What have we added to Christ! December 10, 2010

Now as we learn to put Christ at the center we must remember a very important point. WE CANNOT PUT ANYTHING ELSE AT THE CENTER WITH HIM! It must be HIM ALONE! If we try to mix in anything along with Christ, the thing we add will cancel out any benefit of Christ to us. This is the lesson we learn from the Galatians. They didn’t try to abandon Christ. They just added the Law to Christ. When you do that, Christ can no longer benefit you. You see, Christ and only Christ is what you need. You cannot dilute Christ, therefore, when you add something else to Him, the Father removes Christ from the situation and you’re only left with the “thing” which you added. That thing is not Christ. A simple mathematical formula might help to explain the.

Christ + 0 = redemption
Christ + 0 = freedom in Christ
Christ + 0 = peace (because Christ is all these things)
Christ = 0 = love

But if we change the formula, something happens.

Christ + Law = Law (only
Christ + Works = works (only)
Christ + Love = love (human)

The flat out reality of the messiness of Organic Church and the indescribable joy October 20, 2010

Our road to the or experience of ganic expression of Christ in a true body of believers has been the most painfulour lives.  We started as a Sunday School class in a Southern Baptist church, we had grown to about 60 people. People were drawn to us because we were just flat out real.  We didn’t try to put on masks and be “perfect” christians with no problems.  We had problems and we were willing to confess them and deal with them. Unfortunatly, it exposed alot of issues in the church that your typical institutional church does NOT want to be faced with or to have to deal with, including some wife and child abuse happening under their noses.

Long story short, we left the institutional church. About half of our group did not leave with us, and turned very strongly against us. At that point we thought we were going to have a para- church ministry to the abused and wounded.  We have such a heart for hurting people, but God had different plans for us.  After a very public accusation of being a cult and Satan worshipers because we left the Institutional Church, we just dropped to our knees, in complete brokeness and humility, in front of Christ and laid it all at His feet.  

We were introduced to Frank Viola’s books at this point and God began to show us who He really was and where He wanted us to go.  He wanted to move us into a true Body of Christ with Him as the head.  It was a slow and very painful, confusing process.  The most spiritually mature person in our group became our “pastor” but we didn’t know anything but the “normal” idea of church leadership so that was a very hard process of figuring out how all that worked and what the role of leadership did play in an organic church.  (We are still figuring this all out!) 

We have had “wolves” who hated the institutional church but also wanted nothing to do with Jesus.  They just wanted “community”.  So we had to be cleaned of that.  Then we have had legalistic people wanted to turn us back to aspects of the old way, and we had to be cleaned of that!

It has been very, very hard.  But through it all we never lost our focus on Christ, although this year while reading Jesus Manifesto, we have a new passion for Christ and who He really is, not just how He died on the cross for us so we can go to Heaven.  We also have not lost our focus on being completely real with each other.  We contantly confess our deepest sins before each other and Christ.  We confront each other in love and walk hand in hand together through the darkest parts of hell, TOGETHER!!

Has the organic community become your substitute for God? October 8, 2010

Be kind, for everyone you know is facing a great battle.

A true community is something you will have to fight for. You’ll have to fight to get one, and you’ll have to fight to keep it afloat. But you fight for it like you bail out a life raft during a storm at sea. You want this thing to work. You need this thing to work. You can’t ditch it and jump back on the cruise ship. This is the church; this is all you have. Without it, you’ll go down. Or back to prison.

Suddenly all those “one another’s” in Scripture make sense. Love one another. Bear one another’s burdens. Forgive one another. Acts of kindness become deeply meaningful because we know we are at war. Knowing full well that we are all facing battles of our own, we give one another the benefit of the doubt. Leigh isn’t intentionally being distant from me – she’s probably under an assault. That’s why you must know each other’s stories, know how to “read” one another. A word of encouragement can heal a wound; a choice to forgive can destroy a stronghold. You never knew your simple acts were so weighty. Its what we’ve come to call “lifestyle warfare.”

We check in regularly with one another, not out of paranoia (“Do you still like me?”), but in order to watch over each other’s hearts. “How are you doing?” But be careful about what you are looking for from community. For if you bring your every need to it, it will collapse. Community is no substitute for God. I left our annual camping trip absolutely exhausted and disappointed. As we drove home, I realized it was because I was looking to them to validate me, appreciate me, fill this aching void in my heart. Only once in ten days did I take time to be away with God, alone. I was too busy trying to get my needs met through them. Which is why community cannot live without solitude.( article by John Eldridge)

Have we found “it” or have we stopped looking for “it”?

Okay . . . I know this whole question of “what has God promised us in this life?” is fraught with problems. It’s a question that’s got heresy on both sides. So, let me make a few things clear:

I am not advocating a “name it and claim it” theology, whereby we can have anything and everything we want if we just claim it in Jesus’ name. After all, Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33).

Nor am I advocating a “prosperity” doctrine that claims God wants everyone to be rich and healthy. “The poor you will always have with you” (Matt. 26:11).

What I am saying is that Christ does not put his offer of Life to us totally in the future. That’s the other mistake. “?I tell you the truth,’ Jesus said to them, ?no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life'” (Luke 18:29-30, emphasis added).

Jesus doesn’t locate his offer to us only in some distant future, after we’ve slogged our way through our days here on earth. He talks about a life available to us in this age. So does Paul: “Godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Tim. 4:8, emphasis added).

There is a Life available to us now. Let’s find it!  ( Article from John Eldridge)

What is Organic Church? October 5, 2010

We are a community of Christ Followers who have left the institutional or traditional style of church.  We are dedicated to finding out what it means to be a New Testament Church.  We are striving to be a true representation of the Body of Christ, where every part of the body is just as important as the other.  In other words we are “body-driven” or “community-driven” church, not a “clergy- driven” church.  Every person is gifted by God and has their own unique, personal experiences and journey with God. If they are not using their gifts or sharing their experiences, we all lose out.  Because of this, our community will not look nice and shiny like other churches that have rigid structure and legalistic confines.  We are messy and we admit it.  We have conflict and make mistakes at times but we do it together and all within the underlying love and grace we have experienced from Christ.

 What is Organic Church?  

One way to describe it is that organic church life is the “experience” of the Body of Christ. In its purest form, it is the fellowship of the Triune God brought to earth and experienced by human beings.

Organic church life embodies the biblical teaching that the Church is a spiritual organism, not an institutional organization.

To use an illustration, if you try to create an orange in a laboratory by employing human ingenuity and organizational skills, the lab-created orange would not be organic. But if you plant an orange seed into the ground and it produces an orange tree, the tree is organic.

In the same way, whenever we sin-scarred mortals try to create a church the same way we would start a business corporation, we are defying the organic principle of church life. An organic church is one that is naturally produced when a group of people have encountered Jesus Christ in reality (external ecclesiastical props being unnecessary) and the DNA of the church is free to work without hindrance.

To put it in sentence, organic church is not a theater with a script. It is a lifestyle-a spontaneous journey with the Lord Jesus and His disciples in close-knit community.( Information from Frank Viola,ptm.org)

Hello world!

We wanted a place to write out our thoughts and opinions, so we thought we would give this blogging thing a try!  Let’s see what happens!