We Must Explore

Astronaut Dave Scott got it right when he said, “Man must explore”.  One of my favorite parts of the community of Awaken is that we aren’t afraid to explore. We aren’t afraid to dream. We think big, we let ideas fly and it’s not just the leadership, its everyone, small groups, and individuals. I can’t tell you how many times in the last week that I’ve heard someone say, “What if we did this…” or “How cool would it be if…” Those are two of the most powerful phrases that I know, because almost anything could follow those statements. And without those statements things rarely change.

Martin Luther agonizing over the state of the church, thinks what if this could change. Desmond Tutu in Apartheid South Africa, thinks what if it doesn’t have to be this way. Steve Jobs, sitting in his garage thinks, what if I made something new. These are moments when the world is transformed and these are moments that any of us can have, and we often do, but we need to give them voice. We need to put these ideas on the chalkboard, let them be heard,  let these ideas breathe.

The church didn’t stop changing when Luther posted his 95 theses, its been changing ever since, sometimes for good and sometimes for the worse. We are a community that is looking at how the church can keep moving, keep changing, keep growing. Our bumper stickers say we have ‘permission to question’, and its true. It starts with any person who walks in the door…

Why do we do this?

What if we did this?

Did Jesus really mean…?

Does God really act that way?

Ask the questions and don’t always let someone answer them for you. Sometimes you need to dig. Sometimes you need to build. Sometimes we need to be okay when our questions don’t have answers right away, or ever.

Let’s dream, let’s ask big questions and let’s do it together.

The ONE THING details

Thought I would post here so folks have the info at a number of places.  Here are the 3 specific ways that you can get involved with Awaken’s ONE THING.

1.  Project Food Stock

• Neighborhood food pick up (much like Lupus)
• Identify a food shelf either in your neighborhood or use Neighbors Inc.
• Flyer a predetermined area in your neighborhood, introduce yourself, who you’re with, what you’re doing & when you’ll be back to pick up food.
• Figure out a schedule that works for you
• Go to www.projectfoodstock.org for more details and resources you can print & customize.

2.  Food Patch

• Community Garden in Lakeville
• Awaken is taking 2 & 4th Sundays (starting May 22nd)
• 6 people each night (at least 6 but more can be accommodated)
• 3-5pm gardening
• 5:30 dinner (pack a picnic dinner and eat together)
• 2 ways to volunteer
  • 1.Garden host – you’ll be in contact w/ Shari (who runs the garden) and you’ll be the point person for Awaken shifts
  • 2.Worker – show up, get directions from the Garden host and get to work.
• sign-up as individuals, families or small groups
• Garden grand opening is May 7th @ 12:30pm if you can make it.
• More info @ www.projectfoodstock.org follow the links for the Food Patch.
• Sign up online.

3.  Neighbors Inc

• Summer meals for kids who receive free/reduced meals during school
• 1x month June/July/August
• 10-15 Volunteers to pack 80-100 bags w/ 10 meals per bag.
  • 5 bfast/5 lunch per bag
• Sign up at Awaken on Sunday’s until we figure out a digital schedule and way to sign up.

What is Awaken’s “ONE THING”?

Every year at Awaken from this one forward, we will be using the Sunday of Easter to announce the missional focus at Awaken for the next 365 days. From the beginning of this year (Jan 1) our leadership team has been in prayer asking God to be very clear about what issue in our community could use the attention, potential energy and resources of Awaken.

As we prayed and met with people, it became very obvious that HUNGER was that issue for us this year. Here are some facts:

• In Twin City suburbs, the working poor make up 60 percent of foodshelf clients.

• In 2008, there were more than two million visits to Minnesota food shelves and food shelf usage continues to increase.

• Half of all food shelf visitors are children.

• 1 in 8 Minnesota children lives at risk of hunger.

• Children who suffer from poor nutrition during the brain’s most formative years score much lower on tests of vocabulary, reading comprehension, arithmetic and general knowledge.

• From 2008 to 2009, there was a 25 percent increase in food shelf visits in Minnesota — the largest recorded increase in 28 years.

• Neighbors Inc. in South St. Paul served over 8,800 people last year through their food shelf.

• Over half of them were kids.

• In the first quarter of this year, the number of people served at the food shelf is up 26%.

• 30,000lbs of food go out the door of Neighbors Inc. every month.

So “ONE THING” is the concerted effort of a small band of Jesus followers in a corner of God’s Kingdom working to bring shalom and justice into places and systems where it is absent or broken. Join us this week if you can, live or by PODCAST, to hear more about the journey to get where we are, as well as what specifically you can get involved in to put your mark on “ONE THING.”

Sunday’s Teaching _ “Mine’ing”

On sunday we worked through a passage in Luke 14 where Jesus says something that’s pretty over the top. He tells some folks around him “unless you give up everything you have, you cannot be my disciple.” On the surface, this is pretty startling for a number of reasons. One of them being that none of us actually believe Jesus was serious when he said this because we all have/own stuff.

So the question becomes, what was Jesus talking about? What did he mean? Thanks to some inspiration from Greg Boyd and a teaching he did on this passage at Woodland Hills, I offered some thoughts around the idea that when we say something is “mine” that it actually “mines” us back. When we think about our possessions and things that we “own”, we have to be very careful because they can easily begin to “own” us, and Jesus is very clear that we cannot serve two masters.

So the question(s) for discussion or debate:
- Do you agree with what you heard? why or why not?
(here’s a link to the podcast: http://bit.ly/fxuxX5)
- Are there things in your life that you own that you may be “mine’ing” you back? What does it look like for you to begin holding those things loosely?
- Is there anything that you actually need to get rid of to be free from that ongoing relationship of “mine’ing”?

Last leg of the Trip

I’ve been awake and traveling for the past 24 hours including stops in lilongwe Malawi, Lusaka Zambia, Amsterdam Netherlands, and now detroit.

Its been quite a ride and I’m lookin forward to seeing the girls in a few hours. Also really looking forward to seeing the Awaken folks tomorrow. I missed you all last week but I heard absolutely slamming reports about Courtney and tofs leadership last week.

see ya tomorrow my friends.

Reading while in Africa…

While I’ve been in Africa there has been plenty of down time in the evenings. I recognize that while I say this my beautiful bride of almost 12 years has been at home trying to put three red headed monkeys to bed every night. I love you honey and I’ll be home soon!

Be that as it may, I thought I would share a few thoughts on the books I’ve been able to cover while in Africa.
The first book was “Love Wins” by Rob Bell. If you have had your ear to the Evangelical buzz around town you’ll know that this book has stirred up a hornets nest so to speak. Even if you don’t agree with Bell’s conclusion, it’s a good read that will challenge you. In it, Rob Bell challenges the traditional understandings of heaven and hell as literal places that all of humanity will dwell in forever after death. This part of the book I want to say “amen” to Bell and the need for the church to really think through what we have been teaching about heaven and hell. He takes it a step further and offers a position that in the end, God’s love wins. I’ll leave you to determine whether or not you agree with that but Bell does make a point worth noting, that many people within the stream of Christianity have held to this position along the way.

The second book is “Simple Church” by two author named Rainer and Geiger. This is more of a strategic book for people involved in churches and church planting. They interviewed over 400 churches and leaders to determine if their thesis regarding simplicity was in fact correct. They believed they would find a correlation between the simplicity of the purpose and process of any given church would be directly connected to the effectiveness of said church. They were right!
This is a great book for leaders across the board who are in the process and at the table of organizations trying to move people in a certain direction.

One More Day in Malawi

We just finished the trip back to the capital city of Lilongwe from a beautiful beach area called Salima where we did some shopping at the “curios” and had lunch overlooking lake Malawi. It was absolutely beautiful. There’s always a bit of dissonance in your heart when you are in a third world or developing country amongst people who make less than 200$ a year in one moment, and then sitting in a cabana by the lake with the cool breeze. Still trying to hold those two experiences in tension in my heart.

I’ve seen some amazing things this week in Malawi. I’ll try to recount a few.
1. 10-15 people in the back of flat bed pick ups. Almost everyone walks in Malawi. In the mornings, there are 10x the amount of people walking along the road and riding bikes than there are cars. So if you can get a ride from someone, it’s a pretty big deal. Often you will see a flatbed pickup that is absolutely jam packed with people, legs and arms hanging off the sides, driving at least 60mph down the road. It’s nuts!
2. bikes _ I have seen more bicycles this week than I have in the past 34 years of my life. People will do anything to have a bike. Not only does it transport you, but tobacco, fire wood, nsima, beans, rice, your friends and your family. Most the bikes have wheels that are no longer round and half of the time the frame is bent. But the Africans are very resourceful people and they figure out a way to make it work.
3. Lounging _ when you go through a town or village, everyone is out on the front stoops of homes and businesses. the entire social life of Malawi revolves around what grows and when it grows. during planting season, you will not see this many people just socializing. Right now, all the crops have been planted, but not much is able to be harvested…therefore as Africans are very social people, everyone just hangs out and chats all day in the shade.
4. Hardest feet I’ve ever seen _ at the end of the church leaders training, in an effort to lead by example, Scott, the WR team and myself decided to wash the feet of the 40 or so people in attendance. Never have I seen or felt feet so calloused and hard. These feet had seen thousands of miles and could tell stories you would never believe. By far and away the hardest working human beings I have ever come in contact with. Simply amazing!

We leave for the airport tomorrow morning at 7am. I have been blessed by Africa in so many ways. The WR staff and team do amazing work among the most vulnerable people of the world and do so through the local church. It has been an honor to partner with them and walk alongside them.

Micah

A few pixs from the past few days

Highlights from Ntchisi

Unfortunately the Internet at the Hotel Kasungu is not exactly dependable so we’ve been unable to connect to the rest of the world for a few days.

I’ll try to get you up to speed. On Monday we started ministry in the Ntchisi district of Malawi. This has been the location of the Berean partnership over the past 5 years. Part of our team has been working with HIV/AIDS patients on “Memory Books” which allow those living with the illness to document their lives. It’s probably closest to what we might a last will and testament. It gives people a chance to say things to those they leave behind when AIDS eventually takes their lives. It’s also a way to document their lives. Many of them are the last ones in their families and this is a way to mark their lives and their stories.

Scott and I have been working with a group of about 40 lay leaders from four different parishes here in the Ntchisi district. We have met with them for the past two days working through a 10-session curriculum on Christian Leadership. It has been both exhilarating and exhausting teaching and speaking for 4-5 hours a day through a translator. I think the highlight for me was the first day. We handed out bibles in Chichewa to everyone that didn’t have one at the beginning of the day so they could follow along. I’m pretty sure that these folks thought they had to give them back at the end of the day because when Scott told them these were a gift from us the place when absolutely bananas! Spontaneously they erupted into singing and dancing. You would have thought these people had just won the lottery! They were so overjoyed to have their own copy of the bible in their own language that they couldn’t contain themselves. They mobbed us at the front, every single one of them, shaking our hands and giving us hugs and saying “Zikomo” over and over again (which means thank you.)

When the crowd parted, I saw one woman on her knees praying prayers of thanksgiving to God for this gift she just received. I have never seen anything like it in all of my years as a pastor. What a hunger and what gratitude they had for this story of God. Needless to say, I was humbled and filled with joy to have experienced this moment. I will never forget it.

Our Choirs are Terrible!

I have never really been a fan of choirs. This may not surprise any of you, and it may offend others of you. To those who are offended, please know that it’s nothing personal. It’s just that I can count with 2-3 fingers the number of times I’ve been moved emotionally by a choir and their singing. This changed today.

No sound system, no real director, but absolute harmony in voice with volume that you could feel in your guts! I’ve never heard anything like it. We went to an Anglican church this morning that lasted 3.5 hrs complete with incense, bells, liturgy, processionals and whole deal. It was all quite amazing, but it was the singing that got me. At one point, I was trying to get some video of this youth choir singing a song and I was overwhelmed with emotion and tears. It was breathtaking and beautiful. 25 kids both boys and girls with individual voices all singing together as one instrument that carried with it hope, joy, redemption and resurrection. It was what a choir was supposed to be and it moved me.

I pray that Awaken, in its own culturally current way, is able to communicate the passion and conviction and joy that heard and saw this morning at St. Paul’s Anglican Church of Ntchisi, Malawi.