Nate, Your blog is great...thanks for sharing. This community indeed is something special, a special call from God to be taking risks and to be re-imagining church. As we prepare the next few weeks to meet for the first time as ClayPeople Community I'm amazed at how far we've gone in just this short amount of time. A missional, holistic community...Mission in that we seek to sent first and gathered second. Holistic in that we seek to live lives centered on our calling to follow Christ - its about a spirituality not separated from the rest our lives.
Fences and Wells...
Ranches here in Texas have fences. These fences are to distinguish what cattle are in and out of a particular herd. They are to establish boundaries of where they can go and where they can not. But in Australia, the ranches could not possibly construct fences because the land area is to vast. Instead, they build wells. In their borderless fields the herd wonders freely and the ranchers do not worry because they know they will return to the well for water - to quench their thirst and be replenished for another day out in the fields.
I hope that this place, and this community, is a well and not a fench for us...for the church.
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And what a rich well this is, Tim.
I pray for you and for this community; that you all may find in it a place of rest in God, and that you may be called by it to serve faithfully, as I see that you have. And importantly, I pray that it informs and emboldens your capacity to see God in your lives.
I read some Kierkegaard today. He talks about the way that all people are called and invited to live on the most intimate terms with God. And for the sake of everyone, therefore, God “came to the world, let himself be born, suffers and dies; and this suffering God almost begs and entreats [everyone] to accept the help which is offered to [them].” And this, Kierkegaard says, is surely the thing that would make any rational person lose his understanding and faith – because it runs counter to any reasonable line of thought. That is, whoever is not courageous enough to believe it, must be offended by it – because it is too high for him, because he cannot get it into his head. It just doesn’t make any sense.
This is the way of the Gospel. It is so foreign to human thought that people, organizations, and institutions cannot grasp it, cannot fathom it. It is a Gospel so counter-cultural that even its followers don’t fully get it, and that those peripheral to it are offended by their inability to grasp it. But it is no less true, and it is certainly no less revolutionary.
Kierkegaard:
“For what is offense? Offense is unhappy admiration. It is therefore akin to envy, but it is an envy which is turned against oneself, or more exactly, envy which is worst of all against oneself. The narrow-mindedness of the natural man cannot welcome for itself the extraordinary which God has intended for him; so he is offended.”
As you all prepare for Denver, I pray for your strength to offend. Offend the church, offend yourselves. Be the faithful that the faithful need to be; indeed, be the church that the church wants to be.
The Peace of the Lord be with you,
Matt
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