Archive - August, 2010

Leader Is Not A Title

August 31, 2010 in Identity 7

So much is said about leadership these days. Leadership is influence. Leaders have passion. You lead by example. For the most part, I agree with all of these points. People talk about the great responsibility that comes with leadership. I agree with that as well. So it confused me that when I recently stepped down from leadership for a season, I found that my walk with the Lord became more difficult.

My Church

Leading As A Son

Leading As A Son

I am humbled that for the past 3 years, I have been a part of one of the most amazing churches I’ve ever experienced. When the church was planted 7 years ago, the vision was that small groups would be the focus of the church. God gave the leaders a vision for relational and intimate community. Small groups are nothing new, but the vision was to implement small groups on Sunday mornings, thus ensuring all who were a part of the church would be in these intimate settings. It grew from 1 or 2 “Home Fellowships” as we call them, to 11 today. It is a powerful way to walk out your relationship with the Lord in an intentional community.

Because of the format, each home fellowship has a number of leaders involved. We have a leader which facilitates the group, an assistant leader, a worship leader, an administrator and a children’s church coordinator. Multiply that by 11 groups and you have a large number of leaders involved in just the home fellowship setting on Sunday mornings.  We have a time of worship, body ministry, teaching, communion and fellowship as we eat a meal together.

To prevent burnout, our home fellowships rotate on 5 month intervals. We have a transition month where we meet at our ministry center, then begin a new semester. This gives an opportunity for those that host in their homes to have a break. Leaders can have a short break for the month or opt to take a break for the next semester. All this ensures that there is ample opportunity for others to get involved in leadership and to prevent burnout from any one person.  After leading for the past 2 years, I have decided to take a break.

“Getting Fed”

Before becoming involved in leadership, my experience at church was largely determined by the pastor. If he was an exhorter, I would always walk away encouraged. If he was a teacher, I would walk away with more knowledge. If he was neither or didn’t do either well enough, I would complain that I wasn’t getting fed.

As a leader, I had to learn to feed myself. I love to read and I love to learn so by nature, I love to teach. God has put this passion in my heart and He has given me many opportunities to exercise my gift. As a teacher, I learned to always prepared. When preparing to teach a lesson for a home fellowship meeting, I would spend hours reading a passage of scripture. I’d explore the historical context and examine the original Hebrew or Greek words in the text to pull out as much insight as possible.

As a home fellowship leader I was also aware of the spiritual climate of the meeting. I always came into the meeting “prayed up” and ready to hear from the Holy Spirit. During ministry time, I had to be ready to pray over someone with a need or hear from the Lord to see what He wanted to do that particular day. In short, I was always ready because I spent the time preparing for the meeting.

Stepping Down

This may be the first time I’ve ever stepped down from a leadership position where I wasn’t burned out. After leading for 2 years, I felt like the Lord was giving me the green light to take a break and to take more time to focus on some of the dreams in my heart (like writing).

I just finished leading a great group. I’d been growing in leaps and bounds and my walk was stronger than ever. However a few weeks after I stepped down, I got extremely dry. I found that I wasn’t in the Word at all and my prayer life was marginal at best. I found my words and conversations were more unfiltered than usual. What just happened??

Just as I was hitting a really low point, I took off on a 2-week tour to Israel with my church. During the trip, God met me in such a way that my whole perspective changed. He opened my eyes to how much I strive and how much I try to do things in my own strength. I learned a lot of lessons while out there but mostly, how to just be a son (Eph. 1:5).

Leading As A Son

As I reflect on what the Lord is teaching me, I realize more and more that “Leader” is not a title. A leader is who you are. I don’t have to wear the title “Home Fellowship Leader” to be a leader in my community. I don’t have to have the title “Pastor” in my signature to be able to love and care for the people in my community.

The Lord is teaching me that He wants me to be in His word and pray, not for others but for Him. He just wants to spend time with me. Not so I can make myself look exceptionally intelligent. Not to wow people with how well I know the Word or how eloquently I can pray. He wants to spend time with me because I am His son. And because I am a son, the overflow of my relationship with Him will naturally lead to me pouring that into the lives of others.

I don’t pretend to have it mastered, but I’m so thankful for the revelation of His love in this season of my life.  I now realize that I am a leader because that is my identity as a son. I can lead because He leads me. I can influence because I will point people to Him and not myself. I have passion because His love burns in my heart. I lead by example because I want to look like Christ and not because that is the expectation of others.  Walking in that truth brings freedom to so many areas of my life.

To all the leaders with position, I pray that God reveals to you that you are a leader because your position is determined first in Christ (Eph 2:6).

The Importance of One On One Time

August 26, 2010 in Exceptional Living 0

One On One Time

One On One Time

One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes is “The Dog”.  It’s the one where Jerry, George and Elaine were supposed to see the movie “Prognosis Negative” but Jerry informs them that the has to take care of a dog and asks them to go without him. George and Elaine realize they don’t have a lot in common without Jerry around.  It is extremely awkward for a time and you realize that they’ve never been one on one. Jerry has been the glue to their relationship and without him, they have no real connection. That is until they start making fun of his quirks. The episode, like all of them, is pretty hilarious but it got me thinking about one on one time in relationships.

Do you find yourself calling certain people close friends and one day realize that you’ve never spent any one on one time with them?

Before I explore the importance of one on one time, let’s look at the alternative.

Click here to read the rest of the article

This is an excerpt of an article on the Dayshout Blog. Dayshout is a free service that allows you to use technology to monitor the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual status of your friends. Follow them here on Twitter or visit their website here.

Punishment vs Consequence

August 24, 2010 in Identity 10

We love to quote Romans 8:1:

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

It’s a great verse. It feels good to quote it to others who are discouraged. It gets thrown around a lot. But what does it really mean?

Condemnation

Condemnation

I was talking to a friend the other day and he was sharing about how God was punishing him for the sins he had committed. He wasn’t angry about it. He was really just sharing it in a “please learn from my mistakes” way. I understood that, but I felt that he was carrying a heaviness when he shared. He was sober, sad even. He felt like he deserved the punishment of his sins, and God was giving him what he deserved. He understood that God still loved him and that after repenting he was forgiven, but he felt that he had to pay for what he’s done and sometimes that payment can come at a high price.

This got me thinking that most of us do not understand the different between punishment and consequence. It may seem like semantics, but I believe that having a proper understanding of these concepts sets our context for God and His great love and mercy in the right light.

Where Our Views Are Shaped

Early on in life we learn that there are consequences for our actions. When we were children and we made mistakes, our parents disciplined us. If we misbehaved in class, we got detention. You get the idea. We learn that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In terms of punishment, you get what you deserve; justice is blind. The whole concept of an eye for an eye is ingrained in our mindset at every opportunity in our lives.

The problem with this mindset is that as we accept Christ and follow His ways, we learn that Jesus turns all of this on its head.  His radical love changed the game.  If you really want to understand justice as it relates to sin, you need only to look at what Paul says in in Romans 6:23:

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life”

If you take what we understand as our concept of justice and punishment for sin, we’ll quickly see that we fall severely short. Our wages to God, what we owe for our sin, is literally death. If you want to fully understand what you “deserve” for your sin, meditate on that verse.

Once we understand the price, we can begin to look at Jesus’ sacrifice properly. We don’t actually pay for our sin. The results of our sin is not God’s punishment. Jesus took our punishment upon Himself. There literally is no “damnatory sentence” (see Strong’s G2631 for all you armchair theologians) for those who are in Christ Jesus.  That is what Paul is saying.  There is absolutely NO payment required; no sentence to carry out. If true justice was served, we would be dead. Just let that sink in.

This concept is critical to understand how we relate to God. If we see Him as this tyrant in the sky demanding that we all get what we deserve, it can be pretty intimidating. Every time you sin, you will feel worthless. You will run from God because you know you deserve punishment. You feel shame, you feel unclean, you feel unworthy. You will try to fix yourselves before you come back to God. But that’s exactly the wrong way to look at it.

So I’m Off Scott Free?

Once you understand that your sin requires that you pay with your life, and that Jesus paid with His life so we don’t have to, where does that leave us?

I love what Bill Johnson, senior pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, CA says about sin, “You are free to make as big of a mess as you are willing to clean up.” It is here where we learn the concept of consequence.  We can become so self-absorbed that we don’t realize that our sin doesn’t just affect our lives.  It affects the lives of those around us.  The more people directly affected by your sin, the bigger the “mess” you have to clean up.

Sometimes the consequences of our sin can be devastating. Understandably we can interpret this as punishment. When someone cheats on their spouse with another married person, the result is two damaged families, loss of trust, traumatic impact on children, and many other consequences.  The consequences are far-reaching and may possibly last for a very long time.

However, these consequences are not God’s punishment. He’s not looking down at you saying, “See, now you got what you deserve.”  If He felt like that, He would have never sent His son.  He would demand blood payment for your sin. But God in His great love did what we couldn’t do for ourselves.  God takes away our sin, but He doesn’t take away the consequences.

The important thing to realize is that God isn’t afraid of your sin. He’s not surprised that you struggle in some area. He’s not disappointed that you couldn’t live up to His standards. All He wants is that when you fall short, you run to Him. Remember the father in the story of the prodigal son? He ran out to his son when he came home.  God is a God of reconciliation. He reconciled the entire world to Himself. He’s a loving Father.  His mercy abounds toward us. He’s not waiting to punish us. His demands for justice have already been paid by the perfect sacrifice.  He just wants us to realize the price that was paid, accept it, and be restored to right relationship with Him.

That’s not cheap grace, that’s the most expensive grace you can get.

So what do you think, cheap grace or furious love? Let me know in the comments.

Reflections on Israel (Pt.3)

August 17, 2010 in Meditations 5

We always speak of the wilderness as a time of dryness or distance from God.  It is a time in our life that we know will come, but we always pray to be released from it as quickly as possible.  While you’re in it, all you can think about it getting out.

“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus;
it shall blossom abundantly
and rejoice with joy and singing.”

Isaiah 35:1-2

The wilderness...shall be glad

The wilderness...shall be glad

I didn’t realize the extent of mine until coming back from Israel, but I was in a wilderness season myself.  As we departed for the trip, I knew I was in a rough place spiritually for a lot of reasons.  A lot of dreams in my heart seemed unfulfilled, I decided to step down for awhile from my leadership position in the home fellowships of my church, I was having discontentment in my job, I had been praying for that someone special to come after 3 years of being single; you get the picture.

Then we went to the desert.  As we traveled through this barren land I experienced a real desert for the first time; no trees, no water, no nothing for miles on end.  Then out of nowhere, we came upon an oasis.  Springs that come out of the desert with fresh water, plants, trees and fruit.  It was such a stark contrast to the barrenness of everything else.

Our tour guide asked us a question.  “Why do you think God led Abram into the desert?”  Now if you look back in Genesis, you will see that Abram was well off.  He had a large family, cattle, food and he lived in a beautiful land.  Then the Lord leads him away from all that.  His response was, “Because in the desert, he would be completely dependent on God”.  Then something just clicked for me.

I realized that every time I go through a season of wilderness is when I am trusting God the least.  I find that this is God in His mercy stripping away everything that I’m trying to do for myself and saying, “Trust me”.  Then as I go through it, out of nowhere I will see an oasis spring up.  Because I’m in the middle of nowhere, I know that it can only be the Lord.  I take absolutely no credit and He gets all the glory.

The Lord will keep us in the wilderness as long as it takes to get us to stop striving in our own strength and depend on Him.  I’m reading “Sit Walk Stand” by Watchman Nee and he relates this to a man that is drowning.  When he begins drowning, he is terrified and flailing his arms.  If you try to rescue him in that state, he will pull you down with him.  The Lord in His mercy waits for us to stop flailing and when all our strength is expended, He rescues us.

I feel like I am finally learning what it means to take His yoke and find rest (Matt 11:29).  It’s not this heavy burden that take for myself.  It’s not something that I need to strive for constantly.  I’m learning how to trust and to rest in Him.  It sounds so simple but until it clicks for you, words can’t do justice to the fullness of this promise.

There is beauty in the wilderness.  Witnessing it first hand, I believe it.

Reflections On Israel (Pt.2)

August 9, 2010 in Exceptional Living 0

Our tour guide Salo told us that Jews have a saying when they return to live in Israel:

“I have come to build and to be rebuilt”

I found this statement absolutely profound. It made me ask myself, “Have I come to build or do I just focus on being rebuilt?”

First, A Little History

I have come to build and be rebuilt

I have come to build and be rebuilt

There are a multitude of scriptures pointing to the restoration and return of a remnant to Israel (e.g. Is. 10:21-22; 11:11-12; 14:1). As you can see I’ve been reading a lot of Isaiah lately! In the early 1800s “Zionism” was founded as a political movement dedicated to the creation of a Jewish state. With a number of snowballing circumstances over the course of the next 100+ years, concluding with a year-long war with the Palestinian Arabs, Israel declared their independence in 1948.

Since establishing their independence, Jews have been immigrating to Israel in droves. Immigration to Israel is referred to as aliyah (literally, ascension). Under Israel’s Law of Return, any Jew who has not renounced the Jewish faith (by converting to another religion) can automatically become an Israeli citizen.

As they have returned, the Jews have undergone the process of rebuilding their land. The Jewish National Fund is an organization that is involved in the reforestation of the land (over 240 million trees planted), creating sustainable agriculture, soil conservation and solving the water crisis by creative means.

At the same time, many Jews who return to their homeland are being healed of the scars of the past. I visited a Holocaust museum in Israel which was a powerful demonstration of not only the brutality and atrocious acts unleashed on the Jews, but also the resilience and hope of a people that were not exterminated by hatred and evil. Many have suffered from feelings of anti-Semitism and the return to their homeland provides a refuge and a sense of pride and belonging.

Am I Building?

All this made me reflect on my own life and begs the question “Am I building?” Much of Western Christianity revolves around accepting Jesus Christ as savior and getting your pass to heaven. Everything else is just done in anticipation of that day.  We go along with our lives and manage to fit God in there along the way. There is a huge focus on having our lives rebuilt but not so much of a focus on building anything here that lasts.

I realized that its time for me to start building. I want to see transformation not just in my life, but in lives of those around me. I want to see my community changed. I want to see Jesus break into South Florida. I want to build something that lasts.

I love how Bethel Church in Redding, CA says that they want their city to be a cancer-free zone. That’s what it means to build for the kingdom. I want to see Jesus’ prayer of “on earth as it is in heaven” fulfilled.

God is doing a work in the hearts of Jews and he is preparing a remnant for His return. He is using the Gentiles to provoke them to jealousy (Rom. 11:11). I want to use their motto and let the Lord not just rebuild me, but to use me to build His kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven.

Reflections On Israel (Pt.1)

August 4, 2010 in Exceptional Living 0

Familee

Okay familee, we go!

We are familee!!

As I reflect back on my trip to Israel I think about how perfectly God crafted our group. While I couldn’t see it in the beginning, God was forming a group of people that would become tightly knit, like-minded, and forever changed by an amazing journey.

I remember the very first meeting before the trip and as I looked at the people that would be coming I thought, wow this is quite a random group.  Honestly, I wasn’t sure that we would all mesh.

I counted a total of 4 people that I had spent time with outside of church. The rest I had either only seen in passing, had brief conversations with or I didn’t know at all. Our group comprised of singles, married couples, old(er) and young people.  It was a pretty diverse assemblage.

In our final meeting before leaving, we met together at the house of my pastor. It was there that something changed. Although most of us had not spent much time together, I could already see the connections beginning to form.  As we entered into a time of worship at the house, I realized that I was with a group that was totally committed to worshipping Jesus.  That’s when I realized that this was probably going to be good. Little did I know how good it would be!

As we arrived at the airport and began our long journey to the Holy Land, our team had already begun to gel. Rarely did a moment pass when we weren’t either talking about how awesome God is or laughing out loud at something silly. Even after being cramped into coach seats for 12 hours, we arrived in Israel in great spirits…though a bit jet lagged.

The next gift was our amazing tour guide. I remember the first thing that he said to us was, “My name is Salo and for the next days, you will be my family”.  How true that came to be! God blessed us with an amazing man that was completely in tune with the spirit of our team. His parents were raised in Poland and they emigrated to Venezuela when he was a boy. He was raised there and Spanish is his mother tongue so understandably we were a little baffled when our Jewish tour guide spoke to us in a heavy Spanish accent!

Over the course of the next 11 days, he led us on a prophetic journey through the wilderness of the Negev, the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem and the peace of Galilee. All the while, he brought the Bible alive through his narrative. Along the way he let the Spirit lead him to where we should sing or pray or just sit and meditate. It would go something like, “Maybe here…a few of us pray” or “Katherine, maybe you make a song.”  Then as we left a site, he would inevitably say “Okay familee, we go!” It was awesome!

As the trip was drawing to a close, I felt such an intense connection with the entire team. There were 24 of us total. It makes me think of a phrase that A.W. Tozer used, “Fellowship of the Burning Hearts”. That’s truly what we were. Everywhere we went, we exalted Jesus. We were all invariably linked by our passion for worshipping the King!

Before I left for the trip, I remember thinking to myself that I wished this person or that person would be on the trip and how much more fun or profound it would be with people I knew more intimately. In retrospect, I couldn’t have selected a more perfect group of people to share one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life.

I am forever changed and I come back with new perspective and more importantly…new familee!