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? 

 

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. 

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

A Story Bigger Than You and Me

A thought I've had on and off for years grabbed me again this morning:  

Wouldn't it be great to live a life story so compelling only God could claim credit for it? 

In the Old Testament, God had a reputation. It would have been absurd to claim personal credit for the parting of the Red Sea or for the collapse of the walls of Jericho.  The people of God were caught up in events so big only God could plausibly get credit.

Jesus' life is another example. In the early church there were miracles to be sure, but their extreme generosity and self-sacrifice turned heads.

Part of me wants to write my own script (okay, a big part of me does).  But if I write my story, it will be pretty small.  I'm not talking about fame or renown (it's not that kind of "big" I'm talking about). I'm just saying on my own strength I can accomplish about an ounce of good.  God could accomplish an avalanche of good through any of us, if we let him. He can write stories I could never write.

The problem with a lot of North American Christianity is that our stories are too small.  We're less into life-change and more into life modification or amendment.  We prefer order to disorder, predictability to unpredictability and control to surrender.

So what story do you think God might want to write in you?  Struggling with mood?  Surrender it.  He could use you to bring joy.  Struggling with your marriage?  Surrender and let him write a new chapter...heck, a new book.  Struggling at work?  Let him change you.  Your church boring or stuck? Give it back to God.  It was his in the first place.

My prayer today is this: God, give me a story only you can write.  Whatever that looks like or what it accomplishes is up to you.  But give me (and our community) a story that only you can write.

What's your prayer? 

The Lost Art of Confession

I took some time off from blogging, not just in the last month, but for much of 2009.  

I got deeply immersed in twitter (and still am), but some ideas can't be captured in 140 characters or less. I'd love to develop a dialogue here again, and if you're up for it, so am I.

I spend some extra time this morning praying and spent some time confessing my sins.  True confession: I don't confess my sins well. I need to do it more often and more thoroughly.  It seems far easier for me to ask God for things or pray about things than it does to honestly confess my shortcomings and trust Him to provide forgiveness and the grace to change.

Tell me if you think I'm wrong, but when I read people's tweets I don't see a lot of humility (and I likely don't see enough in my own).  Rarely do we as Christians show our vulnerability, dependence on God or need for Him.  It's easier to pretend we have it nailed and others need to change.  In fact, that is the posture of many preachers and leaders today.  If we had more humility in the church, we'd have more Jesus and less of us in the mix.  How could that hurt the church?

I so need to do more confession...more quantity and quality.  Confession is a gift from God, based on grace, that can help in so many areas.

• It is the basis of salvation - what got us back with God will keep us back with God.
• It's the key to dependence - I don't need to depend on God if I'm depending on myself. 
• It's a powerful way to grow self-awareness which is the key to transformation - I can't change what I can't see, and God won't change what I won't acknowledge.
• It helps me see other people's points of view more clearly - when I see my own shortcomings I can see the value of Christ and his work in others more clearly.
• You're only confessing what God - and often everybody else - already knows is a problem. 
• It leads to greater humility and to greater- Christ-likeness  
• It makes me a better leader - leaders who understand their weaknesses are much better able to lead dependent on Christ. 

Humility is so attractive in others, and confession leads to greater humility. But while humility is attractive in others, it makes me feel like I'm going to die 1000 deaths, which is likely what God needs me to do to allow him to control my life.  I think that's why it's a struggle to confess deeply, regularly and honestly.  So I am going to resolve to go much deeper in my prayers of confession in the next month.

What's your relationship with confession?  How do you struggle?  What if anything keeps you from confessing your sins more freely and deeply?

Suffering? Great!

So...you want to be great.  We've talked about this before in several contexts at Connexus.  But last week, in a conversation I had a huge new insight from a friend.

He simply said this:  There cannot be greatness without suffering.

It was one of those moments when a bunch of things I kind of new and didn't know synced together in my mind and I realized he's right.

Can I think of anyone in scripture who was great who didn't suffer?  Abraham?  No.  Moses?  No. Ruth? Pretty much not.  David? No (read the Psalms).  The prophets?  Nuh uh.  Peter?  Nope.  Paul?  Never.  

In fact, the people we widely regard as the greatest leaders often suffer the most.  Jesus' life was a life of suffering.  The ultimate act of the redemption of humanity was supreme suffering?

Switch to world history: can you think of a single historical figure we admire who didn't suffer?  I can't. 

In fact, we vilify people who avoid suffering.  Dictators use power to make others suffer so they don't have to.  We hardly admire the rich who insulate themselves from suffering through money.  A hero is someone who embraces suffering and uses it for the good of others.

This rocked my world.  I spend far too much of my time trying to avoid suffering.  Guess I need to change. Here are some take aways I'm still processing:

• If you are suffering, this can be a portal into greatness if you will use the suffering for God's glory and for the benefit of others.  (Think of people who are ill who still give to others...) 

• If you are avoiding suffering like the plague, you will never be great.  

• God uses suffering to grow people. 

• All suffering can be redeemed (Romans 8:28)   

What do you think?  Do you agree?  Do you think the principle is true?  Why or why not?

Second, does it give you hope?

Dude...What's Buggin You?

Chicks and Dudes is our early summer series about relationships.  It's all about how men and women struggle in relationship and what God says about it.  You can help add some primal research.

Dudes, it's your turn.  What drives you nuts about women?  What don't you understand?  What seems like it will always be in the category of permanent mystery to you?  Where are the tension point in your relationship?  Post your comments and let's hear it!

Thanks to the chicks for some things to think about.  Anyone else want to chime in?  Ladies, add your struggle/complaint/question here.