Carey Nieuwhof

Me? Status Quo? No...I Mean Yes....

The longer you are part of the status quo, the more you will want to defend it.  

There.  Finally said it.  Been wrestling with this for months now, and I finally got out the tension/struggle/principle in a single sentence.

Here's what I don't like:  I actually do struggle with wanting to defend the status quo. Which is a hard confession.  I've always thought of myself as a bit of a renegade.  Bucking trends, changing things up. Some of that is self-deception I'm sure, but there is a track record of change.

It's easy to point fingers at the establishment and say that they've fallen in love with the status quo. But what happens when that establishment is you? To a certain extent, we all represent the establishment of something.   You are the 'establishment' in your business, your ministry, your department, your shift, your family, your book club, your whatever.  And you'd basically love to perpetuate what got you there.

Connexus is eighteen months old.  I love this church.  I had a role in creating it.  But at 18 months a church ought to be transitioning.  Thinking and rethinking.  Great ideas will stick.  Bad ones will fall by the way side.  

How do you fight this tendency?  For me, it's a question of constantly exposing myself to ideas I didn't think of, view points I don't agree with, and initiatives I didn't have a hand in birthing.  The more I am open to the contributions of others that are forward thinking and innovative, the less I will tend to defend the status quo.  I also find that the older I get, the more ideas from younger leaders seem 'weird' to me, which means (guess what), I might be shoring up the status quo.  Gotta stop that.  Now.

The longer you are a part of the status quo, the more you will want to defend it. 

In what ways are you defending practices that are a window to the past, to the way things were done, not to the future and the way things ought to be done for emerging generations? 

 

Can You Spare 15 minutes?

So it sounds a bit Sunday Schoolish, but the reality is, you should read your bible. 

Why do I even feel a need to say something that basic?  Because in my experience, many people who are pursuing Jesus or even following Christ don't.  They just don't.

Sometimes it's laziness, suspicion of the text (is this thing legit?), an over-busy schedule.  But I wonder if under all that is a core belief that if exposed to the light, might shock us:  deep down we don't read it because we think it has no value.

Few people would say that out loud.  Truth is, though, few of us make time for things we don't think hold value.  So if we don't make time to read the Bible...

And then we flounder in our relationship with God, complain we never hear from him, and generally think our faith isn't where it should be.

So, here's a suggested antidote.  Here's what I believe can not only change your view of the Bible, but more importantly, grow your relationship with God and change you as a person.

Read the Bible for 15 minutes a day.  For two years.  

15 minutes a day.  2 years.  

The truth is you are going to spend 15 minutes a day in the next two years doing something. In fact, you'll waste 15 minutes a day reading blogs, watching YouTube, or just staring out into space? Why not make it a productive 15 minutes.

15 minutes in the Bible a day in the Word for two years. 

My guess is when you come out the other side, your view of scripture will have changed.  Your faith will have grown.  God will seem far closer.  You will make wiser life decisions.  God will have worked on your character.  You will be a new person.

Tomorrow we'll talk about how to spend those 15 minutes (how to read the Bible).  But in the meantime, what do you think?  A reasonable challenge?  Is this doable?  Why or why not?

A Bias Against the Bible?

This post isn't about the media or 'secular' society.  It's about people who say they follow Jesus and our attitude toward the Bible.

The last month has brought me into contact with an attitude I've seen over the years that just doesn't seem to go away.  The attitude?  Nearly everybody wants to hear from God, but a lot of Christ followers really don't like to read their Bible. 

Let me say that again - a lot of people just don't like to read their Bible.  So they don't.  And then they wonder why they don't hear from God.

The issue's been a live one during our Signs from Beyond series - I really believe we mostly hear from God through scripture - not direct revelation. 

But I've heard variations of this over and over again over the years and intensely again in the last month:

Yeah, I just don't really read my bible.
I find the Bible too confusing.  
I don't get anything out of the Bible when I read it.  
I wish God would just speak to me directly.  

Bottom line:  if you don't access God's word, your probably not going to hear from God.  And your faith won't grow.  And you won't develop an intimate relationship with Him.  And you will end up making foolish decisions because you didn't consult God, but then you'll blame him for your misfortune.  And you'll be frustrated because you'll think God bailed on you.  But in reality, you bailed on Him.

As to whether the Bible's too hard to understand, I'm not sure that ultimately holds water. Check this out. 

No, I'm not in a bad mood.  I'm just sayin.... Because I've seen it over and over and over again.

What do you think?  Do people like to read the Bible? Do we read our Bibles? Is it too hard to understand?

On Monday, I'll come back with a plan I'd like to propose to change people's views about the Bible. In the meantime, chime in....

Now You See It - No You Don't

There's a verse in Hebrews that gets me every time.  I know it's two verses after the 'famous' verse, but I like it better than the famous verse. 

Here's what Hebrews 11:3 says:

What we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.

The writer is talking about how God formed the universe.  Imagine being there in the moment before anything we now know was created, and God saying "this is what exists in my minds eye: Solar systems, planets, oceans and forests, people and duck-billed platypii."  

And you and I would have said "Huh?"  We couldn't have seen it.  It hadn't been created yet.  We would have had no category.  What we were about to see wasn't going to come from anything we could currently see.

Which is kind of how God always works.  

Which, if true, leads us to a disturbing question: what God had planned for you might well come from nothing you can currently see.

That's only a problem because people of small faith (me - you?) love to walk by sight.  We operate best in the known.  Tomorrow is a lot safer if it looks like a slightly improved version of today.  It seems controllable.  It seems safe.  It's predictable.

What if your trust and my trust started operating on a level that so implicitly submitted to God that if tomorrow completely dis-resembled today, it would be fine?  What if we were so open to God that tomorrow might look radically different than today?  

Often we're willing to settle for a better version of inadequate because our fear keeps us from trusting God for anything better.

What we can see did not come from anything that can be seen. The best stories of faith operate on that principle.  

______________

Abraham, I'm going to make you into a great nation.   

Yeah, but I'm old and have no kids and my wife is way past the baby years.  Like that's not even possible!

What you will see will not come from anything that can be seen.

_______________

David, you're going to be king.

But there already is a king, and I'm just a boy and I'm the runt of the litter and I'm only a shepherd.

What you will see will not come from anything that can be seen. 

_______________

Peter, come and follow me.

You, rabbi?  But like I fish for a living and I kind of failed out of Hebrew school and if you really are who you say you are I promise you that you've got the wrong guy.

What you will see will not come from anything that can be seen.

_______________

So - what if God is calling you to something that can't be seen right now?  Would you go?  Would you do it?  Would you trust him that much?

What if thousands of people started trusting on that level today?  What would happen to our lives, to the church, to the Kingdom?

Because what we can will see is probably not going to come from anything that can be seen right now. 

Let Me Encourage You....

Nobody I've met to date has been over-encouraged.  I've never encouraged someone only to have them respond with "Hey - you know what? I've had way too many good things said about me.  I'm at my max. Lay off a little."  

On the other hand, most of us probably feel like we could use an encouraging word.  I even keep an encouragement file.  Every time someone sends me an encouraging note, I drag it into that file on my desktop.  Many of you do the same thing I'm sure.  

Sometimes, though,  I wonder whether we misuse encouragement.

Let me ask a hard question:  when someone encourage you, do you file it away as affirmation, or do you use it as encouragement? 

What I mean by that is what the word literally says - encouragement is designed to give you courage. Are you encouraged to do bolder, greater, more ambitious things because of the words that came your way?  I'm pretty sure that what the Kingdom of God needs is more risk takers, more people to boldly push out frontiers, try new things, experiment and explore.  

If you're not advancing the Kingdom, then you're either managing it (adding no new value), justify your inaction (there are lots of reasons not to be bold) or blaming others (if they wouldn't be so....). Managing has a season, but justifying why you aren't doing anything of significance or blaming others for it really don't make for a compelling story.  It's way too easy to end up spending most of our time justifying, blaming or managing yesterday's fading success.  And meanwhile, nothing of significance gets done. Fear and the power of inertia gobble up our drive.  

So here's a little thing that could make a difference.  When someone encourages you (and they will, if not today, then tomorrow), use it to give you courage.  It's not just affirmation.  It's directed, by definition, to make you do things you wouldn't have done but for the encouragement.  Be bold.  Do something!

You'll have to push past the fear that always stands between the status quo and progress.  But then that's the dynamic that fuels every story worth reading and every major act of progress in human history.  Someone pushed past their fear and moved forward.  

Today, be encouraged.  For real. 

Wanna Get Your Copy of Hip 2B Holy?

Many of you have asked how you can get a copy of Global TV's Hip 2 B Holy, a documentary that heavily profiled our ministry at Connexus and several other Ontario churches.

The cost is $30 CDN ($28 USD) + GST (6%) and PST (8%) for a total of $34.20 CDN.  Send your requests to:

90th Parallel Productions Ltd
203 Gerrard St. E.
Toronto, Ont  M5A 2E7
Phone: (416) 364-9090
Fax: (416) 364-0580
E-mail:  susanne@90thparallel.ca
www.90thparallel.ca

They'll send you a DVD. 

Thanks to our friends at thinkyouthministry.ca for the info.

The Reason We Do This

So we've heard from a lots of people this week.  Thank you for the avalanche of messages.  But one or two comments have a way of putting it all into perspective.

Sam spoke volumes when he posted this on the blog.  This is all he wrote:

I'm so glad Connexus came along. I was dying spiritually before. Thanks for introducing me to Christ.

Among the emails was one from a woman who started attending one of our campuses at Easter because a friend invited her.  She is so grateful that her relationship with God is coming back into focus.

Elvis and Katie attend our Orillia campus.  Their story is a powerful indicator of how God puts lives back together again when people are committed to creating the kind of environment where people with little to no church background can find Christ.  

Had another moment on Sunday when I watched several families bring their children in front of God and a community stand around them committed to helping families win at home.  

I love it when stories about people who had given up on church or never thought about church start to pour in.  

Two things:  First, thanks to our incredible team that makes this happen.  Our amazing staff team, our unbelievable volunteers (did you see the blizzard footage in Hip 2B Holy?  Our crew is crazy!) get up every day in the hopes that people would find an environment where they could enter a growing relationship with Jesus.  

Second, church for people who don't go to church is possible. Among the emails and notes have been inquiries from across Canada about whether there are churches like this in their region.  There are some great churches emerging.  It's so encouraging.  But we need more.  More churches that strip away the human baggage and lead people into an authentic relationship with Christ. 

So here's my question: if these stories move you, if there's something burning within you that makes you want to offer this kind of environment, what's stopping you from gathering a team and starting a church in your city or region or repositioning your existing church for a new mission and strategy? 

What if there were hundreds - thousands - more stories waiting to be written, and God was looking to you - as a believer or a skeptic - to be part of the plot line?  

An Open Letter

Dear Hip 2B Holy Viewer,

If you happened to have watched Hip 2B Holy on Global, and you're one of the people who hasn't gone to church for a long time or ever, this letter's for you.

First, I just want to say sorry for keeping you away for so long.  The church has not done a particularly good job of being clear or even being open to people who aren't part of our club.  That needs to change and I hope it is changing.

Second, sorry for any and all anger directed at you by Christians.  I'm always amazed that Jesus rarely had a harsh word for religious "outisders".  Instead, he kept his harsh words for insiders who didn't reflect God's heart (usually religious leaders).  How we got it backwards, I'll never know. So for the times we've held placards denouncing you and whatever your group stands for - sorry.  It's not like Christ to attack the people He died for.

Third, sorry for behaving like Jesus died for the church.  His compassion and affection were actually sent for the world, not just for a small minority of people or peoples.  When Jesus died and rose again, we were all covered by that.  Sometimes we in the church behave like it was for us only.  That's wrong.

Fourth, sorry for making it so hard to understand what God is saying.  If you've tried church, you realize that often we just get "weird" about how we do church and we make it hard for someone with no background to understand what's happening or going on.  That needs to stop.

Finally, while the documentary did a great job in many respects, I felt a bit bad about its portrayal of mainline Christianity.  Yes, it's in decline.  Yes, I was in mainline circles for a decade and left, but there's no bitterness.  There are pockets of life and some fantastic Christ-followers in mainline churches.  Wish that had come out.  

There is a lot more to be said.  But the bottom line is this: Jesus loved this world passionately enough to die for it and offer us new life.  

I hope you can be part of a new dialogue - a new beginning.  Many of us are still getting our heads around what it means to be loved by God.  I don't fully understand it. 

When we gather, we want to create an open, accessible, even irresistible environment in which people of all backgrounds and life-stories can come together to discover grace, forgiveness, transformation and hope.  

We need you.  We need skeptics, doubters, people who think they are beyond the reach of love, people who feel the whole Christianity thing is garbage.  We need you in community - in our community, to be part of the community and part of the dialogue.

Thanks for watching...If we can help in any way, we're in.  Post a comment.  Drop by our website. Send me an email.  Come to one of our services or drop by a church in your neighbourhood.  

There's a powerful message and relationship with God that's really worth exploring.  I hope we can do that together. 

Carey

I Only Got to Verse One

So in Part Two of the series "Signs from Beyond" (yesterday in Barrie, this coming Sunday in Orillia), we talked about God's will being revealed mostly in scripture.  

The assignment?  Read Romans 12.  Why?  Because most of us don't want to read the Bible. Most of us would rather hear from God directly rather than read the Bible to hear from God, even though direct communication is NOT something God does very often.  And even when we read the Bible, most of us don't read it as though God is speaking to us.

So the assignment was simple: read Romans 12 every day for a week and try to apply it to your life. I promised to do that too.  

This morning I started. I only got to verse one.  Actually, just the first part of verse one.  I didn't eve make it through one verse before I got stopped in my tracks.  Here's what hit me: the part about giving our lives (bodies) fully to Godin light of all He has done for us. 

Now I preached on this text yesterday.  I studied it during the week.  I've read it 100 times in my life, maybe more.  But I missed the part that says in light of all He has done for us. That stopped me dead cold.

I started thinking:  Do I really think about all that God has done for me?  What if I did?  That could change my motivation.  That could double or triple my gratitude.  If I really think about all God has done for me, my brain would melt. The Christian story isn't about what we can do for God, it's about what He has done for us.  It's about grace, mercy - God standing with us when I least deserved it. Wow! 

So I didn't read any further today. I had enough to saturate my little brain in applying just one verse to my life.  Usually I read 3-5 chapters of the Bible a day.  I got stuck at verse one.  And it's still eating at me.  I wonder what the rest of the week will hold?

Who says God's Word doesn't speak?  Try it.  Romans 12.  What's it saying to you?

Who God Really Is...

I had an experience last Thursday that really sent my world spinning. Without going into a lot of details, a friend went into a deep crisis that had a number of us deeply worried and scared for his well being.  For a period of about 12 hours, we didn't know which way things were going to turn out.

I went to bed that night incredibly concerned for my friend, but also deeply grateful for our faith. Because this was a situation that involved suffering on multiple levels, I found myself accessing my faith at a deep level.  I found myself so thankful that the kind of faith we often long for - a God who makes everything nice and ends suffering - doesn't exist.

Instead, I found so much peace that the central symbol of the Christian faith is a cross.  I found so much comfort in the reality that God chose to enter our suffering.  I was so grateful that although no one knew how the circumstances facing us would out, there was a peace inside I couldn't describe.

Sometimes I think the Christian faith is best understood from the perspective of suffering.  When you have a need, it puts you in touch with some of the deepest strands that run through every life.  

If you are looking for a promise that everything will always be perfect and you will never suffer, the Christian faith will disappoint you deeply.  But if you are in touch with the fragility of the human condition, your personal needs and the needs of others, the story of Jesus will resonate more deeply than anything I know.  At least it did - and does - for me.

I'm sure at some point this week you'll need to jump into a story that gives meaning to your disappointment, your frustration, your fear or your suffering.  Jesus is ready to meet you there, and for that, I'm so grateful.