Pursuit and the journey of a church

I'm just returning home from our church's first mid-week gathering called Pursuit. There were about 20 people who came to experience a more intimate worship/teaching time along with sharing in communion together. This was a huge night for the journey of our church! I believe this because it's been obvious to me that God is doing something in the hearts of many people within our faith community. People seem hungry to know God in a deeper more comitted way and this mid-week gathering I hope will help people grow and understand more their identity in God. What I loved about tonight, was that it wasn't a "service" where we had to have everything structured just right and where we the pastors provided all the leadership. Tonight, everyone had a hand in Pursuit and it felt right. I really do believe Redwood Hills is a great church and it's obvious God is blessing our efforts and changing hearts. I think this is the start of something...some would call it revival, I would call it an awakening. People are being awakened to how much they need God and how much they need each other in their faith journey. We'll see where this leads us...

Love and Peace.
Rex

Ensenada Here We Come!!!

Our time is finally here where 23 of us will travel to Ensenada Mexico and build a house for a young family that is currently homeless. I'm so excited! I've been thinking today that the church is ALWAYS talking about Jesus. Think about this for a moment...Christians are always evangelizing. The question is, what are we saying about Jesus? Is our action speaking about him or our inaction? When our community looks at our church, what are they learning about Jesus? I hope things like Mexico is speaking loudly to people about what we believe. I hope that people are learning to trust Jesus and that he offers a life that can change the world. I hope that this journey to Ensenada will transform people in our team so much that they will radically change the way they live...maybe someone will give their life to ministry or begin to give themselves away to a people or a cause that will speak of the love of Jesus in such a way that many people will become followers of Christ. Who knows what can happen...I believe God is up to something within our church and I'm grateful to be a part of it.

Peace and Love.
Rex

Home from a great vacation...

It's been a little while since my last post because our family had a chance to go to Palm Springs for a week's vacation. We had some family members put us up in a Westin Resort and covered our airfare too! What a great week! The resort was fabulous...the weather hot, and the chance to be with my wife and boys for seven days with no work was much needed. I feel very rested and ready to work and lead through the summer. There were some things that God spoke to my heart about and I thought I'd share some with whomever reads this blog of mine.

I've been too caught up in the numbers of our growth at church. This was a painful realization because I should know better. The Kingdom of God isn't about church growth...damn the mega-church's influence on me!

People always need a pastor and rarely need a church professional.

God has the heart of a father and I need to explore this much more thoroughly.

My family needs more extended times where I'm not focused on work...anyone else want to send us on a trip? :)

Vacations with the kids aren't really vacations...more like family trips!

Peace and Love.
Rex

5.

Lordship 2

It's Sunday night about 9pm and we're just returning home from visiting a new church that's being planted here in the Bothell area. My wife and I know some of the people who are part of the leadership team there and they've been asking us to come visit for quite awhile now. I have to be honest, I didn't really want to go to church again today but I'm really glad we did. It's a church which focuses on some of the celtic traditions and promotes a very experiential service with prayer stations, communion alters, and confessionals. This isn't the kind of church I could do every week but it was really good for my spirit to have a different worship experience and just slow down and reflect for an hour or so. Upon my reflections I began thinking about this idea of Lordship and what it's really all about. One of the words that came to me was care...Lordship is about caring. Caring for people, creation, our money, our stuff, our health, our time and our talents. Everything God has given to us, everyone God has put into our lives we have a responsibilty to care. So where does Lorship and caring and the church fit into a christ-followers life? Unfortunately I grew up thinking that I really only needed to care for my church and not the church down the road. God has since taught me that there is no one church that's better than the other, big ones, small ones, emerging or traditional, they all belong to Jesus and they all need our care. Tonight I took a moment to care for this church and I sat in silence and prayed that God's blessing would pour out on this body of people. I prayed that God would provide for them and protect the leadership as they work so hard to build a church. Now I sit here and I think about my church, and I ponder how to care more for it. I'm thinking about how I need to surrender my leadership of it to God even more than I have and trust him...I'm thinking of how there are hurting people who I need to pray for more often...I'm thinking of the community our church exist in and how we can love them. If you are on this journey of truly making Jesus the Lord of your life, will you join me in praying for your church? Maybe you're reading this and we go to the same church...will you please pray for God's blesisng on it? What can you do to care for your church? That's a big question...but then again, whenever we're talking about Lordship, we're talking about something big.

Peace and Love
Rex

Lordship 1

Did you happen to catch that last Saturday was Earth Day? If you missed it you must live in a cave with no access to any form of media or human contact. Earth Day has never been talked about more than this year. Maybe we have Al Gore to thank, or maybe the media had nothing else to talk about, or maybe it's because God is trying to get our attention. We know the media has plenty to talk about and while Al Gore is doing some great things with his work to bring awareness to Global Warming, I think we need to look seriously at the thought of what God maybe trying to say here. Have you looked at some of the changes and problems our climate is facing? Do they bother you? Is it another ploy by media to cause fear in the mind of americans? Is this crisis something left for the liberals to care about? Do you think God cares about any of this? While I can't say that I am the the best at recycling or saving water, I can say that my attention has been caught to the realities of what is happening in our world and I'm left wondering what Lordship and global care have to do with me. As a church we've been talking about Lordship and the various things like money, family and time that God has given to us to care for. It's true that our stuff is a gift from God and that we must be very careful in how we use it and value it. The same goes with our relationships and the time we have here to live. But what about the earth? Could there be a greater gift than the world in which we live and breathe? For many, many years the western church has promoted a gospel that saves us from living in this world, so go ahead and live how you like because Heaven awaits. Times are changing now as christians are seeing that our salvation is a rescue. It's a rescue from one way of living and an entering into a new, Jesus way of living. This new life he gives us means we have divine resposibilites to care for this world and God's creation. Now, how far you want to take that is really up to you. Does it mean christ followers no longer drive SUV's? Do we transfer our home energy to solar power? Do we dedicate time and money to different global causes? Do you simply brush your teeth without using water? I don't know how much God wants from us, but I do know that God wants his people and church to be aware that there is a problem with his creation and he wants us to be open to him and how he would want to use each of us to protect what he has created for us to enjoy. Caring for our earth isn't a liberal thing, and it's not a hippie thing...it's a love thing. May we learn more and more to love God by loving others and the world in which these "others" live in!

Peace and Love.

Rex

The Questions Keep Comin'

This has been one of those weeks where I just can't keep silent about some of the problems we're facing here in America. Like so many, I am deeply saddened by all that took place Monday morning on the campus of Virginia Tech...but I have to be honest that each and every time these tragedies take place I become increasingly angry toward our country's leadership and their inability to bring change to our gun laws. We are a so-called christian nation founded on christian principles and we're so far from understanding peace and what Jesus would think about the freedom we have with arms. I simply can't understand why some states still have such easy access to guns and weapons. What is it going to take for these lawmakers to see that something has to change? I know I'm in the minority here with my thoughts on guns and peace but I really don't care. I've spent many an hour thinking about peace and what Jesus had to say about it and I'm convinced that we can't keep going on like this. And speaking of not being able to keep going on...today I got a call from a friend in Tacoma who told me that a girl who was in my youth group and lived next door to our family before we moved lost her fiance today in Iraq. My heart is crushed for her as she also lost her brother to cancer recently. Whether it's 9mm hand guns on the streets of America or the big guns in a desert somewhere in the middle-east, it all needs to stop! It's becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of any of this...it all sucks and I just pray that God will be merciful to us as a nation for using his name to justify our war and for passing weak gun laws in a christian nation that influence the hurt and killing innocent people.

Love and Peace.

Rex

Am I Cool Enough?

The other day I was headed south on I-5 to Tacoma when I drove up next to a Hummer H3 all decked out with fancy decals and lettering across most of the car. At first I couldn't figure out what the heck it was all about, but soon I noticed that it was a government owned H3 advertising the US Marines. It wasn't but one day later that I again was on the freeway when I saw a van with the same sort of artwork all over the vehicle...this time the ad wasn't for a branch of our military, it was for a church! A wave of thoughts and questions soon flooded my mind and still rattle inside me today. What made the Marines feel like they had to become cool by driving around in some pipmed out H3? It seems to me that the Marines have never had to portray being cool to anyone. They're the Marines! Are today's teenage boys and girls so wrapped up into image that even the most bad-ass soldiers in the world have to play the cool game? Since when did churches feel they have to spend money to pimp their vans? Does it really make others' who are driving down the road think..."Oooh, what a cool van, I think I'll go there this Sunday."? Why do we as church leaders have to be put out a cool product? I understand relavence and it's importance in today's culture but I think there's a fine line between being relevant and being cool. I think Jesus was, and still is today the most relevant person this world has ever seen. He lived to engage with his culture the message of God and that there is hope and freedom to be had...in all this was he striving to be cool? I certainly hope not. I also hope I as a pastor can lead a relevant church and not worry so much about being cool. I'll keep you updated as to how I am doing with this one...

Peace and Love,
Rex