May 24 - There Are No Detours in Mission

Living Water Community Church - May 24
Acts 28 - “There are No Detours in Mission”

Seven months ago, Cindy and I left Living Water to go start a new church community in the suburb of Bolingbrook. We talked it over with a lot of people here at the church, we prayed together, we even had a goodbye party for Cindy and me. We went out with the church’s blessing. . . . And now we’re back.

I think our story is a little like Paul’s story in Acts 28. So I’m going to spend a few minutes this morning telling my story, a little time talking about Paul’s story, and then we’ll spend some time praying together about how it relates to our stories--what God is asking of us as a church-community and what God is asking of each of us personally.

A Young Church? A New Community.

Some things make me happy. Like last Sunday night.

The church group I'm part of stakes its identity on the conviction that community--fellowship, koinonia--is a major part of Jesus' message about the new order of things God is bringing. Just like God frees us through Jesus' death and resurrection to be in his family (John's Gospel says to be "children of God"), so we're freed to be family to one another. This is something we're struggling to learn how to live, to move this from conviction to habit. I think some would call this "discipleship" or, maybe, "spiritual formation."

We've been trying out different ways to do this. We're plotting to begin home groups in the next months. We've already passed around sign up sheets for rotating dinners around each others dining room tables (or on each others living room floors). (If anyone still needs to sign up, email me.) Another way we've been training ourselves in the discipline of friendship is a common potluck after each service.

Last Sunday night, this looked like fifteen or so people, clustering around three or four tables, slurping bowls of white bean chili (a Cindy specialty), chomping garlic bread, and savoring some cake batter cookies (if you've never had these, your taste buds are missing an new world of delight). Even better than the food (which, let me repeat, was quite good), people were trading stories, getting to know one another. Some are old friends--some are old married couples. Some are quite new. Everyone was, perhaps unknowingly, showing what the new life Jesus promised looks like, how it listens and laughs, ask questions, passes the container of cookies. This makes me happy.

We started out calling our Sunday night gatherings "the Five O'Clock Service." I thought that was a generic enough, straight-forward enough. But after some reflection, some prayer, and a few conversations, we're changing the name. From this point forward, we'll be the Five O'Clock Community. I hope when we follow Jesus, it looks a lot more like sharing in a potluck than listening to a sermon.

Nov 30, 2008 - We Are Here to Repent

Nov 30, 2008
First Presbyterian Church of DuPage - The Five O’Clock
Is 64.1-9 & Mk 13.24-37

Proposition: When we see the brokenness of our world, our hearts yearn for God’s kingdom to arrive; yet we must realize how we take part in the sin that is destroying our world and repent for it.

We are here tonight to repent. We have seen God come to save us, we have been saved by God, but we have not lived our lives as those who have been saved, as those who have seen God. We are here to repent.

This is what Isaiah has to say to us tonight. Tonight we are at the beginning of Advent. We lit a candle at the beginning of this service, the first candle in the Advent Wreath. Tradition associates the first candle with hope--the hope of Messiah, exiled Israel’s hope of return to the Promised Land, our hope of Jesus’ return to save us. Hope is powerful stuff--we’ve seen that recently in political campaigns; maybe we even feel that now as we look ahead to Christmas, to reunions with family, with old friends, to a break from the regular droning on of our day-to-day lives. I strongly believe that it is our hope that sets us apart as Christians.

The passage tonight tells us a lot about hope. This is a prophetic song. The song is longer than just the text we read tonight. It starts early in the previous chapter and stretches to the close of chapter 64. The prophet wrote this song in hope.