea that you are following so close behind your teacher and mentor that you literally wear their dust. Reminded me of Paul’s “Follow me as I follow Christ.” 

# A call to anglo-white leaders that we need to be know this – that God does not show up when i show up. He is already working in all these neighborhoods. i don’t “bring God”

 [Maybe we can add to that the knowledge that God loves these people way more than i ever will and He is more amped about His Kingdom than i will ever be!]

# In an answer dealing with how various culture groups view other culture groups a one liner that someone one lined was ‘The demon of superiority is there. We need to overcome it’ which is as self-explanatory as you need.

# Building on last night again we heard that the purpose of you moving into a community [one of the big pillars of CCDA is RELOCATION] is not to change it. It is to find a person and to pour yourself into them and watch as they change the community. [Isaiah 61]

# This was an interesting point which i don’t think i have considered before. As the dominant culture [white people] we don’t need to learn other cultures [that is the reality that is, not the one that should be] whereas the minority cultures always have to learn the predominant culture [one example is westernised time and the idea that a meeting has to start on time which you don’t find so much in the Latino and African communities – we come in with the assumption that our idea of time is right and the minority culture has to learn that or be left behind or severely judged or corrected]. And this was accompanied by the idea that there are a bunch of assumptions to challenge. One of them would be the question of ‘What is success?’ and another one that came out quite a bit through different questions and answers was ‘What is a leader?’

The importance of asking, ‘What did you learn from your family and from your community about leadership?’ And a bunch of other important questions we need to give time to.

# The idea of needing to course correct. Not 180 degrees which is what it often sounds like people want. Realisation that as with the church in Ephesus [Revelations 2] there is a bunch of stuff we are doing right or have gotten right… but we definitely need to slightly alter the direction of this ship in certain ways. The assumptions of one cultures superiority over another being a huge one. The question of who mentors you and the need for non-white mentors. So ask yourself this: Who were the authors of the last ten books you read? Who were the last ten speakers you listened to sermons from? Who is shaping your worldview? And if you are serious about desiring diversity then that is a good and probably quite easy place to begin.

Just some snippets, but hopefully you managed to find some gems in there that spark something in you.

[For even more from evening 2 of the conference, click here]

of dinosaurs, finger insects and state line jumps…

we [myself, my beautiful wife Val, our housemate Sueihn and my gym and office buddy Coe aka ‘Bubbly’] just got back from a very long trip which involved two twenty-five-plus hour two day road trips on either side of a one day Nurturing Communities conference which lead directly into the Christian Community Development Association [CCDA] annual conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota… what a complete blast.

we had a great time road-tripping up, but it was our decision to take some moments on the way home in particular, to stop and in the absence of any roses to smell, just do some really silly things for good photographing and memoryabilling and so we did…

from upside down white house buildings to giant cow hay bales to halloween head platters to being asked why we climbed the ‘mountain’ with the native american on the horse on it [“it’s dangerous because we haven’t glued the rocks down”] we did a crazy bit of everything and had a LOT of fun…

Coe’s big desire on the way up was for us to take a jumping pic next to a “Welcome to [insert state name] State” board and every time we entered a new state there was a different reason why we missed them and on the way back it looked like the same thing was going to happen [to be honest he spurned the one i offered to stop at because it was not impressive enuff] and so when we hit our state of Pennsylvania on the way home i did a ‘now or never’ and we stopped at the Welcome Centre just inside of the state and took jumping pics near an even crappier sign… mission accomplished.

and then there was Coe’s new friend(s) mr and mrs stick insect hand creatures who at various parts of the trip made an appearance next to him or on both sides of him or occasionally on his head just to keep him on his toes and navigating well [has a bit of a spider underappreciation]

but the point was that life needs to be taken seriously, at all times, but sometimes it is the having fun aspects of life that need to be taken really seriously… we did that a lot and it made the whole trip a lot of fun and bonding and laughing goodness…

thankx team white lightning [our car’s name!] for making it there and back despite creative brake moments, oil light flashings and the dashboard lights pretty much coming on and off at random intervals as they always do…

what stories are you telling?

a number of the simple way staff and residents are currently at the Christian Community Development Association [CCDA] conference in Minnesota which started last nite and is set to be an incredible time and i’m sure i will share a little bit about that here.

last nite, Richard Twiss, a native american leader [who also spoke some challenging things last year which i think in part led to this year’s theme being ‘Reconcile’] started off proceedings with a simple challenge:

“The original followers of Jesus didn’t quote books and verses – they told stories.” In fact the early Christians for many years told stories and it was only much later that the stories were put together and approved as the canon that it became about John 3.16 and Romans 8. Before then they simply recounted stories.

i think most of us find evangelism tough… but we all have stories… if you are a Jesus follower and don’t have any stories then you really have to question your Jesus following… but if you do [and i’ll bet you do] then maybe this is a way that will free you up from the pressure of evangelism or discipling or any other of those large christianese words…

simply tell your story more… and tell His stories more… and especially share the space where His story intersects with yours…

if His story was great enough to affect yours in the way it hopefully has, then it is great enough to affect someone else, and possibly a whole lot less daunting…

so go on and tell it [mountain optional]

are you doing and being or just going and saying?

“Are you doing what Jesus did and taught?”

that line came up in the bible devotions this morning at the CCDA conference and it’s not like it’s anything new or particularly revolutionary, but it is a line i think must keep on being said and cried out and shouted and written down and sung about until more and more people take a moment to really hear it and digest it and pour their present life through the filter of it and go, ‘Hm. Wait. Maybe not. I should do something about that.’

or something.

the line is NOT ‘Are you going to church?’

it is NOT ‘Are you involved in some form of ministry?’

it is also NOT ‘Do you read your Bible and can you quote verses from memory and know all the words to the latest hit worship song?’

and there are probably a bunch of other things it is NOT.

but what it IS is ARE YOU DOING WHAT JESUS DID AND TAUGHT?

a good place to start is to head back to the gospels [matthew, mark, luke, john] in the second part of the bible and read once more the story of Jesus and pay careful attention to WHAT JESUS TAUGHT as well as take time to focus on HOW JESUS LIVED and then to stop, have a quick hammer time, and think to yourself, ‘Am I Really Living out What He Said and What He Did?’

like for real?

well, are you?