Journey Community Church - La Mesa, California

This weekend was powerful, raw, authentic… Real Church!

Chris Rader, our pastor of Care Ministries shared his “My Journey” the full story being in his book: Unconditional Dad – A Pastor’s Journey Through the Words, “Dad, I’m Gay.”

We created a lot of space and wanted Chris’ Journey to be the message and then I shared a reflection on an element of “Journey DNA” that our pastoral team felt came out through Chris story.

I’ll be writing another post this week addressing some of the questions that several people had.

Worship Was powerful and that’s with 2 new songs!

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The series we have called “Renaissance” is wrapping up. I think it’s a really good way to talk about this thing that Jesus was constantly referring to and God’s project on the earth called “The Kingdom of God.” We are always looking for new language to talk about and to help us really get this.

This weekend I wanted to focus on how Renaissance is activated in our lives, what that looks like and how it happens. One of the foundational ideas is that Renaissance hasn’t happened until it “ACTIVATION”.

We talked about how a lot of the energies and impetuses we often rely on (“should” kind of things) will never get us to Renaissance. I borrowed a couple of ideas from psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihály who has done some great thinking on the idea of being in “Flow”. Flow is a big part of “renaissance”. For a link to his 18 minute TED talk click here.

But primarily we have to remember as we closed off, “RENAISSANCE ROLLS IN WHEN JESUS SHOWS UP.”

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Sometimes you just got to make up words. With a nod to our friend Scot McKnight and his book, The King Jesus Gospel this week’s message was about “GOOD-NEWSING”. (On a side note, Scot’s book is wonderful and provocative and would make a great read).

The “Good News” triggers the RENAISSANCE that God is brining. One of our problems is that we need a bigger understanding of the Good News (Gospel) that the New Testament is all about. In our language it’s natural to think of the “gospel” as the content of the message. But in the Greek language in which the New Testament is written, Good News is often a verb (euaggelidzo – the verb, euaggelion – the noun). The Good News is something we do, something we embody as well as something we speak.

When we are experiencing the goodness of the Good News, embodying the Good News and extending the invitation, people’s lives are changed. Nick Kwok shared his story of the Good News lifting him out of suicidal despair and calling him into a lifetime of “Goodnewsing” to fraternity and sorority college students with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship (Click http://www.intervarsity.org/greek/ )

Nick also demonstrated a simple way to share extend the invite through “The Four Circles” (Click here to see James Choung share the “Big Story” here http://www.jameschoung.net/2007/09/17/the-big-story/)

But as you should expect by now, we have to take a step of faith. Sometimes the step is simply believing this: “YES, ME”. We closed by reminding each other, “You are an agent of Good News”.

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It’s not a matter of if! God is doing a renaissance! It’s going to be all encompassing. The rocks and trees and dirt will cry out. “Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy before the Lord; for He is coming to judge the earth… (Psalm 98:8-9)

But wonderfully and in a way, surprisingly, it starts with what God is doing in His people. It starts with our recovery and as we looked at this release.

We spent our message time this last weekend in one of my all time favorite parts of the Bible, Romans 8. Right in the middle Paul belts this out:

8:21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

The God plan starts with our freedom. Release!

So the question is how do we live in that release. So beginning last week and continuing this one we talked about what that looked like.

The part that seemed to land so heavily this weekend was our need to “LET GO OF CONDEMNATION”.  Condemnation is not something we do; it’s a way that we are in the world. We need to learn a different way to BE! Many people’s experience with religion and “Christianity” to the contrary, condemnation is not the energy that propels authentic transformation. Grace is!

[The following paragraph is earthy and slightly gross – you might want to skip it]

Apparently that point needed driving home for me. On Tuesday I did a little prayer walk around our facility stopping by the Journey sign looking over the buildings and praying for the various ministries. As I looked at the worship center, I noticed a bird swooping over the parking lot toward the worship center as I was praying. As he got close, with me still praying, he let loose what looked like a very healthy amount of bird poop. (I told you to stop reading). Of course I laughed. But then, this thought flashed brightly in my mind. “That’s exactly what the devil is trying to do to us. He wants to spoil, soil and stink up with condemnation, accusation, guilt and shame.” Not exactly Isaiah’s vision in Isaiah 6, but point made!

The highlight once again was the My Journey. This time Jared and Bob Womack share the son and father story of God delivering from addiction.

Worship as per usual was sweet.

After the services on Sunday our Generations ministry through a family fun day.

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We launched “Renaissance” last weekend at Journey. The events of Easter mean we can experience Resurrection life, Renaissance. It’s something God is doing and is His unstoppable plan! But for us it starts with us experiencing “Birth from above” new birth!
The question is how to experience that. It’s beyond an IN / OUT idea that many of us understand when people starting talking about being “Born Again”. It’s about experiencing and seeing God do Renaissance in my life. That’s where recovery fits in. That was the essence of the message this week.

WORSHIP was sweet and powerful this weekend. We keep pressing into God and it feels like God is growing us as a community that worships!

LINDSAY shared a powerful story of her renaissance in her own life as she found grace and life-giving community in our single parents group! I loved listening to her story in each service. As she shared, I couldn’t help but think, “This is what we dream for Journey! This is who we are and who we want to be!”

This series is going to change us.

Last week we took one step toward that the “recovery” we all need. This weekend we take another as we speak of “Renaissance as Release”. Get ready for another powerful story of renaissance with the My Journey!

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What an amazing weekend at Journey. Easter is always EPIC at Journey. Journey WAS born on an Easter weekend.

Among the many things that blew me away

• We INVITED like crazy! I met so many guests and friends
• Which is probably why the place was PACKED! That was fun to see
• The presence of the Lord was thick! All of us who sense the filling of the Holy Spirit!
• The Good Friday and Easter services were COMPLETELY different (purposely of course) and both were very powerful!
• We asked you to step up an SERVE and you stepped up BIG TIME!

Here’s a bunch of pics! 1^st Good Friday!

We talked about “The Rock of Surrender” that Jesus prayed “not my will but Yours” before going to the cross. Thanks to Greg King for making us a rock!

NOW FOR SOME EASTER PICS

Thanks to everyone who made this such a GREAT WEEKEND!

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I’m blessed beyond all reason in that week in and week out, I feel like God meets me somewhere in the process of prepping the Weekend Message. Sometimes I’ll look over old messages notes and be amazed that I came up with that (knowing that I only kinda did). Usually this is kind a steady semi-predictable process in the course of the week. But every now and then it’s more sudden and direct. That’s the case with the message from last weekend. It actually started as a retreat talk for the High School ministry of my friends at Brookside Church in Omaha, Nebraska. I was flying out early Friday morning. I was up late packing and getting everything ready. I was finally ready to hit the sack and I drug myself into bed knowing that alarm was going to sound all too soon.

As I’m drifting off to sleep I start thinking of John chapter 11 and the story of the resurrection of Lazarus. Not my usual last thoughts of the day, but pretty cool. Then a talk kind of materialized in my head. I felt like the Lord was saying that THIS was the talk I was supposed to do instead of one of the ones I had already sent them (complete with discussion questions). So I got up ran downstairs and wrote up some notes to the talk the main point being – GOD DOES WHAT HE DOES BECAUSE OF LOVE.

It was clearly a God-thing. It totally landed on the retreat. But even as I was sharing it with these High School kids 2k miles away, I sensed it was also a talk for Journey.

Right now at Journey we have 2 things oddly and wonderfully juxtaposed: Lots of people going through excruciatingly difficult things and great joy, faith and hope from those same people. The beauty of this continues to cause me to gape and marvel.

I couldn’t have seen it that Thursday night / Friday morning last fall, but it really was “His Word” for us! I love it when it happens like that!

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