Faith: Salvation

This week we will be looking at what it means to have faith. We will look at Ephesians 2.8,9 then also at some general themes through some of the gospels.

There are a lot of things I think of when I think about faith. I think about Indiana Jones, I think about Superman, I think of friends, and I think of my car. It's funny to me how many various meanings we have for such a (supposedly) simple word. I'm reminded of Martin Luther and I'm reminded of my mom. We are going to be looking at the relationship between faith and salvation. What do you think about the two?

Service/Fellowship

Hey team, we are looking at "fellowship" this coming week and we looked at "service" this past week. The challenge for us was to go serve downtown at the shelter, and I appreciated everyone that could make it. I understand we couldn't all do it. The main thing is to begin to think about where and how we can serve in our day-to-day lives. We at church get obsessed with evangelism and sharing the gospel, but I would challenge you to go and serve someone and see if they refuse to listen to stories about Jesus' love.

This coming week we will be looking at fellowship. Of all the topics we have covered with church, I believe this might be the easiest to practice but the hardest to perfect. Fellowship is about love and vulnerability. How can we better practice fellowship? How can we find ways to fellowship together?

As always, I love Refuge and couldn't be happier with what God is doing among us.

Discipleship/Worship

Last week we looked at Jesus' words about discipleship. This week we will be looking at a short story about David and worship.

With discipleship, we looked at Jesus' clear expectations. He is asking us to hold nothing back. If our family has been first in our lives, he is saying they aren't any longer. If education was first, or work was first, or our sweet cars were first, they are no longer in that spot. Essentially, discipleship is the decision that God is your first priority.

This coming week, we are looking at an aspect of discipleship. Worship, in my opinion, is sacrifice. It can be corporate and it can be individual. It is essentially our waste of time on God. What do you think about worship?

Mission

This week we are going to be looking at what "mission" is. It isn't so much about "missions" or "mission trips" or anything like that. The way I see it, the world is in disarray. People are full of hatred, sadness and pain. God created a good world with good creatures. Somewhere things went wrong.

And this is where the mission of God comes in. God is sad that people are estranged, both to himself and to others. So God continued creating, this time he created a plan to bring his beloved children back to himself. He came up with a way to be a righteous judge and a loving savior all at the same time.

So now, I believe the Mission of God in the world is being manifested in the church. Sometimes we do it well, but most of the time we do it very poorly. We have altar calls and we invited people to "get saved" but then we have very little follow through on what it means to be continually saved. God wants to continue saving us, day by day.

What do you think about the Mission of God? How can we do a better job?

Church

This week we are starting a series on church, what is it, what should it be, how do we get there? Hopefully we will all take some steps that will make us into a better church, and hopefully we will all learn some about what it means to be the church.

In theology, this is called 'ecclesiology' and in my opinion the American church has a very weak view of what it means to be the church. We really drop the ball on quite a few things, so here is a basic rundown of the areas we will be looking at.

Mission. God's mission, our mission. What does it mean to be church on a mission, what kind of mission are we trying to accomplish, how do we do that? Everything else we say about the church has to do with God's mission in the world.

Discipleship. God's goal for every person is that they become a disciple of Jesus. How can we be good disciples? What separates a good disciple from a bad one?

Service. Can we truly be disciples and not seek to serve? How did Jesus approach leadership? How does this flesh itself out in life?

Worship. What does real worship look like? How can we be a church that celebrates God? Can we truly worship without sacrifice?

Fellowship. Do we have to like one another? What if we don't?

Hopefully this series gets us thinking and doing what it means to really be the church and not act like one. Hopefully we can be a church on the journey, and hopefully we can minister from our brokenness not from pride or anything like that.

Here.We.Go

So we are full speed ahead. Saturday night was good. It was a real blessing to be worshipping with all of you in that setting for the first time. I look forward to the people we meet, the lives we help change, and the memories we will make. It was pretty great the way everyone spoke with someone they didn't know. Class death-knells for churches are when they start to focus inward instead of outward. The church is called to be missionary by nature, and part of that is being open to new people.
There are a few outstanding things we probably need to start developing. We need to start some dialog about children's ministry. How can we show parents that we care about them and their kids? Do we develop a way to keep children in the main worship service? What should we do with nursery aged children? Is anyone interested in helping develop some of that?
Website. We have a couple people that have spoken with us about potentially doing it. I think we should set a deadline and start working toward that.
Taskforces. I was just thinking about some things that we will need to get started on, and thinking that I don't have to have my hands in everything. What if we started having temporary taskforces to work on certain issues? We could either get volunteers or have it be random. I was thinking we do something like that to come up with a philosophy for chidren's ministry, outreach, things like that. What do you think? Just kind of spitballing here...

T-Minus...

What, like, 31 hours? Crazy huh?

Just a few thoughts as we are approaching our first worship service. We should not expect perfect from ourselves (and on this I'm speaking to myself first of all). We will have goof-ups and mess-ups as we go. Those are good opportunities to learn and to get better.

Don't try to meet everyone who comes tomorrow night. Now, it may end up being really nasty weather, so we may end up with only our core. In that case, be sure you know everyone. But if there are others there, let me just encourage you all to have one meaningful conversation/contact with someone there. That is, in my opinion, more important than just meeting everyone.

We need to start thinking about what to do with kids... in a good way. We will have parents come and they will want to know that we are thinking of them. If you are interested in helping me work through that, I need you to let me know soon.

Please be deliberate about maintaining the connections that we established during our home church phase. Invite people to dinner, to watch "The Office", you know, stuff like that. Relationships take work, at least, ones that are worth keeping do. It is ok to be intentional about them.

Looking forward to it, and as always, you guys are great.

Facility Championship

Ok everyone, we are down to our final two choices for our meeting place. We are either going to meet at Hope Community Church on south Logan St, or Bethlehem Lutheran Church on Wadsworth. The vote was 7-6 in favor of Hope, if it is free. The vote was 8-5 in favor of the Lutheran Church if Hope is not free. So there we have it.

I should hear from Hope sometime tomorrow or Wed, if I don't I will try again. I believe Chad is also going to try to get hold of them sometime this week.

Let me say how much I have enjoyed our time as a home church. I believe that we have a good thing to emulate when we get into our "Refuge Groups" and start looking to grow through them. We need to be very deliberate about continuing to work at our relationships, and we need to be sure to communicate.

I can't tell you how excited about our first service I am now. The worship team has put some hard work into making our services meaningful and well-thought. I love you guys and am thankful for what each of you brings to the table.

Fundamentalist detox

I like to think that some of what we have been doing for the past 7 months or so has been a type of detox from fundamentalism. Many of us are used to churches where asking questions is bad, accepting whatever answer your pastor gives is good. I couldn't disagree with church more than I disagree with that.

I think at one point or another that all of us have been shaken by some things we are talking about. That is good. I think one of the most disrespectful things we can do to God is to refuse to think more deeply about him. I think about it kind of like I think about any other relationship. What if after a few years of being married to Robin, I suddenly stopped asking her questions? What if I refused to mention her to anyone else, or to try to understand her more deeply? What if I had a very detailed journal of our previous interaction, and I refused to do anything but read that journal because I thought it helped me to "know" her more?

I think sometimes we run that same danger with God and the scriptures. Obviously the Bible is much better than some detailed journal, it is the written record of God's revelation to people. But it is not to be substituted for an actual relationship. We have, at least in my opinion, an obligation to ask tough questions, to talk to friends about God, to try to know him better than before. Sometimes I will discover something new about Robin, and it is pretty great. Wouldn't it be a catastrophe to be afraid to ask her anything new? That is, to me, the only way we can continue to draw closer.

So, I know this has been a struggle sometimes. When I was a fundamentalist I didn't have this kind of struggle. But I also didn't feel like I was pursuing God as he was pursuing me. It felt like I was simply knowing God as the pastor knew God. To me, that would be like just getting to know Robin by asking her dad a ton of questions. Talk about short changing ourselves!

That is why I think it has been good to "detox" from fundamentalism. Hopefully as we go now, we can enjoy the cosmic dance with God, knowing that he is infinitely creative and capable of making new dance moves, of interacting with us in a personal way, of moving us and making us into the kind of citizens of his kingdom that he desires. My hope is that we will always be a church that embraces the questions of life.

Our story

I talked a little last night about living our story. I just want to reiterate that on here today. What kind of story are you living? What kind of story is Refuge living? How are you contributing to that?

The best types of stories are those that set the hero or heroes against long odds. I think about "The Lord of the Rings" or a great Batman story. The hero doesn't think he or she can pull it out. The deck is stacked, the enemy has them surrounded. Just as it seems most bleak, the hero pulls it off.

If we are seeking to be the church in a world that has moved on, we have long odds indeed. We live in a world of contradictions. People want to be in great shape, but they want to drink sodas and eat as much as they want. People want to have clean teeth, but they don't floss.

Most of all, people want true, deep relationships. But they don't want to open up and make themselves vulnerable. People want community, but they don't want the community the make demands of them.

In the Christian world, people want to follow Jesus, but they don't want to follow him to the cross. They want to skip right over Good Friday and get straight to Easter.

It is my hope that at Refuge we will be a community that looks the hard things of life in the face. I hope that we will be unafraid of owning the difficult teachings of the Bible, that we will be unafraid of loving people even if that means arguing with them. I feel like we have come hundreds of miles in only a few months, and I am excited for the other places God takes us.

The other thing about great stories is that they are anything but predictable. Our journey together takes twists that we don't expect, and sometimes we have to just hold on for our lives. But the great thing is that we know we can count on God to pull us through. I'm glad you are all in this story with me, because this story needs a community of heroes, a group to make a difference in the world and in Denver. I know sometimes it might seem like a tough journey. It is. But as Dumbledore tells Harry, we can do what is easy, or we can do what is right.

Homework

For those of you who weren't there last Sunday, we all have a bit of homework. We are all going to contact at least one lead or facility where we might be able to meet. So I will update you all on mine.

I have been in contact with the pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church. I am going to meet with him on Monday to see if he might have a backdoor way we can get into the facility on 32nd and Zenobia. Hopefully that works out. If not, hopefully he will have a direction to help send me.

I can't emphasize it enough, be praying that God will guide and provide for us in this time. A facility is not make or break, but it sure would be nice. So, please be praying and searching, if we all do a little then it will add up to a lot.

Do you have any concerns or thoughts this week? Let me know how you are.

Place

Hi team. I plan on blogging on this bad boy once a week, so if you are following, let me know.

Right now one of my big priorities is to get us someplace to meet. I have been in contact with the United Methodist Church of the Rocky Mountain area and they have an empty facility on 32nd and Zuni, but since my initial discussion with them I have not heard back. Tomorrow, Tanner and I plan on going to meet with a church here in the Highlands that may be open to allowing us to meet there. They do not have a Sunday evening service, so it would be a nice place.

Let me just ask you all to be praying as much as you can for this. We need a place to meet, and it would be really wonderful if it was our own. I know a lot of churches do not start with their own facility, so we can be ok without one, but I also know that sometimes God provides in ways we aren't expecting. Either way guys, please be praying. God is capable of doing so much more than we can expect or ask for, but I believe that we need to be continually asking him.

Do you have any prayer concerns this week?

Post one

Hey team. Just getting a post on the page so that we will be able to see what it looks like. Let me know if you want me to link to your blog from here, I will link to mine. Also, give me some input on the look. We can set up a slideshow and a flickr account and it can always be rotating our pictures on this page. Hopefully this will be good until we can get our own official website going. Thanks
Chris