Kingdom Come!

Beginning to post at:
http://kingdomreflection.blogspot.com/

Some years ago I stumbled across Jean Vanier.

Not literally.  No I didn’t find him sitting on the floor in a library somewhere and literally stumble over him when I turned the corner and there he was.

I don’t know how, but somehow in my quest for genuine community I came across his name.  But in the pre-Amazon.com world of South Georgia, I could never find his books.  He was not as popular as James Michener in the secular bookstore or Frank Peretti (he’s been around a long time) in the Christian bookstore.  Go figure.  Why was there no following for a Catholic guy who founded communities for mentally-challenged people in South Georgia?

So the very first time I went to Kenya in 1991, I stumbled into the used bookstore in Yaya Centre hungry for something to read to divert my mind from my teaching schedule.  And there on the shelf, tattered, dog-eared, underlined and ugly green was Jean Vanier’s Community and Growth.  Trembling in disbelief, I took it from the paperback-packed shelf and thumbed through it.  My first thought was, “who in Nairobi would read this?”  So for some price in Kenya Shillings, I purchased it and took it back to Rick and Cheri’s apartment, and sitting in their verdant red-soiled garden began to devour it.

And in this book was a level of spirituality and reality that I had not encountered before.  At least in print.  So this morning as I was perusing Deb and Alan Hirsch’s blog and I saw this quote, I thought I need to share this with a lot of folks… include them in my journey and my discovery!

“It seems to me more and more that growth in the Holy Spirit brings us from a state of dreaming-and often illusion-to the stage of realism. Each of us has our own dreams and projects, which prevent us from seeing ourselves clearly and accepting ourselves and others as we are. Dreams throw up a strong barriers. They hide the psychological, human and spiritual poverty which we find hard to bear in ourselves. And sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between the dream-aspiration that motivates and inspires our lives and the dream-barriers which are flight and illusion.

The work of Jesus and his Holy Spirit is to touch us more deeply than do dreams. When we discover that God lives in us and carries us, our dreams can disappear without leaving us depressed. We are held by the gift of faith and hope, that fine thread which binds us to God.” — John Vanier, (Community and Growth, page 74.)

When I read this I had this great urge to run and find my copy and begin reading it all over again!  But I’m in Georgia for Christmas and (hopefully) its old worn and raggedy self is somewhere on my shelves in Pensacola, Florida.  I’ll just have to wait.

And now I discover that Jean Vanier is still alive!  Still living!  I assumed that he was dead years ago, but nope, he’s living in a L’Arche community in France and has recently published a new book with Stanley Hauerwas entitled Living Gently in a Violent World. 

Okay, so chances of me finding it in the used bookstore in Yaya Centre are slim (since I’m not there and it’s brand new!), I’ll just have to look in my stocking hanging by the fireplace.

Penn says:

I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, and you think, ‘Well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward’… How much do you have to hate somebody not to proselytize?

I recently - like last week! - read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.  It’s a pretty amazing book.  Gladwell sets out to give reasons for success and lack of success in people that you know about - the Beatles, Bill Gates, etc. - and people you don’t know.  And basically he comes up with the conclusion that I’ve said for years - you need to be in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing!  And Gladwell reiterates that you must do the right thing over and over until you become good at it — like 10,000 hours.

Place is important.  God calls us to a people (ethnos), more than a place.  But those people are in a “place.”  they inhabit time and space.  And we have to be there.  Ministry has to be in proximity to those God has called us to minister.  When Phyllis and I felt the urging of God to minister to college students, we moved!  We moved fifteen miles from a lovely, relatively inexpensive home on a South Georgia pond between the fraternity houses.  And we moved, not because of the fifteen mile commute, but because we knew that being among the people Gd had sent us to was important.  We needed to be there.  You can’t really minister to people unless you’re there with them. 

And I know this flies in the face of conventional wisdom.  Since we live in the world of attractional mega-churches where people drive for hours just to get there, we feel we can also commute to the office/church.  Since we live in the world of jet-travel, we can do short-term missions with forays into the midst of the unwashed and unreached.  We think we can have the best of both worlds.

But we can’t.

And timing is important.  Gladwell looks at times to be born for optimum success in certain fields.  Now, of course, most of us have a hard time deciding on our own birth!  But his point is finding our niche in history - our time for impact.  We often glibly say, God is never late; He’s always on time.  And so He is.  But we can be late.  Or even early.  Being in the right place at the wrong time is a problem.  And I think this is often the Christian problem.  Our timing is off.  We’re answering questions no one is asking.  We’re responding late to things that need immediate action.  We’ve just got  a delay in our ability to respond.  Bad timing.

Somehow, we need to - once again - learn to “walk in the Spirit,” being “instant in season and out” so that we are able to get the timing thing down.  If you are in the right place, doing the right thing at the wrong time - it’s still wrong, or at best ineffective.

And we’ve got to be engaged in doing the right thing.  Actions must be “right.”  What we do at the right time in the right place produce results.  Actions - not just good intentions or grand ideas or cool wanna-dos.  But really doing the stuff - as difficult and inconvenient and nasty as it might be.

And we gotta be consistent.  And I am the absolute world’s worst at consistency!  I couldn’t stay on a diet if my life depended on it!  (Oh yeah!  Yikes, it does! Oh well…) But in some things I am consistent.  In reading the Word, in rising early for a “quiet time” (that sometimes gets noisy!), in reaching out to others, in dreaming and planning Kingdom kind of things, I’m pretty consistent. 

We have to continue to do what we do - whatever it is - until somehow we become good at it.  The writer of Hebrews says (5:14) that maturity is arrived at by those who constantly live in the word of righteousness and thereby train themselves to distinguish good from evil.  Constant use leads to training in discernment.  You just see it differently.

I was thinking,,, I’ve been teaching the Bible, working in church development and discipling people for a long time.  Have I done my 10,000 hours?  Have I been in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing consistently enough to get it right and make the impact? 

It’s my prayer…

More later…

In thinking about 2009…

Here are a couple of things that I’m trying to put together:

• 5 - 17 MARCH 2009
• • Trip to Sochi, Russia
  • • the purpose is to assist in teaching and training my friends Nick and Olga Markin as they work to develop a house church network in the Sochi area
• Wanna support this venture?  (You can give through Globe International - just put for Glenn Hatcher…)
• • travel costs: $2500 +/-
  • in-country cost: $600
• Wanna go?  Contact me with questions…

• APRIL 2009

• No Brand Retreat   
• last year a small group of us gathered at Beckwith Conference Center in southern Alabama for a long weekend of laid back discussion, teaching, chat and prayer about:
• • the church
  • men being men
  • missions and living misionally
  • relationships
• this year we’d like to do the same thing…  food was good, time together was pretty awesome
• • venue can be the same or anywhere else…
  • cost is kept to a minimal - but the food is plenteous and accommodations are comfortable…

Let me know…

David Fitch asks some good questions here regarding Dan Kimball’s concerns about missional churches.

In thinking “missional,” maybe we should read this by Erika…

Mike Frost, co-laborer with Alan Hirsch (The Shaping of Things to Come and reJesus) defines “missional” here.

Part of this is a response to another CT article expressing misgivings of the “missional church movement.”

If I - as a missionay-type - get this at all “missional” and “attractional” are descriptive of a posture - either being “out there” with the Gospel among people, joining God in the “highways and hedges” or positioning ourselves with the best programs, messages, “hooks” and attractions possible to bring people near to where we are so that we can give them the Gospel.  It’s not about big v small, or complex v simple, or smoke machines v kumbaya.  It’s about a posturing (as Mike in his gravely Aussie voice puts it) the church not around “evangelism” - as good as that might be - or “community” for the sake of community or worship as the ultimate mandate of the church but around mission - the sending of God.

My Facebook friend Lee Grady of Chraisma magazine talks about what we should learn from the Todd Bentley/Lakeland revival here.
Basically I’d like to take a few moments to comment on what Lee says.  He says we should have learned:

1. Accountability!  So, who can argue there? But accountability like accounting needs to be done right.  We’ve witnessed how Enron and Citibank’s accounting can be bogus.  And so can accountability.  Accountability needs to be nased on several things:
2. • mutual trust - trust must exist before the hard times and hard questions come…
   • grace - there needs to be a sense of latitude and empowerment in our accountability…
   • true relationship - relationships are not based on anointing and/or flow-charts… it’s not about the big names in your up-link.  Relationship is more about friendship and transparency than status…
   • community - accountability is not just a pyramid with down-flow, but is a 360 community of like-minded, loving, encouraging and discerning people…  it’s about more than one person serving as watching eyes.  It’s about the King’s Community caring for each other.
3. The One man show is over!  This grieves me to even hear this statement!  I was blasted - literally blasted into the Charismatic renewal in 1971 (granted, as a mere child… not really… or maybe) and this was our quest.  This was our passion: every Believer is a minister!  We wanted to see a real NT Church where every joint supplied and teams were gathered according to gifts not glitter.  1971!  And here we are in 2009, for pity’s sake, saying the same thing!  This is a theological question that needs to be answered and buried deep in our hearts: Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection ushered in Pentecost which decentralized religion and set forth a legion of gifted and anointed “little Jesus-es” into the world!  We’ve got to lose the Great-Man-goes-up-the-Mountain Theology and get to the equipping the saints mentality!  Lee says he hopes we’ve learned this!  I hope so, but I have my doubts…  We still believe the pulpit/tv is the only place for real ministry.
4. Chill Out!  And this is fundamental!  Can we stop running to places and chasing people and phenomena long enough to actually do what Jesus said?  Can we actually believe that God is active in the earth - not just in Lakeland or Toronto?  Can we see the benefit of leadership without the idolatry?  Can we give our lives for the world?
5. Character is more important that anointing.  Duh!
6. Lay hands on no man quickly. I now this in reference to the fateful June night of Apostolic ambition, but really!  Can’t we just get back to the whole idea of relationships?  Apostolic succession in the First Century was about fathering others, not about endorsements and public displays of manhood!  Those guys should know better and should be very sorry for even getting involved.  Nonetheless, relationships of trust and honor should be established, not on how many books you’ve written or how many people you “pastor” (there’s a real question that could be raised, but we won’t) or how many churches you oversee.
7. You can’t have revival without repentance.  And I want to know, “Repentance from what?”  How about repentance from our whole church mindset - leadership status, place of church services, worship, music, revival… all these things!  Repentance in a Bible-way means rethink everything!  Everything!

So, here we are ready for a new year.  And we as a church struggle with self-absorbtion and are continually looking for a savior.  Todd Bentley failed us; he didn’t bring revival.  Signs and wonders didn’t bring Lakeland to it’s knees. 

And did we learn anything?  Only time will tell.