God is a Giver

Yesterday at Creekside we worked through Romans 11.1-12.  This is a short text but there is a lot going in there.  I loved going through the story of Elijah and the duel with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel.

The text really came together though when in Pre-Preach Kate and I were talking about the idea that God gave Israel eyes that couldn’t see and hears that couldn’t hear.  Kate asked, “Why doesn’t God give them eyes to see.”

And it finally clicked, that God gave the offer of grace first.  God is a giver and grace is always his first offer.  And that offer is always on the table.  But when we don’t receive it, God gives us not grace, God gives us our desires, and we don’t really see God’s offer any more.

God is a giver.  His first offer is always grace.

That helped me so much with understanding this text.

Sports Night, Doctor Who, Life. Oh The Joys of Netflix Streaming

I love Netflix Streaming.  I know they don’t have a ton of great current movies on there but they have a treasure trove of great television shows.

It was through Netflix that I discovered the awesomeness that is Doctor Who.  It was through Netflix that my wife and I got all caught up on Friday Night Lights, just in time to finish the series with everyone else.  Netflix introduced us to Downton Abbey, where we watched the entire first season in 3 days.  So many great television shows are available that even if I still subscribed to cable I would probably use Netflix just as much.

My most recent show du jour is Sports Night.  West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin perfected the hall way walk and talk on Sports Night and made a show about the people who make sports news without getting bogged down in sports talk every episode.  Just like the West Wing did with politics, Sports Night takes the issues around sports and makes them the background for the personal relationships and drama of the primary characters.  Brilliant.

This show also walked a fine line between drama and comedy.  In the beginning it was clear that they were trying to make a comedy with a studio audience and everything.  The show evolved into more of a drama.  And what’s even more remarkable, each episode is only 22 minutes.  A 22 minute drama, that’s unheard of.  But it so works.

Unfortunately the show only had 2 seasons and it’s 14 years old, but it was a great show that I never would have watched if it wasn’t for Netflix Streaming.

So if you are looking for something to watch this summer, I would recommend Sports Night.  If you like cop shows, Life is great, and if you like fun Sci-Fi, then check out Doctor Who!

Enjoy!

Confess and Believe

Week two of Don’s Sabbatical was a blast.  We talked about how we receive grace.  Confess that Jesus is Lord, and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9).

It’s a simple idea but it it’s a huge statement.

When we confess that Jesus is Lord we are saying no to all the other things that want to be lords of our lives, success, power, money, sex, approval, addiction, pride, ourselves.  When we confess we remove those other voices from the throne and put Jesus where he belongs.  He is Lord.  We are not Lord.  Jesus is Lord.

If Jesus is Lord then we can walk in confidence that we have a good king.  We can walk in confidence that Jesus is good.  And we can talk about Jesus.  He’s bigger than politics, nations, and anything else that tries to take our allegiance, because Jesus is not just Lord, he’s eternal.  He’s going to outlast this election.  He’s going to outlast America, just like he outlasted Rome.  Jesus is our eternal Lord!

When we believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead we are saying, that God has the power to do the impossible.  God raised a dead person back to life.  Jesus is alive.  Jesus is eternal.  Jesus is Powerful, Jesus is Lord.  We can trust the God who had the power to raise the dead in the middle of our struggle, in the middle of our pain, in the middle of our anguish because he has the power to raise the dead.

And as followers of Jesus we have the opportunity to walk in that power, when we confess that Jesus is Lord and believe thatGod raised him from the dead.

Jesus is Lord!

Confess and Believe!

Short Work Weeks make for Long Work Days

I love a three day weekend as much as the next guy. But man, the day after the three day weekend is crazy busy.

I love my job but it’s never done. No one else is going to do that research, right that sermon, call those people, lead those meetings. So all the stuff that I needed to do on Monday got crammed into today’s stuff. Crazy busy. But we’ll make it.

Just a crazy busy day.

New Journey

Well today is the first day of the rest of my life.  That expression really doesn’t mean anything usually but today is the first day in a 100 day journey with Creekside Church.  Our lead pastor, Don,  is now officially on Sabbatical.  Which is rad for him.  I’m glad that Creekside is at a place in our history where Don can withdraw.  He is going to rest, recharge and renew the vision that God has placed in his heart for Creekside Church.

We are on the verge of a very exciting time at Creekside.  Can’t wait.

Between now and Labor day I will be leading the staff, the elders and deacons, and doing the bulk of the preaching.  We just hired a new Youth Pastor, and we are preparing to bring on a New Worship Pastor, the adoption of the Rock Church which will become Creekside Lynnwood, etc.  There are all kinds of amazing things that are going to be happening over the Summer and if you are a part of Creekside Church you don’t want to miss all that’s going to happen over the summer.  This summer is going to be a time of preparation for us all.

Let’s get ready for the exciting Journey that God is leading us on.

Better Together

Last night Creekside Church and the Rock Church celebrated our pending adoption.  God has laid on our hearts the desire to see our mission of helping people discover, trust and love Jesus Christ grow.  We want to see many people in many communities find the grace, love, joy, peace and community that the Gospel provides.

Creekside Church could have just decided to grow by growing bigger and bigger buildings.  That could totally work.  But that’s expensive, takes a lot longer, and centralizes the mission of the gospel in one place.

God has been working on giving us a different vision for how to move the Gospel forward.  Creekside Church is not a huge church, we’ve been consistently growing, we’ve been becoming more healthy as an organization, and we have become more dedicated to our mission.

So we are going multi-site, and we are starting by adopting the Rock Church in Lynnwood.  The Rock Church will become Creekside Lynnwood.  Their pastor Scott Fenton will become a campus pastor of Creekside.  We will share the same mission, purposes, core values, etc.  Scott will preach live at Creekside Lynnwood, Don will preach live at Creekside MLT.

Last night’s celebration was a wonderful time of worship, communion and vision casting as we began to lay out the plans that we currently have for this transition and the public launch on September 16.  This seems like it’s a long way away but there are a lot of details that we have to work through in the transition.  We want to do as much as possible as smoothly as possible so we don’t want to rush into anything.

The founding pastor of the Rock Church, Scott Harris, led us in a kind of adoption ceremony.  It was great to see the founder of the Rock church honor Scott Fenton and celebrate this journey.  The Harrises are currently working through the adoption process as a family and the words that he keeps hearing from others is, “Adoption will change your life.”  Creekside MLT, our lives will be changed.  Creekside Lynnwood, our lives will be changed, and our prayer is that through this adoption that we will continue to see the Family of God grow in both communities.

We are better together than apart.  Looking forward to a pretty exciting at both Creekside Campuses and beyond.

Better Together

There are some things that are great on their own.  Peanut Butter for instance.  It’s amazing.  But then Mister Reese came a long and said, “you know what this could use?  A delicious coat of chocolate.” And with that the first recipient of the Nobel Peace prize was . . . what?  Oh I guess the Nobel committee has made a horrible oversight.  

Anyway.  

I spent much of this week at our Network’s annual conference.  It was great.  The best part about these kinds of gatherings is that it reminds me that I’m not doing ministry alone.  Creekside Church is not doing ministry alone.  We are connected with other people who are committed to the mission of the Gospel.  We want each other to succeed.  Talking with the different leaders that were gathered together it was so great to see that we truly are better together than alone. 

If you are a church leader and you don’t go to your network’s gatherings.  You need to fix that.  If you don’t have a netword that gathers together then start something with other churches in your community.  It is incredibly important that you not try to do this alone. 

Messy Becomes Beautiful

I’ve been meeting with a group of guys over the past few months.  We’ve been reading the book Messy Spirituality by Mike Yacconelli.  This is the third or fourth time I’ve read the book.  It’s a small little book that reminds me that Jesus doesn’t desire perfection, he wants us.  He will do the work of cleaning us up, changing our hearts, and helping us to become freed from the sins that we struggle with. 

I’m being reminded that when we let Jesus and the Holy Spirit do their job, we can walk in peace in the midst of our messiness and the messiness of the people around us.  I’m not responsible to fix you and your issues.  That’s the Spirit’s job of transformation. 

At the same time I don’t celebrate my messiness.  I acknowledge my own sin, my own weakness and keep focusing on Jesus.  The more I focus on Jesus who I want to be like, the less I focus on my mess. The more I live like Jesus, the less inclined I am to stay in my mess. 

Jesus takes people in their messiness and makes us beautiful.  This song by Gungor reminds us of this.  If you have a few minutes listen to this song and ask Jesus to help make a beautiful thing out of your mess.

Tension

The past few weeks have been fairly tense in my world.  We’ve recently had to let one of our team members at Creekside go.  Not fun.  There are a lot of emotions around this whole event.  And I’m not really a big fan of emotions other than happy.  I’m like a dog that way.  Happy or sleeping are my too optimal modes.

The tension has been at work as we process what’s happened and what still needs to happen with who does what and how and for how long.  All that fun stuff.

The tension is at home as my wife and I who share a friendship with this team member and his family process what’s going on.

The tension is with this team member, mainly because I don’t know what to say.  (See previous comment about emotions).

I woke up this morning thinking about a song from the band Sixpence None The Richer.  The song is Tension Is A Passing Note.  If you want to listen to the song here it is:

Now I know this song is not earning me any masculinity points and I’m fine with that.  I wanted to share this because tension can serve as something that you get hung up on or it can be something that transitions into something much more beautiful.  This idea that tensions is a passing note comes from the idea of Suspended Chords.  The sound of these suspended chords can create dissonance because it’s something that we are not used to hearing.  Or it can create a tension that we wait to be resolved.  And when that tension is finally resolved it can give the listener a sense of aural relief.  Our ears are used to certain kinds of music and sounds.  And these tensions notes raise our awareness that something is different.

People are aware when there is tension in a room.  And if that tension is not addressed and resolved it can seriously damage relationships and organizations.  If we let the the tension in the chord go on to long people will turn the music off.  But if we let tension serve as the transition into relief then we learn to like the sound and we learn that tension is not forever and it can be resolved.

Who do you need to resolve tension with?  What steps do you need to take to bring forgiveness and grace?  This tensions doesn’t have to last forever.  It can become something that makes your relationship more beautiful.  Bring resolution.

Makes me think of this song as well.

HOPE

I’ve been reading Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination by Walter Brueggemann.  It’s a small book that has been really moving me.

This is something that he said about hope:

“Hope, the conviction that God will bring things to full, glorious completion, is no and explanation of anything.  Indeed, biblical hope most often has little suggestion about how to get from here to there.  It si rather an exultant, celebrative conviction that God will not quit until God has had God’s full way in the world.  On the one hand, such an affirmation is an antidote to our deep despair that most often can see no way out of our present vexation.  On the other hand, such an affirmation of hope is a warning about our self-sufficiency that imagines that in our own power we can have life on our own terms, no or in time to come.”

Wow.  God will have God’s way in the world!  That is where I place my trust.  It’s not just using wishful thinking to make a difference in the world.  It is the confidence that God is God and he will accomplish his purposes in the world.