As promised, the second Identity Theft post to walk us through the process of truly choosing to walk in covenant with God. It is the best deal we could ever be offered. If you are in the New River Valley area this weekend (and aren’t a member of another church 
) you won’t want to miss this week as we look at how we can specifically overcome common obstacles that we can encounter as we try to walk closer with God. If you would like to listen in to the series so far, have at it!
First of all, just to be clear, the ! was for the new site. While I am excited about my posting, not sure I would give it a !.
I haven’t been posting as much over the past month as things have been insane at [nlcf]. I do have several that are close to ready to go, and now that my schedule has died down, they will be coming soon. Everything from how I learned that I don’t ever have to attend another rave, to discussions of some of the most difficult topics that Christians face in our culture today. Impressive, eh?
Probably not.
Well, at any rate, if you were at any of our three gatherings on Sunday I said I would post a couple of times to help continue the discussion about how we reclaim an identity that has been stolen. If this makes no sense to you, my suggestion is that you take a look here, once you are on board, take a look here. And if that really piques your curiosity, the first talk in the series is here. (We are a bit behind on posting the talks as we are shifting servers and that can mean that our blah blah blah… all the computers that connect to the internet need to change where they are pointing blah blah… so that our site won’t crash… blah. All that to say, please be patient with us as we shift our servers.
If none of that really interests you, then you might want to just look at this video of a kitten being cute.
So, it is upon us. For those of us who are connected to non-quarter colleges and universities, the beginning of Fall Semester is here!
For me, being in Blacksburg Va and co-pastoring a church that works to empower both local residents and college students to see more clearly the picture God is trying to show them; fall is an exciting time. Just this morning I was walking into my office and heard the Marching Virginians drum corps practicing. You could here the reverberating drum beats all over town! That is one of my favorite indicators that fall kick-off is about to commence.
As is our custom, this past week our campus staff team met for the entire day to plan, pray, reflect, dream a bit and discuss our mission for the year. I always look forward to that time to hear what God is saying to those I serve with, and to see how they reflect on what I sense God is saying to me. One section of that day is where we discussed the events that we undertake in those first two or three weeks. Overall [nlcf] isn’t a church that puts on a ton of events. In fact, we typically try to pull back our meetings to as few as possible so that people can we out living the gospel and not just meeting to talk about it.
But the first couple of weeks is different. What we have seen over the years is that the majority of the literally thousands of people who will be arriving at Tech (many for the first time) are helped by having certain events available to them. So, we have our list.
During that time, I was asked a question by one of our newer staff people, Sarah. She asked how an introvert was expected to navigate the numerous events that we host, almost all of which are built around meeting new people and trying to help them feel at home and get involved in whatever groups they prefer. IE NOT optimized for introverts.
I thought it was a great question and as I have reflected on it, I have a few thoughts. So, I will list our events that we are hosting, the goal of the event, and how different personality types might manage those times. Away we go… (more…)
We are coming to another transition point.
Leadership Training participants and leaders are finishing up their time.
Internships and Co-ops are in their final weeks.
Students that have been home are planning their returns to campus.
New students have been through orientation and are now starting to get their stuff packed.
Grads are starting to feel the reality that they won’t be returning this time.
Those of us in the New River Valley are seeing people start to pour into the area, stores are getting busier, school supply list emails are going out and houses and apartments are changing hands as some leave and some arrive.
It has even dropped into the low eighties in the evenings a couple of times!
And this is the last Diaspora post for the summer.
As I reflect back on the summer and what God has spoken to me about, I keep coming back to his sovereinty. The fact that he is God and is ultimately in charge. He is the one that has most earned the right to guide my thinking, my soul. He is the one that is most in love with me and has the most fulfilling use of my short time here on earth in his mind.
He is the one that challenged me early in the summer to consider who is really blessed as compared to who I can feel is blessed.
He is the one that challenged me to really look at how much I actually take Jesus’ command seriously. Am I willing to be sent into the world as Jesus went, or am I just going to busy myself with the business of putting on a weekly church gathering?
He is the one that challenged me to really consider where my faith stops and my fear takes over. To consider what my definition of success and failure are.
And all through it, he has just been with me. There have been some amazing moments where I clearly felt his presence.
It has been a great summer and I have so enjoyed walking through it together with you all.
Peace, Jim
I have to admit that I have been surprised by how much I have enjoyed reading Amos for the past couple of months.
One of the greatest parts of being able to regularly teach the scriptures is that I take a few months (usually) before I teach on a book or a topic to try to immerse myself in it. I was once challenged to never teach on scripture that I hadn’t read fifty times, the idea being that the more you dive into the scriptrues the more you can grab what was going on. The Holy Spirit seems to really draw me into interactions that have really blessed me; and hopefully those that hear me!
I have been excited about us teaching on Amos for well over a year now, volunteered to teach the three weeks we will be dealing with it, and even am leaving our staff retreat early to get back August 8th to finish the series up. But my excitement has been due to the sense that God wanted us to talk about it, not about the book itself.
Amos is the third of the minor prophets. A section of short accounts of seasons in Isreal and Judah’s history when God is saying Enough! The minor prophets writings are full of God’s judgement, unpleasant verses, and involve a tough task of understanding what was going on then that led God to say what he did and how that connects with our experience today and what he is intending us to take from it. It is not a very highly read book, tucked into the back of the Old Testament and full of tough stuff.
Honestly, it isn’t easy.
But I have been surprised.
As I have read Amos more times than I can count in various translations, relfected on how specific writers and the church has looked it over the centuries and spent a great deal of time asking God what he would want to say to us… I have started to see something that I had missed. A great deal of love and hope. An incredible example of how God blends the fact that he is fully in charge of everything he has created and that we as humanity seem to have genuine freedom in the choices me make within that creation.
In light of that, this week’s challenge is fairly straightforward.
Read Amos a couple of times. You need to read it a couple of times to get through the initial feelings you will have when you do read it. The language is strong, God is upset. That is clear. If you would like some of the context of why, you can listen to my talk from last Sunday.
As you are reading, ask God to help you look past how you feel about what he is saying, so that you can start to get to how he feels about what he is saying. Then pose the question, am I doing what the Israelites were doing?
Pray that God will give you a heart that is more tender to both your weaknesses, but also to the love that God so clearly feels for you. Remember, in God’s eyes, if you have accepted Jesus’ offer of forgiveness and call to follow him, you are part of the family of Israel. Keep that in mind as you read.
Finally, share what you are seeing with someone else. I would love if you would share it here so we can all be encouraged, but the most important point is that you share.
Last thing, if the website is a bit tough to get around, give us some grace, a totally new and revamped one is coming in the next couple of weeks! Long overdue!
Peace, Jim
I will start off with this. I am a fan of Tim Keller.
I don’t always agree with him. But then I cannot think of anyone I always agree with. But I love several things about him more than I disagree with him in a few theological and practical areas.
1) I love that he wrote “The Reason for God” while he was a pastor in a church. I think that writers who are having to walk out the realities of their views in a local church context benefit greatly from those experiences. What you are thinking about and writing about has to connect with the daily lives of those you are sharing life with. There are certainly a number of very powerful writers that I truly enjoy that I stepped out of pastoral ministry. So, my appreciation for Keller’s path isn’t a condemnation of anyone else’s.
2) I love that Keller’s church, Redeemer Presbyterian is so heavily focused on serving New York City. Hope for New York literally mobilizes thousands of people to serve each year. I love that.
3) I love that Redeemer Pres. has managed to reach a very diverse group of ages and races. Personally, I don’t think I have done as good a job of that as Keller has.
Here, Keller speaks as a part of the authors@google series. He was there soon after the release of his book, The Reason for God, and is speaking to the main reasons why people would find reason to believe in God, and why others would not. I really enjoyed it.
Hope you do to! Please let me know if you have any comments/thoughts about what he was speaking about. I always love to hear what you are thinking!
Peace.
One of the things many people that I speak with strugle with is how to describe the good news, the gospel, of Jesus as our Messiah. One one hand you can make it very simple. He came, he died, he rose again. We are forgiven when we accept those truths. Quick, clear and to the point.
On the other hand you can easily make it so etherial that it feels almost impossible for someone who is not a seminarian to ever figure any of it out.
Honestly, I have been to both of those extremes.
What is left is a simple question that is not very simple at all. What is the good news? What is this hope that we who follow Jesus claim to have access to?
JR Woodward asked 50 people to try to describe what they thought the good news was. This group has activists, philosophers, artists, blue and white collar workers, authors, and yes, pastors and seminarians. We are from different walks of life, we are of different ethnicities, and we have different backgrounds. His question to all of us was the same; could we describe what the good news, the hope of Christ, is like? But he threw in two caveats; we had to address it as if it were being written up in our local newspaper, and we couldn’t go over 700 words.
Many months later it was thrilling to see the fruits of those descriptions bound up in the first release of Ecclesia Press, ViralHope: Good News from the Urbs to the Burbs (And Everything in Between). Take a look at the trailer, produced by the Brothers Nee.
Hello everybody.
I realize that I am not only being cliche, but redundant as I express my shock that so much of the summer has gone by already! So, there it is. Again.
I doubt it will be the last time either.
This season of the year is always a bit of a unique one. A key group that [nlcf] reaches out to are college students, so the start of the fall semester is always a very busy one for us. But busyness isn’t the issue.
The start of fall signals the start of a season where we have very specific goals. Goals that we need God to step into and enable, or we simply won’t hit them. This fall is no different. And that is why this time of the year feels so unique.
This time of the year begs the question, “What if God doesn’t do his part in the way we are expecting him to?” Yes, we have a part to do in all this, but unless God shows up and does the heavy lifting, then we are stuck.
That question then leads to others, “Why didn’t he do his part? Did we misunderstand? Is he trying to show us that we are on the wrong track? Are our hearts wrong?” And a litany of questions like them.
What do we do when God doesn’t do what we thought he was going to do?
This question, like so many we have reflected on this summer, have so many levels to them, so many nuances, that we simply cannot reflect on them all. So, let’s try to go after what we can. There is one that I hear lurking underneath so many of the others in my own heart, but also in the hearts of those that ask similar questions. What does it say about God’s love for me when he doesn’t show up and do what I ask him to?
Not surprisingly, this one runs very deep, so let’s take a look. And let’s start in the chapter that many people — and commentaries — call the Hall of Faith, Hebrews 11.
I would strongly encourage you to read the whole chapter, as I am going to pick it up in verse thirty-two. And away we go…
32 “And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again.” Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37 They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated– 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. 39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. 40 God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”
First, an apology. I thought this was scheduled to go up yesterday. Just realized it was not. My “I’m on vacation bad.”
So here we are.
We are on the verge of July, and while I know this is very cliché, I feel like I am always in disbelief that we have already come through this much of summer.
My family and I are visiting our Virginia Beach Leadership Training program for about a week and a half. I had the honor of speaking to a great group of emerging leaders last evening, very early this morning and then I will do so again tonight. This weekend I will be speaking at all five gathering of Coastal Community Church and also at Fuse. It is a great church and I always enjoy seeing them.
This week I would like to ask a very simple to state but tough to fully answer question.
Ready? Hang on, its coming in just a minute.
“Jesus came and told his disciples, ‘I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach the new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’” Matthew 28.18-20 NLT
Likely, everyone that is reading this post has heard this one before. Go and make disciples. And yes, that is the jist of it. But let’s unpack this a bit.
When Jesus spoke to his followers, his learners (that is what disciple means) he had lived his life here on earth without sin, had laid his life down and submitted to one of the most gruesome death processes that world knew, had taken the entirety of the weight of our human rebellion (past, present and future) upon himself and finally, had physically risen from the dead.
As a result, God the Father had given God the Son authority over everything. Jesus had access to all the power of the trinity and had reign over everything.
So when Jesus said,“I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth,” he meant it. It would be like your boss getting a huge promotion at work and they tell you, “I have the power to bring you up with me, and I am going to do it.” They have been given power and they are telling you how they intend to use it.
Well, we are in week two of our little group and the emails and posts have been truly good. Thank you for all who have posted and responded. For those that have not, let’s try to hope on the train this week. Fortunately for you, I may not have always gotten everything done that I have tried to either!
So, this week. Let’s take a closer look at the Sermon on the Mount. Now, this may not be the area that we spend the entire summer in. In fact, I doubt it will be. Overall, I am trying to take what I hear from you, add in what God is speaking to my heart and see where he wants to lead us. So, I would say that none of us in this group fully knows where it is all going.
Let’s look at Matthew 5.13.
13 “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness?
Now, when I read this, and this version is from the Message, I think a couple of things. I love the very start of this passage, “Let me tell you why you are here…” It is just very simple and straitforward. The stuff that we often wish was more frequent in the Bible. Jesus would have been sitting on the big hill, looking at those who had come to hear him, and probably they would have been pressing in close to hear.
And he says, “Let me tell you why you are here.” Obviously he wasn’t talking about why they were there listening to him, he was speaking about why they are on earth.
He is speaking to us as well. So, we would do well to slow down for a minute, lean in a bit, and listen to the answer that God the Son, Jesus, is about to give to the statement he just made.
We are here to be salt. The seasoning that brings out the God flavors of the earth. We are to take the things that God has done and continues to do, and make them more easily seen, more easily noticed.
Jesus gives two very basic statements. He offers to tell them why they are here, what their purpose is. Then he gives them a very simple explanation. We are to bring up and discuss the fingerprints that God has left and continues to leave, all over the world, in our lives, everywhere.
Clarity about our purpose. To make God more fully known, both to those who are followers of his and to those who are not. We are to talk about what God is up to.
If God is in charge, then he has the right to ask that of us. The question is, are we doing it? Are we talking about what we have seen God do? Do we talk about God to those who agree with us about him, but never to those who don’t?
There is certainly much more we could discuss about this short passage. In fact, I think the Sermon on the Mount has layers to it that we will spend our entire lives exploring. I suspect even after that, when we stand with God in heaven and he shows us the fullness of what he was up to, we will still be amazed by how little of it we actually got.
But let’s not worry about that for now. For now, let’s let it be very simple. Jesus said we are here to make God more well known. That we are here to allow the “God-flavors” of this earth to be more detectable.
Let’s make what we do be very simple as well.
Let’s memorize that set of scripture. You can take the first two sentences or you can tackle the three verse section. Whichever you prefer.
This week, at least once, but as often as possible, be the salt that you are. Talk about what God is doing, what he has done in your life. Do that however you feel led to, if you would like some help with that, email me and let me know.
Comment back in and tell us what happened. This way, the rest of us can be encouraged by what you have done. Also, many others are reading this as well. So, by sharing what you shared, you are continuing to be salt. However, if you feel it would be best to keep it private, you can either email our list serve or me personally. But lets share some stories. Even if nothing seems to happen.
Pray that those around you would be the salt they are, or would sense God’s flavoring of the world through you. Pray that the rest of us would do the same and pray that [nlcf] would be a place where that could happen on a broad scale.
I cannot wait to hear back and know I am praying for you all!
Peace, Jim
“This book affected me deeply. It’s one of the greatest treatises I’ve ever read on life’s deepest questions about God and the whys in life. I think the Lord has produced a classic through Jim Pace. It will be read and studied by skeptics and seminarians, peasants and presidents. Very few have written so well what so many have wondered when it comes to God and suffering.”
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