We are back and full of thanks to you for praying for us while we were serving the Tsawout First Nations on Vancouver Island with the Tsawout Assembly of Praise. We had a hard, hard week and a week of great blessings. I am so thankful for the believers who faithfully seek the Kingdom of God among the families of this First Nation. In our camp with over 40 children we experienced great resentment and great tenderness. The dichotomies held within even one child were astonishing and caused me to reflect on the polarized places of my own heart. I am thankful as well for our team that sought Jesus desperately after our first day of chaos and put together a plan for the rest of the week that sought to metabolize our situation and live out the ways of peace. Please continue to pray for us and specifically our children as they process the experiences of the week.
Author: Craig
pray for us
This week I will be away on Vancouver Island with our friends at Tsawout Assembly of Praise running a children’s camp with them. Pray for the group going over from Cityview and for the church. Recently there has been a tragedy among the Tsawout. A fire at a home took the life of a mother and daughter. We really do ask that you would pray for us as we share LIFE together.
golf and fun
I enjoy golf. It is not always fun. But there is a joy in it still for me. It’s only been three years and I don’t get to play as often as I would like. However, the game is a joy to me. It is a challenge. I picked up a review of a book in the New York Times of The Downhill Lie, and related particularly to the follow quote:
Consulting books by the experts, Hiaasen comes across this tall order from Bob Rotella, the sports psychologist: “On the first tee, a golfer must expect only two things of himself: to have fun, and to focus his mind properly on every shot.” A friend agrees to join him in a tournament on one condition: “Promise me you’ll have fun.” Meanwhile, his wife and son sign up for lessons and … they think it’s fun! Hiaasen writes as if he were the only golfer out there who isn’t having a good time. Is golf fun? I wouldn’t know. In my experience, it’s a lot like writing — exhilarating when you get it right, and the rest of the time it’s torture.
While the journal format doesn’t allow Hiaasen much occasion to exercise his flawless ear for dialogue, it does give us a chance to hear the voice in his own head. His preoccupations emerge as themes here: a midlife awareness of the physical decay that aging brings, a stubborn resolve to prove himself the exception, memories of his father, hope in his son.
I turned 40 this week. And after a party in which we played duck duck goose, danced the hokey pokey, cops and robbers, octopus and ran up hill chasing footballs and frisbees, I was painfully conscious of the shape I am in. But for golf…I promise to have fun! Let’s go play!
telling The Story with a Fresh Slant
James Choung has released a book and is blogging on his napkin presentation of the Gospel. In contrast to the Four Laws and the The Bridge, Choung uses four circles to tell the story and provide access to Kingdom theology. Besides picking up a copy of his book, True Story–A Christianity Worth Believing In, you can explore his website, Tell It Slant, which includes video of the presentation, or you can read the article From Four Laws to Four Circles at Christianity Today.
missional discipleship
You get what you inspect, not what you expect. With that leadership lesson I have too often realized my own agreeable nature fails to be as loving as Jesus is. Jesus has great expectations for his disciples; expectations that pushed their minds and captured their hearts. However when it comes to the inspection of his expectations in their lives Jesus follows through. Jesus calls the Twelve that they might be with Him and that He might send them out and that they may have authority…
While they are with Him Jesus makes the most of every teachable moment. As I read the Gospels I find that He is inspecting their lives for faith, servanthood, clarity about His identity, kingdom values such as obedience to Him and sacrificial giving. As well His teaching seems to constantly seek to realign their worldview to the coming reality of the cross and the resurrection. It’s as if Jesus confronts them with pain and their need for change daily: “You thought God was like this, but He is not; He is like me.” The disciples are being confronted with forgiveness, grace, and the incarantion of God in flesh.
When it comes to discipleship and the question of missional or incarnational living, I find that I am of two minds. I am right brained and left brained. Moses came down the mountain with the Law and I want the disciple of Jesus to know the Word of God. Jesus came down from Heaven as the fulfillment of the Law and I want the disciple of Jesus to know Him. I want their knowledge to be formed by their experience of the Word and Him by the Spirit and I want their experience to be formed by the knowledge of Him and the Word.
This requires inspection of the most crucial expectations. So Paul says to Timothy, “Watch your life and doctrine carefully that you might save some.” Obediece to Jesus as a response to grace is the fruit of a regenerate and Spirit-filled life. As we have been seeking to work this out at Cityview we have landed on three words to describe our congregation’s strategy for pursuing our vision of L.I.F.E. as a follower of Jesus Christ: stances, spaces, and domains. More on each of these later.
We have some huge challenges to missional discipleship. But the biggest of these has nothing to do with our access to the Scripture. Rather it has to do with the amount of time we make available to the people with whom we would share our lives and our walk with Jesus. Then it has to do with the kinds of activities and conversations we actually engage in together.
urbanfoot 