Latest Posts

What’s on your summer reading list for 2018?

April 12, 2018 0 Comments

As Winter term ends for students and we get ready for summer term, the church I’m a part of at UBC publishes a summer reading list.

Our list of books seeks to get at our desire to be a Gospel-Shaped, Disciples-Making, City-Blessing church. So we know we have to get in touch with authors who help us engage some aspect of the four relationships of Christian discipleship — with God, with self, with people, and with the stuff of Creation.

You can see our 2017 Summer Reading list above.

I’m curious — what would you recommend for a summer reading list?

 

 

Change, Discipleship, Education, Leadership

Worship: The Question Everyone Must Answer

April 9, 2018 0 Comments

Here’s the latest talk from the Sunday Gathering of Origin Church

Live Loved: The Question Everyone Must Answer

Change, Discipleship

, ,

A Pastor’s Agony on Easter Monday

April 2, 2018 0 Comments

In 24 years of ministry in Vancouver I have never preached an Easter message I am completely satisfied with. The Resurrection of Jesus has more to say to us than I can say. Texts built around the Resurrection of Jesus provide a frame, the subject, and the colour for the message, but I must admit again, I am terribly inadequate to the preaching of the Resurrection of Jesus on the day of our celebration. I fall short of finding words conveying the joyful and fearful surprise of this great reversal.

 

Lord help.

 

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”  Matthew 28:5-7 (NIV)

 

Did you see that?

 

“Now I have told you.”

“Now I have told you.”

Who gets to end a message with that? Who gets to say, “Now I have told you” and be done?

Apparently the first messenger who proclaimed the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, that’s who!

The angel says it.

And next, the women proclaiming this good news to the disciples could have said it too.

“Now I have told you.”

 

But for me, on a Resurrection Sunday I am plagued with the indictment that I’m going to have a crowd who have heard it all before and somehow are not moved. Somehow we have been conditioned to non-response. I don’t get to say, “Now I have told,” with the same confidence that somebody is going to get moving.

 

Lord help. Stir us again Holy Spirit.

 

Maybe I should take up painting. Well on second thought, probably not. Last year Mike Frost introduced his readers to what he calls the “greatest Easter painting of all time.” I like it. The painting, The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre on the Morning of the Resurrection, by Eugene Burnand, is most appropriately housed not in a great museum, but in an old railway station in Paris. Typically no one stands still for long in a railway station. If your train is called, you get moving. “Now I have told you.” The word assumes a change is coming, in fact the change has come, whether you are ready for it or not. Scroll up and take a look at it again. John to the left seems to joyfully anticipating the possibility of a reunion with Jesus. Peter though has a look of agony and fear at the possibility. They have been told, and they are moving.

 

8So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”  Matthew 28:8-10

 

Before the women preachers got to their audience they were interrupted by the subject of the Resurrection.

 

Did you noticed the pairing of fear and joy?

Did you notice how Jesus interrupts their movement?

 

The Resurrection of Jesus will illicit both fear and joy. Fuelled by these we may want to dance; we may want to run. We may be so ready to take action. Zeal for the message and task may consume us. But it seems our Lord, would have us pause before the apostolic action is taken, and simply meet Him and worship.

Change, Discipleship, Leadership

, ,

A prayer that will be answered

March 12, 2018 0 Comments

Life has its disappointments. I liked Pirate Joe’s. Why? I admire entrepreneurs and enterprising folks. But as we know, even though the pirate met a need here, he irritated the original Joe, and had to close up shop. Not to make light of the struggle or the disappointment, but this is our common experience: everything doesn’t always work out the way we hoped. For praying people, we often pray all the way through such struggles. Which causes us to wonder

about our prayers

and

about our adventures

and

about our Lord.

 

Will all prayers be answered the way we intend?

 

Here’s a prayer that will be answered just as it was intended:

“They they may be one just as we are one.” John 17:22

 

Jesus asked the Father to do it.

In the Scripture when get to listen in on Jesus’ prayers, that’s the conversation of the communion of God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are aligned with His intentions.

Jesus prayed for us…”That they may be one just as We are one.”

I am challenged by Oswald Chambers as he explores the implications of this prayer. (See below) What is available to God to accomplish Jesus’ request in us? All my struggles! Surrendering to the Lord in the midst of my struggles entails surrendering these struggles to Him and surrendering the “aims” that are frustrated.

“That they may be one just as We are one.”

In oneness with the Father, we can discern what to leave behind, how to persevere and how to love.

 

God is not concerned about our aims. He does not say, “Do you want to go through this bereavement, this upset?” He allows these things for His own purpose. We may say what we like, but God does allow the devil, He does allow sin, He does allow bad God is not concerned about our aims. He does not say, “Do you want to go through this bereavement, this upset?”

He allows these things for His own purpose. We may say what we like, but God does allow the devil, He does allow sin, He does allow bad mean and intensely selfish. How are we behaving ourselves in our circumstances? Do we understand the purpose of our life as never before?

God does not exist to answer our prayers, but by our prayers we come to discern the mind of God, and that is declared in John 17: 22: “That they may be one just as We are one.” Am I as close to Jesus as that? God will not leave me alone until I am. God has one prayer He must answer, and that is the prayer of Jesus Christ. It does not matter how imperfect or immature a disciple may be, if he will hang in, that prayer will be answered.

Chambers, Oswald. If You Will Ask: Reflections on the Power of Prayer (Kindle Locations 618 -629). Discovery House. Kindle Edition.

 

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

AMEN.

 

Discipleship, Prayer

, ,

The vision that humiliates a leader

March 1, 2018 0 Comments

 

The prayers in the New Testament have to do with a heavenly state of mind in a heavenly people while on this earth. We are continually reminded that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and the rulers of this world’s darkness.

 

The first thing to remember is to watch at the right place, the place where God has put us. Watch, that is, for God’s answer to our prayers, and not only watch, but wait. When God calls upon us to pray, when He gives the vision, when He gives an understanding of what He is going to do through us in our Sunday school class, in our church or home— watch.

 

How many of us have had to learn by God’s reproof, by God’s chastisement, the blunder of conferring with flesh and blood. Are you discouraged where you are? Then get on this tower with God and watch and wait. The meaning of waiting in both the Old and New Testament is “standing under,” actively enduring. It is not standing with folded arms doing nothing. It is not saying, “In God’s good time it will come to pass.” By that we often mean, “In my abominably lazy time I let God work.” Waiting means standing under, in active strength, enduring till the answer comes. We must never make the blunder of trying to forecast the way God is going to answer our prayer.

 

Chambers, Oswald. If You Will Ask: Reflections on the Power of Prayer (Kindle Location 444- 454). Discovery House. Kindle Edition.

I love this line from Oswald Chambers: “We must never make the blunder of trying to forecast the way God is going to answer our prayer.”

 

For those who lead forecasting is a danger. We are seduced by the talk of being visionaries. Our educators cry out, “Money follows vision. People follow vision. Without vision the people perish.” So quickly our leadership becomes not example, but telling — telling people what God is going to do. In fact before you know it, we are telling God what to do as well. That’s visionary idolatry.

 

Yes. Vision matters. Articulating a vision that truly corresponds with the kingdom of God is a humiliating experience. But of greater humiliation is waiting on God to move hearts.

 

Wait. What? Yes. Its of greater humiliation to wait on God to move hearts for that’s what the vision of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ requires: a vision of people touched and transformed by Jesus Christ. There’s so much here that I am not in charge of —I am not in charge of their heart. Church leaders we must be humble. To seek to dominate is contrary to ways of Jesus.

 

Yet, I believe we can lead with humble confidence. We can plant seeds of the Gospel. We can persuade and respect autonomy. We can create nurturing environments with a culture of grace.

 

And so we pray and we contend.
And so we watch and we contend.
And so we wait.

 

Its humiliating and necessary.

 

Colossians 1:24-29 (NIV)
24Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. 25I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. 27To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

28He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. 29To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.

Discipleship, Leadership

, , , ,