One Church Blog

I heard that phrase at a conference recently and it was both refreshing and challenging.  Refreshing because it was a reminder of some of the things that God had place in my heart when I first dreamed of One Church and challenging because it was made me aware of how I had drifted from that idea.

The idea is taken from chess.  The queen is the most powerful piece on the board but if you spend all of your time and energy protecting the queen, you may make your king vulnerable and lose the game.  There are alot of chess pieces each with their unique abilities.  By investing in protecting the queen, you may be neglecting the rest of your resources.

In church world, the queen is our weekly worship gathering.  We tend to spend all of our time and resources trying to make everything happen in that one hour. When we do that, we can forget about all of the other resources and time that could used better if they weren’t devoted to “protecting the queen.”

So at One Church this week we are not meeting on Sunday night for our regular worship gathering. Instead, we are meeting in homes in Woodstock, Roswell , and Atlanta in order to pray about and discuss ways that we can serve the communities that God has placed us in.

I’ve realized that for quite a while most of my time, thinking, emotions, and energy have been spent on making Sunday nights happen.  The measuring stick for how well One Church is doing became how many people came and how well I think I did in communicating the message.  As soon as Sunday night ended, I found myself immediately thinking about the next Sunday.

There’s nothing wrong with our working hard to make Sunday nights the best experience we can but not to the neglect of the talents and time of our complete community.  Of course, all of this is possible because God has gathered a great community of people at One Church who are following Jesus and really desire to do church differently so that we can do life differently.

We’ll gather again for worship on Easter evening and continue to ask the Holy Spirit to lead us to Jesus as we do.  I’m just excited that we’re starting to put ourselves in environments that allow us to live out our vision to “serve the world by leading people to freedom in Christ and freedom in life.”

“Sometimes we pray for God to rescue us from the storms and waves but sometimes God uses the storms and waves to save us.”

I heard Rob Bell say that last week and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how true that is.

As I think back over the times in my life when I was the most desperate for God to change my circumstances, He used those very circumstances to change me and to save me from the man that I had become. In fact, the most signficant things about me have been developed in the midst of “storms” that I begged God to rescue me from.

Even with that knowledge, I find most of my prayers lately are save-me-from-the-storm prayers. “If only you would change this circumstance…”  Maybe God is more concerned about me than he is the circumstance I find myself in.

Storms reveal what I’m placing my trust in and who I believe is really in control.  When things are easy, its easy for me to live under the illusion that I’m in control.  When a storm comes, it shatters that illusion and forces me to trust God who has been in control along.  That is so much easier to type than it is to live.

When I start to feel like I’ve lost control, I get anxious and scared.  I start to scramble and grasp onto anything to re-gain that feeling.  My prayers are less about trusting God than they are ways I try to manipulate him to do what I want.  My devotion and commitment become sacrifices that I show God to prove to him how much I deserve to be saved from the circumstance.

Maybe the reason God doesn’t always save me from the storm is because the storm is saving me.  Its saving me from being the kind of man that believes he’s always in control and deserves a God who does whatever I want.  Its making me into a man who believes that God is good, is in control, and can be trusted.

 I was pulling out of my driveway and before I put the car in drive to leave I took one last look at my house.  Just then a big wind blew and I watched as some leaves from my neighbor’s yard blew into mine.  I could have told you exactly how many leaves because I had raked up all of the leaves up in my yard yesterday.

My first response was irritation because their leaves “defiled” my yard and frustration that my yard is not going to look any better than my neighbor’s.  No one will even know that I rake my leaves and they may think that I don’t care what my yard looks like.

To be honest, its embarassing to type those words because they reveal how silly and selfish I can be at times.  They reveal how I often approach life.

When I was raking my leaves, I actually considered raking my neighbor’s leaves too.  The inner monologue that stopped me went like this: “What if they don’t want me to rake their leaves? They may be offended that I thought their yard needed to be raked.  If I rake their yard, they may think that I was upset that their yard still had leaves.  What if they think that I now expect them to rake their yard?  I wonder how my hair looks…” Well, we can stop the monologue there.

Isn’t it interesting how worrying what others think can stop us from doing something we want to do?  We can created a myriad of “what ifs” that keep us from the freedom of serving the needs of others. “What if people think I’m naive?  What if they take advantage of me?  What if they don’t appreciate it?  What if it doesn’t make a difference?  What if it makes others feel bad?”

I live with this unhealthy need to be understood and if there is a chance that something I say or do may be misunderstood, I often don’t do it.  At least, not when I’m living in my resources and not abiding in the love and acceptance of Jesus.

Abiding in his love sets me free to love, give, and serve the needs of others without fear of how I may be misunderstood.  Loving others is risky and messy.  It means stepping in when I see a need and doing something about it.  Love is never expressed in an inner monlogue with myself.  It’s expressed by serving the needs of others with the humble awareness that all of us have yards that get messy and need attention.