Intentional Reflection

Tonight’s a good example of why I love the team that I get to work with as part of Renew Communities. After getting all that has to happen so that two kids are bathed and in bed done I sat down and saw these two “social media” updates…


The Sewing Machine War is Chris Solyntjes’, our worship+arts pastor, band and they played a show at Musica in Akron tonight.  Josh Landis is our Renew FM director and is also heavily involved in theater arts and education in the Cleveland area.  Tonight they were both doing exactly what God made them to do.  The best part is that it had nothing to do with Renew Communities.

Too often our talents, passions and abilities get commandeered by church and either it gets all wrung out as the church sucks them dry or over time we just learn to only use them in certain ways that fit what’s happening on a Sunday morning.  When we create in any way we are actually putting the God of the universe on display even if we never mention him or it’s not a “Christian” activity. This is part of what it means to be “image bearers” of a Creator God.  If this is only seen within the confines of a Sunday morning this intentional reflection will only be seen by those who already know God.

So here’s to creating in public and here’s to embracing this creator God and who he’s made us to be.

The Pastors Worst Nightmare

Found this post linked from another pastor’s twitter.  It’s the story of a “dynamic” church plant in Atlanta and the reason why a pastor and his family are leaving.  It’s drop dead honest and the thing that most church planters are most afraid of.

What if things grow?
What if lots of people think we’re cool?
What if everything looks really great to those watching but nothing’s really happening?

Here’s a quote but you ought to go read the rest…

Here’s what we’ve learned this summer: It’s not organizations with boards and secretaries who record the minutes that change the world.  It’s not even dynamic leadership that successfully leads the board with the secretary who records minutes.  It’sPEOPLE WITH HEARTS BROKEN FOR CHIRST and His people. Before we had 1 service we stopped a man from committing suicide and bought 500 toys and uniforms for school kids in the inner-city.  We didn’t need dynamic leadership, by-laws, and committees to do that.  We just needed to care.

Am I frustrated?  CLEARLY!  Am I overstating the irrelevance of the Sunday morning song and dance?  Probably.  Did people come to Christ and renew their relationship with God because of what Courageous Church did for so long on Sunday mornings?  Absolutely!  But, then what?  Glad we baptized you, glad we helped you believe in church again and feel all warm and fuzzy about your creator, but I’m sorry we failed to actually make the vast majority of you into disciples.

Why Do A Family Series 2

This Sunday we kick off our FamilyShapes series.  I wanted to give some insight into why and what we’ll be tackling together!

Christians tend to talk a lot about the family and family values. Entire elections have been based off of the ideal “Biblical” family. There are certain shapes that families take that churches preach against and others that are exalted in sermons and Bible studies. Ultimately what ends up happening is there is an image presented of what a good Christian family looks like. This is fine on one level but if your family shape doesn’t match the shape presented in most churches there’s a pretty good chance you won’t feel like you belong. Even worse than that if you don’t feel like you belong at church then you might start to wonder if you really fit in God’s family.

The truth of the Gospel is that Jesus has made a way for everyone.

Regardless of the shape your family takes the Gospel of Jesus says you belong. If there is brokenness in your family Jesus can heal that. If love has died Jesus can resurrect that. If you’ve got shame about things that have happened or are happening in the privacy of your home Jesus can set you free.

This post isn’t just about why do a family series but why we’re doing this family series. Since we want the people of Renew Communities to be the church where life intersection happens we have to truly understand that God welcomes everyone into his family through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ regardless of the shape their families take. If that’s the truth – then we need to figure out how to communicate this good news in a way that helps people know this is true.

Week 1 we’re talking about belonging to the family of God, a church family and your own family.

Why Do a Family Series 1

This Sunday we kick off our FamilyShapes series.  I wanted to give some insight into why and what we’ll be tackling together!

There are certain types of sermon series that pastors do just hoping that tons of people will show up at their church. If you ever hear that a pastor is going to do an “unedited” sermon on sex you know he’s just hoping for a standing room only crowd that Sunday. Family is another topic that seems to really connect to the masses. I’ll just be honest – for that reason doing a family series at Renew’s Central Gathering has been something I thought about avoiding. We never want to do things as part of Renew Communities to just fill up a room.

I once read a quote from Mark Driscoll about dating and families. He said that if you’ve got young adults in your church you should talk about sex and dating a couple times a years and if you families in your church you should talk about family relationships the same amount. Why? Because every day people are hearing “sermons” on these things where ever they go. TV, Movies, Magazines, the Internet, friends – all of these are sending messages about the roles and relationships that most shape who we are.

If we hope to see Kingdom centered families then we need to be sure we are painting a picture of what a family defined by Jesus looks like.

And… Since people are getting messages all day long about the roles and relationships that most shape who they are we’d love it if these things we believe to be true about family defined more than just our family relationship. What if church was more like a family? What if we really felt like we had brothers and sisters that were doing life with us? What if we felt at home in other peoples houses because we’re a part of the family of God?

Join us Sunday to hear more about what this might look like!

Trash Picking

We live in a pretty new neighborhood here in Berea which means it’s pretty well taken care of most of the time.  There’s a school near the front of our neighborhood that has recently closed which means that somehow a bunch of trash has started to collect by the fence near the sidewalk and on the playground.  About a week ago I thought about how sad it was that all this trash was piling up with no one to clean it up.

Enter my two year old daughter.

Saturday night Kenzie and I were walking home from the playground as quickly as a two year-old can walk and she says “Daddy, look at all this trash!” I of course responded by saying “yeah, that’s a lot of trash.” Then Kenzie says “we throw it away dad!”  So I say, “well, maybe tomorrow we can come back and pick it up.”  For the next hour all she said was, “Daddy and Kenzie going to pick up trash tomorrow!”

It rained Sunday, our schedule was weird Monday, nap time ran too long Tuesday so we never went to do it – yet Kenzie kept talking about how much she wanted to go pick up that trash – so tonight that’s what we did.

I loaded Kenzie and Eva into our double stroller and we went down to pick up some trash.  Kenzie loved running around and we filled a whole bag (though in this picture we were only half done).

Why share this story here? Well, because my kid spurred me on to love and good deeds tonight.  There have been many “good intentions” about my neighborhood that I just never followed through on but when Kenzie got the idea that we should pick up the trash it had to happen. She wasn’t going to let it go until we did what she thought we were supposed to do.

Here’s to our kids leading us to be the people that God made and called us to be!