Life Is War

Last night at our launch team gathering, we spoke of the reality that life is war. And that war requires perseverance. And that perseverance means rejecting the idea of "once saved, always saved" and replacing it with the more historic and bibical idea of the perseverance of the saints. The saints, God's holy people, the ones united with Christ, are those who persevere and hold onto faith until the end! Such perseverance is neither mechanistic nor deterministic; it is brought about as the grace of God moves us to strong, determined, intentional effort. (See the post below, from Dallas Willard, for more on intention).

See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness (Heb. 3:12-13).

Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:17-18).

They, whom God hath accepted in His Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved... Nevertheless, they may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins… (Westminster Confession of Faith 17.1 and 17.3).

True believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted… [yet] by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may, in due time, be revived… (WCF 18.4).

The war is on - for your soul and for the souls of those around you. May you make use of the means of your preservation this week as you persevere in prayer, in Scripture, and in love for one another!

(The photo is of Westminster Abbey, in case you're not steeped in English Puritan history...)

Dallas Willard on Intention

A question for us to ponder: do you, and do I, intend to be spiritually transformed?

Read and reflect on Dallas Willard's words about what the connection between belief and intention:

No one can actually believe the truth about [Jesus] without trusting him by intending to obey him. It is a mental impossibility... The idea that you can trust Christ and not intend to obey him is an illusion generated by the prevalence of an unbelieving "Christian culture." In fact, you can no more trust Jesus and not intend to obey him than you could trust your doctor and your auto mechanic and not intend to follow their advice. If you don't intend to follow their advice, you simply don't trust them. Period.

Now, an intention is brought to completion only by a decision to fulfill or carry through with the intention... If I intend to obey Jesus Christ, I must intend and decide to become the kind of person who would obey. That is, I must find the means of changing my inner being until it is substantially like his, pervasively characterized by his thoughts, feelings, habits, and relationship to the Father... People who do not intend to be inwardly transformed so that obedience to Christ "comes naturally" will not be - no matter what means they think of themselves as employing. God is not going to pick us up by the seat of our pants, as it were, and throw us into transformed kingdom living.

So the problem of spiritual transformation (the normal lack thereof) among those who identify themselves as Christians today... is that it is not intended.

-from Willard's excellent book The Renovation of the Heart

"To See Their Souls Well"

Last night after our launch team gathering, I was talking to a Coram Deo guy who will remain nameless. He was telling me some of the frustration he felt in trying to reach out to two friends of his who have been deeply wounded by Christians. He was identifying deeply with their pain, to the point of questioning the authenticity of his own faith. And he asked some challenging questions that deserve our consideration: Is Coram Deo really going to be any different? Won't we be guilty of the same hypocrisy, the same shallowness, the same fakeness that caused these friends to turn their backs on Christ? After all, we are a church made up of people... and people are sinful.

Those questions have troubled me this morning, and I hope they do the same for you. But they're not the point of this post. What I want to talk about is something else this guy said about his friends: "I'd do anything to see their souls well."

To see their souls well. I think that's the mark of whether we really love people. It's one thing to want to see people "come to Jesus" so we can be on the winning team, or get some satisfaction for our efforts, or feel like God loves us more, or have a good story to tell. But these motivations are all self-serving and shallow and ungodly. The true mark of my love for my neighbor is simply: do I long to see his soul well? Would I do anything to see him healthy and alive and thriving and in a place of soul-rest?

Thanks, nameless guy, for showing me what it means to love. I have much to learn.

Behind the Scenes

You can't plant a church without a whiteboard. At least not if you're me. I'm a visual thinker. And so are a few of my colleagues.

Pretty much every week at the Coram Deo offices, we hash through theology, structures, plans, and vision by making a mess of the multiple whiteboards around our office area.

Just thought you might like a glimpse behind the scenes into the arrows and charts and funnels that end up becoming the vision and direction of Coram Deo.

I wonder if Jesus and the apostles had a whiteboard? I personally don't know how Acts 15 could have taken place without one!

Unplugged

No sound system.

No microphones.

No cool lights.

No projection screens.

No Powerpoint slides.

Just a guy with a guitar.

Just the people of God being called together into His presence to worship. Not yet publicly, but privately. These are formative stages, as we seek Him in prayer to shape the DNA of Coram Deo.

"...the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be his worshipers." - John 4:23

Big Fat Thanks to Suzanne, Leigh, Hilary, Kurt and LeeAnn, and the others who spent last Sunday night investing in the children of Coram Deo. This is the next generation! Thank God for how he gifts the body of Christ with the skills and passions to come together and create a church that leaves no one out. It is much fun to see the body at work!

Sidenote: Contrary to Paul Ludacka's wishes, you DO NOT have to be a Vikings fan to be a part of Coram Deo. Just thought I should clarify...

Coffee Is A Go

Can you have church without good coffee? I don't think so. Could it be that God wanted a coffee shop in Denver to go out of business so Coram Deo could brew good coffee? Hmm... maybe. Of course, it might not have been God's fault; maybe they just didn't know how to run a coffee shop. Anyway, thanks to some sleuthing by JD and Todd, the Lord provided some top-of-the-line coffee equipment this week! So rest easy... the bean will soon be flowing at CD.

Yep, that's it there... Fetco... High-end, Italian-made equipment... just like the kind they had in the Garden of Eden.

Graham and Carrie are back

Graham and Carrie Frank are back in Omaha! They are honorary members of the Coram Deo Launch Team, having prayed for its inception from halfway across the world. They've spent the last year using their gifts as an engineer and a nurse to serve some of the world's poor and needy people in northern India. Plus, they got to do some cool stuff like trek the Himalayas and wake up every morning looking at 26,000 foot mountain peaks.

They're taking their time to go through the delicate process of cultural readjustment. What they have seen and experienced in the last year makes the things we think are really important pale in comparison. When you've seen a little orphan baby die in your arms, when you've spent every day helping people who don't even have the most basic of health needs, when you've lived without a phone for a year... all the stuff we value seems pretty trite. I look forward to how Graham and Carrie will challenge us when it comes to simplicity, true community, and following Christ.

So give them space to readjust... but when you see them, welcome them warmly. We are blessed to have them in our lives.

Mission, Community, Sabbath: Evangelical Neglect

In casting vision for Coram Deo, we’ve talked a lot about mission and community, and how much of evangelicalism has lost sight of them. Many churches are guided by comfort, not mission. And programs have replaced authentic community. Blah, blah, blah. This should be old hat by now.

But what about Sabbath? The idea of resting – worshipful resting – has also been lost by American Christianity. After all, we’re busy. Not just busy with life, but busy with church. Busy with ministry. Busy with trying to be missional! So busy that we’ve conveniently relegated the 4th Commandment to the Old Testament, as though God no longer cares that we rest and remember him. Ask any evangelical Christian about the Sabbath, and you’ll get hemming and hawing and stalling that resembles FEMA talking about Hurricane Katrina last week.

I’m finding that a community of believers modeled around spiritual formation and mission actually enhances Sabbath as well. (Could it be that God intended it to be so?) This past weekend was one of the most restful in recent memory. And I mean restful in a spiritual sense, not in a mind-numbing, entertain-yourself-to-death sense. On Sunday, we had a bunch of Coram Deo people over for a leisurely breakfast. We spent the morning talking and praying about what God was doing around us. Then we all went our separate ways, took naps, and headed downtown for the evening gathering. Afterward, I went down to Septemberfest with some more Coram Deo folks to watch Common Jones play some quality music.

On Labor Day, I took a walk with my family. Some people down the street got TP’d the night before, so we all pitched in to help them clean up. I played baseball with my son in the front yard. We grilled out with some more friends from Coram Deo, and they brought along a guy from their apartment complex that they’ve been reaching out to. He is a young follower of Christ, still trying to get his life together, and he spoke honestly about some of the challenges of overcoming his past. It was a great time. Then more naps and relaxation and hanging out as a family.

Then, after the kids went to bed, we spent 2 hours with some awesome friends who just got back from a year in India. We didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of all that God did in their hearts over that year, but it was great just to be with them. We closed the night in prayer about 11 PM, sharing with them the burden of transitioning back into a society where materialism and consumption are the norm, and where true community is abnormal. They have much to teach us about the other side of the world, about God, and about living simply.

Unplugging from the paranoid pace of evangelicalism and making space for community and mission makes true Sabbath possible. This way of doing church is good for the soul.

Megachurch Burnout

There's a really interesting post on the Musings blog this week by a college student who grew up in one of the largest megachurches in Dallas. He gives his own perspective on why his generation is rejecting the megachurch in favor of a smaller, more intimate church experience. If you're convinced that it takes espresso and cutting-edge video to have a culturally relevant church, his words might surprise you. Read his article here.