This summer, while at a camp speaking, I came to a place where I had no idea what to do next. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say and I wasn’t certain what God had been up to the previous night with the many distractions we had experienced on a night that I had thought would be HUGE for the Kingdom.

I found myself on my knees the next morning, begging God for some idea where He wanted me to take the group…desperate for the words to speak and the ideas to convey. As I prayed, the Holy Spirit impressed a familiar phrase on me…”the battle belongs to the Lord”. I stopped praying and turned to my Bible to find that phrase. My search led me to II Chronicles 20:15-17. King Jehoshaphat is faced with a vast army made from many nations all coming against his small country, Judah. He goes to the Lord in prayer…the Lord sends a prophet who says this to Jehoshaphat, “Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s…You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you…do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the Lord will be with you.” I knew in that moment that God was reminding me that this battle was not mine, but His…that I simply needed to take my position and stand, and watch God fight for me on behalf of His kids. That night, God moved in a mighty way, beyond my ability and beyond my imagination.

Trying to live as God’s missionaries in our culture can be difficult and overwhelming at times. Trying to make a difference in the lives of people around us can be downright frightening. The great news…the battle belongs to God. He will fight for us. Let’s, at the very least ,take our positions and stand firm.

The New Testament Church understood what it was here for…to make visible and known the life and power of the Lord Jesus Christ as His Incarnate body here on earth. In other words, Jesus lives among or abides within His Church. He promised to do this when He said, “where two or three are gathered in my Name, I am in the middle of them.” This seems to be a different presence than the individual presence of Jesus that each of us experiences on our own, the Christ in us.
It struck me that if Jesus doesn’t abide in a church, then what good is it? If the church only does what other groups of human beings can do, then it really isn’t the church…but if the church lives and moves in the abiding presence of Christ, then Jesus becomes the source of power, life, and mission and Jesus directs the steps of that church.

Francis Schaeffer said it this way, when talking about the New Testament Church, “This abiding presence of Christ gave them a sense of power, of adequacy, of readiness to cope with any situation that arose. These men were never at a loss to know the thing to do. Infinite resources of grace and wisdom and strength were available fo them to draw upon…a reservoir in the unseen realms that could never be exhausted. Men who felt that all the resources possessed and excercised by Jesus in the days of His flesh were still waiting to be appropriated and used would not shrink from any task that challenged them. Neither should we, if we had a like simple faith and confident trust and an experience with a living, reigning, indwelling Lord!

The church we plant WILL be a place where the Lord abides in visible presence and power. When people are with us, our prayer is that they leave knowing they have been in the presence of the supernatural.

My wife, Pam, is an avid reader…she found the following in a Henry Nouwen devotional book:

“We all need to eat and drink to stay alive. But having a meal is more than eating and drinking. It is celebrating the gifts of life we share. A meal together is one of the most intimate and sacred human events. Around the table we become vulnerable, filling one another’s plates and cups and encouraging one another to eat and drink. Much more happens at a meal tan satisfying hunger and quenching thirst. Around a table we become family, friends, community, yes, a body…the table is one of the most intimate places in our lives. It is there that we give ourselves to one another. When we say, “Take some more, let me serve you another plate, let me pour you another glass, don’t be shy, enjoy it,” we say a lot more than our words express. We invite our friends to become a part of our lives. We want them to be nurtured by the same food and drink that nurture us. We desire communion.”

“Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people…And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” Acts 2:46-47…

NOW THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!!!!!!

Recently our whole family saw the National Acrobats of China. It was amazing! We saw a woman support her entire body on one hand, on a pole, upside-down, for ten minutes, all while contorting her body in every which way. A group of tumblers sprang back and forth, landing on each other’s feet! And for the grand finale, fourteen people rode on the same bike. We couldn’t stop saying, WOW!

For me, the Bible tells about the wow! movement of Jesus. When He rose from the dead and walked out of the tomb, His resurrection power released into the world. People received back their sight, lame people walked, murderers became missionaries, and ordinary fishermen gave sermons that caused multitudes to follow Him. Wow.

And the whole world took notice.

Do today’s followers of Jesus elicit Wows from the world?

Where has all the wow! gone?

God’s power has always wowed the world.

What can you do, in Jesus’ name, to WOW someone today?

I have been reading a book by George Barna called Pagan Christianity. In the book Barna postulates that when Constantine declared Christianity to be the official religion of the empire back in 313AD, he altered the face of the church for the past 1700 years. The church went from being an underground movement of revolutionaries to an institution housed in a building. It moved from an organism that flowed through the lives of its people to a place people attended to get their needs met and then traveled back home without bringing their faith with them. It caused Christians to become consumers instead of participants in a Kingdom and led to a church that has been largely ineffective in accomplishing the mission that Jesus gave her, “Go, make disciples of all nations”.

He lists a number of other shifts that he believes occurred with Constantine’s decree. The list is as follows:

> The Lord’s Supper changed from a common meal to a ceremony.
> Worship changed from participation to observation.
> Witness changed from relationship to salesmanship.
> Leadership changed from everyone a priest to professsional clergy.
> Growth changed from multiplication to addition.
> Missions changed from being missionaries to supporting missionaries.
> Confession changed from public before a small group to private in the confessional.
> Discipleship changed from on-the-job to classroom training.
> Fellowship changed from in-depth community living to more surface in large meetings.
> Body Life changed from lifestyle to membership.
> Gifts changed from edification to entertainment or extinction.
> Empowerment changed from God’s power to man’s ability.
> Buildings changed from functional to sacred meeting places.
> Administration changed from integrated to compartmental.
> Membership changed from producer to consumer.
> Childcare changed from parental to church responsibility.
> Bible study changed from doers of the Word to hearers of the Word.
> Evangelism changed from “Go” to “Come”.

Could the way we are the church today have more to do with what happened in the fourth century at the hand of Constantine than with what happened in the first century at the hand of Jesus?

When I was a youth pastor, I spent years taking groups of kids out to a camp in Colorado. It was a camp designed to challenge a camper physically, emotionally, and spiritually. One of the challenges to confront every camper and every leader was the sport of rappelling. Rappelling is a sport where you tie yourself to a rope that is already tied to a tree and then you go to the edge of the cliff and lean on the rope backing off the cliff “butt first”. Rappelling can only happen at the edge of the cliff.

When I arrived at the top of the rappelling hill, my hands became sweaty and my head felt light. I wanted nothing to do with the edge of the cliff, nothing to do with backing off a 60 foot straight drop that would certainly lead to my death. It took the belittling voices of my friends and a lot of talk to get me on the rope and to the edge of the cliff. Once there, I became aware of a couple of realities…I could die doing this and the view from the edge of the cliff is so much better…I can really see everything in a spectacular way.

Being on the edge of the cliff eventually became exhilirating and rapelling became more and more fun. This idea of being at the cliff’s edge also applies to what we are doing as a church. One of our leaders once said at a meeting, “the view from the edge of the cliff is the best view you can get. I am not saying it’s the safest place to be, but it certainly is the most exciting.” That’s really true. You can choose the safe and secure route, the comfortable place to live, or you can get out  to the edge of the cliff where it takes great courage and great faith to live. In fact, when you are at the edge of the cliff, you even find a new sense of your need for God because your in a place where you need to put your trust in Him.

So, if you are a part of Jericho Road Church, I hope that you have ventured out to the edge of the cliff. That might look a little different for each of us because we are all different people. For some, it might be talking with a neighbor, for others, it might mean telling your story to a group of people you really don’t know that well. Some others might need to get out and serve someone or get involved with a neighbor. Whatever it is for you, once you get out there, at the edge, you’ll realize that the view is way better there.

This blog is a place for me to share with all of you some of my thoughts and reflections about this church, this community, this body called Jericho Road. It’s a place for me to paint a picture of life on the edge, life walking in Jesus’ way. I hope that you’ll check here on a regular basis so that I can share with you some of the things that I am learning as I lead this movement. Please feel free to weigh in, comment, disagree…let’s have a conversation…maybe that will help us all to go closer to the edge. Maybe a dialog will help us all to gain the courage and find the faith to do what God is calling us to do. I hope that it will help us find the best view.