Enter Georges Boujakly and the Creative Team. Georges (is it a French/Canadian thing to put an ‘s’ on the end of perfectly good words and not pronounce them??) may be the shortest person I know but he is also the deepest. I told him about my stuckness. We had used the battleship vs. cruiseship metaphor in describing the church last week but there is so much more to the church than just this picture. Where to start? How to communicate this?

Georges handed me the book From Eternity To Here by Frank Viola, who I loved on This Old House. (Okay, not that guy.) He said read this…it’s going to help you. He smiled, hugged me and then said something I already knew but apparently needed reminding of –

“Grant…don’t start with the metaphor then go to the text. Start with the text. You’ve done your best teaching when you simply let the text speak and come alive.”

Well, no duh. Thank you, Georges. Creative Team listened to me ramble and was a place for me to think out loud with the ‘new’ information from Georges.

What was the ‘new’ information? Shockingly nothing new but something very ancient.

When speaking of the church, God uses three main metaphors — all them found in — wait for this — EPHESIANS! God has a ridiculous crazy sense of humor.

What are the metaphors? The Bride of Christ, the House of God, and the Body of Christ. All in Ephesians, all have OT roots, all adding a key piece of whyChurch. And that’s the fun that awaits us on Sunday.

But I loved the toys and getting to blow things up. I loved having a mission that focused all of our decisions. Loved the leadership development, having a team focused on an important task where much was at stake. Putting our lives into the effort. It really wasn’t just a job. Loved the process of developing leaders — where the goal was to develop people to be better. And I loved serving my country. It was hard but it was rewarding.

What’s this got to do with whyChurch? Over the next few weeks, we’re going to look at Jesus’ mission for the church, what WH is doing to fulfill that mission. We’ll take a trip down memory lane as well as look at the future of what implications His mission has on us.

Here’s a nugget from my notes so far:

The mission of God can be first seen in Genesis 12 with Abram and gets sharper in focus leading up to the arrival of Jesus. Jesus brought a laser focus to His mission by using simple, powerful stories that captured the heart. These simple – not easy – stories were given to us so that the focus would be on DOING the mission, not defining it, dissecting it, or discussing it.

The Past 30, The Next 30
A Little Sacrifice Now…
Why The Debt And Why Now
Exodus 36:5
A Gentle Rebuke

So what happened Sunday? We had over 17k dollars come in towards the debt…which means there is 19k left…which means in the span of 9 months we’ve gone from 100+k in debt to 19k…which means we are on track to be debt free for 2010. Praise God.

The point of it all was not to just get out of debt to get out of debt – which would have been reason enough. The point is for us – the Church – to start putting our money where our vision statement says we put our money – helping people. Being out of debt allows the church to spend money on ministry, in people, helping others.

Next series – whyChurch?

While I was at the Convention this week I was asked – don’t you get tired of preaching the anti-sex sermons?

I was kinda caught off guard a bit so I asked back, “Do you think God is anti-sex?”

So I think I’ll start off Sunday morning with a great big apology for speakers everywhere. I imagine if you put all the talks and sermons that have ever been done about sex in churches, it would be a small pile and it would mostly be negative. Like – God hates adultery, don’t fornicate, don’t have sex before marriage – which are all true statements but they hardly communicate the total heart of God on the topic of sex.

Personally, I’m faced with a very odd reality. How many years have I talked to teens and parents about sex? How many talks have I had with other people’s kids and not even flinch? And now I have a 6th grader and 4th grader living in my house that I’m responsible to teach about sex. (No, I didn’t forget about Cayden but she’s still fairly clueless on the whole idea. Camber is a completely different story…not going there right now.)

But I know that my kids are going to get information on sex. I can’t stop that. I can jump the curve to make sure they get the RIGHT information from the Designer and hope they trust HIS heart and intention on the matter. I can put them in front of the TRUTH about sex so that they have a chance for sex to be an awesome, wonderful, incredible, deepening, spiritual experience with their spouse instead of a wounding, damaging, destructive, harmful experience with lifelong consequences.

This Sunday is going to be very, very interesting.

From Lynn’s reading:

My husband does not deserve my resentment, but my respect and my love. He may never come to church, I don’t know, but I am content to leave the future up to God.

God never meant for me to handle this in my own power anyway and trusting in Him is the only way I can take my marriage from the hard truth to the throne of amazing grace.

Lynn is an artist with words. Her vulnerability allows us to not only join her on her own journey of healing but it forces us to look closer at own attitudes – which is always a good thing. I’m challenged every time I hear a word from her. I’m thankful to God for her.

Every marriage is moving to one of two places – oneness or isolation. Marriage is never static.

The 50/50 plan of marriage never works. What’s 50% in a marriage anyway? I need the 100/100 plan.

There is no human that can satisfy you completely, make you complete. Only God can do that.

I’m both excited and frustrated with what is coming up this next week. Excited in that it’s a Q & A, Amy will be with me helping me answer the questions. It will be the first time we’ve ever done anything like that…it could be awesome…or it could totally go wheels off. Excited – we’ve already got some great questions to pick through.

Frustrated – there is a part of me that is going….man, there is still a lot more left that we could explore and unpack. Frustrated – not every marriage story has a happy ending and I hurt for those in the middle of the wreckage.

Off to prep for Sunday…