we are celebrating our 3rd birthday as a church this Sunday @ 9 + 10.45.
this means testimonies, special treats for the kids, + lots of praising God for what he has done.
we would love to see you in the room.
the big birthday edition
this weekend, we hit the 3 year mark in our new church. it feels momentous, like when a baby is out of diapers or a college student goes off their parents cell phone bill. it feels like we are starting to hit our stride, helping the community well + communicating our faith clearly.
increasingly, it feels like we are learning how to do good ministry in the 2020’s. that has required adjusting my expectations. the message doesn’t change, but the way we convey it has. it’s been challenging for me to learn. like Jesus said,
luke 5.37 - and no one puts new wine into old wineskins. if he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed
Jesus is contrasting his new kingdom with the kingdom of the old testament and the old covenant. He is saying that if you try to understand him through the lens of the old ways, you will miss it. even more, if you try to operate with him in the old ways of thinking, you will ruin things. the new doesn’t work in the confines of the old.
every pundit and prognosticator out there loves to tell us how much the world has changed. that the restaurant business + secondary education + dating + church + etc etc will never be the same. this was true during COVID and it’s still true now. i don’t know how much of that is accurate and how much of it is still unknown, but one thing i know for sure: if we take the old mindsets into new realities, disaster is ahead.
old solutions to new problems leave everyone frustrated.
old strategies for new opportunities leave everyone frustrated.
this principle doesn’t mean the bible isn’t true anymore or that we don’t need to pay our bills or something foolish like that, but it does mean we need to re-think some things. the way we worked before, may not work. the way we rested before, may not work. the way we thought about money before, may not work.
God wants to do something new in you. he wants to do something new in me. this is so simple, but important to recognize: if we take our old mindsets about money + family + communication + government + discipleship into the season ahead, we will ruin the NEW thing god wants to do through us.
isaiah 53.19 behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? i will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
so even while our church + my life are going well, i must resist the temptation to settle on the way things are or have been. God wants to continue to move and do powerful things in and through us.
There’s this hilarious family story I’ve heard many times of this cliff jumping experience in Canada. Luke and his cousins head up to this cliff they’ve jumped off at least a hundred times over the years. But, this time they are with a cousin who is a little younger. As in most families this cousin, though small is trying to hang with the big kids and they are all thrilled to include him, however as he gets to the top of the cliff (maybe 25-40 feet in the air) and he looks into the lake he is about to jump into and he says in that whiny voice a kid uses so well, ‘I can’t!’ They plead with him because if he’s not going to jump then he has to walk all the way down alone. It’s fun to say it in that whiny kid voice, ‘I cannnnnnn’t.’
And as I think about the third birthday of Good News in the Neighborhood, I shake my head and laugh because I too thought, ‘I can’t.’ Planting a church was nowhere on my bucket list. This week I finished reading a book and it said this sentence: “I can assure you on the other side of every “I can’t” excuse is a glorious adventure with God just waiting to happen.” I am so thankful that Luke and honestly my relationship with God wouldn’t let me settle at a whiny-kid-I can’t!
Often there’s a reason behind the ‘whiny-kid-I-can’ts’ that even adults fall into.
‘I can’t’ can really mean: I don’t want to.
‘I can’t’ can really mean: I don’t feel qualified to.
‘I can’t’ can mean that wasn’t in my plan for my life.
‘I can’t’ can mean I am scared of what it’s going to cost me.
Or quite truthfully it could be a combination of all of these things which is where I found myself when I was first told about the idea of starting a church.
Here’s the good news, Jonah didn’t want to. Moses had a stuttering problem and didn’t think he could talk well enough to lead a nation. Mary and Joseph were both caught quite off guard by the idea that they were the ones chosen to have a child conceived by the Holy Spirit. And the rich man who asked Jesus what he should do to follow him was saddened when he said he had to sell everything and follow him. This is what I love about God’s Word, we can identify with these fallible humans who didn’t get it right everytime and God still wanted to use them.
Through Jonah God saved a nation. Through Moses he led the nation of Israel. Through Mary we get to experience the blessing of Jesus as Savior of the World. And through the rich man’s question we have the honest and raw answer from Jesus of the cost of following him along with the knowledge of what is to come and that it’s going to be so worth it.
There’s this new phrase that gets tossed around quite often nowadays called Imposter Syndrome. It’s basically when you fake it til you make it but inside you have this inner tension because you have all these ‘I can’t’s’ yelling louder than the ‘I can’s’. And here’s the beautiful truth from God’s Word, in Matthew 28 Jesus shares the great commission with all of his disciples to ‘go therefore and make disciples of all nations’ and he says, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” His presence in the midst of the ‘I can’t’s’ has the power to make them ‘I cans.’
What glorious adventure in trusting God is standing before you? God wants you to sweep the excuses to the side and trust Him and His best for you instead.
Last Sunday’s Sermon
the right way + wrong way to deal with jealousy, a challenging message on how to deal with wanting what other people have
What God’s Teaching Me:Dom Gaskin
this is good news,
luke + kristen