Shift Happens...Leaving No Paradigm Unturned!

The Jewish people celebrated the Festival of Shelters by living in tents for a week. It was a reminder of their homeless days. It must have been something like a combination of Tent City and Family Camp!

The brothers of Jesus thought it would be a perfect time for him to go public in a big way. They goaded him to put on a spectacular show to drum up a greater following. Jesus preferred to fly under the radar but he still rocked the festival. He seemed to be intent on leaving no paradigm un-shifted.

Jesus subverted the “will to power” – even in himself! (John 7:16-18) He wasn’t pitching propaganda to enhance his own political leverage or social position. He wouldn’t resort to manipulation and intimidation. He chose kindness at every turn. Even his confrontations with the religious elite were acts of bold kindness, intended to liberate them from frozen legalisms.

Jesus recalibrated the metrics of righteousness. (John 7:24) He measured his own character in terms of doing what he saw the Father doing. He was more interested in right relationships than heartless adherence to a code of religious conduct.

Jesus collaborated with the calendar. (John 7:6, 8, 30) He worked with time as a creative medium like a musician or an athlete. Music depends upon the skillful use of slow and fast, of pauses and rests. Great athletes understand when to accelerate and when to wait for a blocker, when to pace for a marathon and when to kick into a sprint. Jesus sensed when the time was ripe for him to stir up redemptive controversy and when it was time to disappear into the crowd, when to linger and when to make haste. He didn’t fight with time, he worked with it.

Jesus decentralized the Fountain of Life. (John 7:37-39) His Holy Spirit became an engine of life-energy, equally available to everyone everywhere. He showed that there was no particular place, person, or religious system that controlled the source of spiritual life. This was a radical affirmation of the dignity of common humanity.

Jesus deconstructed unbelief. (John 7:5, 47-49) He engaged different types of unbelief differently;

• His brothers might have been unwilling to believe because they were too familiar – too used to him in their everyday lives. Maybe they grew dismissive of the wonder of his presence. Jesus didn’t try to prove himself to them.
• The religious elite were unwilling to believe because their closed system of thought was too precious to them. They weren’t interested in being surprised. Jesus persistently messed up their tidy categories.
• The desperate dad of an epileptic boy confessed, “I believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24) His unbelief was honest and humble. He knew he was literally unable to believe hard enough on his own. The sort of faith Jesus was calling for required divine assistance. Jesus responded by instigating a miracle.

Jesus liberated Nicodemus from the matrix. (John 7:50-51) Nicodemus was open to new perspectives after his conversation with Jesus (John 3:1-21); so much so that he was willing to lob a loaded question into the middle of his religion. He had become dis-illusioned in a very redemptive sense. The shrunken world of closed beliefs had been exposed as inhospitable to persons infected by the truth.

Scott Burnett

Are You Ready?

I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. Revelations 3:8

Today there are forecasts of a coming storm. As I left the house I reminded my girls to fill their cars up with gas, put chains in their car and carry their winter supplies with them. I talked to a friend at the coffee shop and asked him if he was ready. He said, “Yes, I have a generator and a back up generator.” I spoke to my doctor and she said they were making preparations because even when the area is down people still need medical services. Pastor David and I planned together how the church will stay warm and open if we have to go without power. Worship will always go on come snow storm, power outage, or earth quake. There will be a tremendous need for a great caring network in times like that. This might seem like a bit of an over reaction but last winter’s power outage was quite the experience. Let me ask you another question about the future. Are you ready for the possibilities? It may be easier to get ready for the disasters than the successes. Are you ready to publish that book, launch a new Tiny Little Church from the one you currently pastor, invest your bonus, enjoy a happy marriage, or take pleasure in a growing friendship? Have you mentally and spiritually prepared yourself for the good health you hope for, the fruitful ministry you have dreamed of and financial blessing that you pray about?

I believe that only God knows the plans He has for us – plans to prosper us and give us a future. Recently, I have commissioned Pastor Linda and Tim Magee to take a month and rewrite our church policy manual to prepare us for the explosion of ministry and opportunities that we are going to face with our new building. The last time I sent Pastor Linda on a well deserved sabbatical (and this is no sabbatical but a concentrated working task), I gave her the book, Sabbatical Journey by Henri Nouwen. Later she emailed me and said that it was a terrible book to give her because he died at the end of the sabbatical. So this time there is no book, but it is a time of preparation for blessing.

Are you ready for the wonderful blessings that God is preparing for you?

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Tim White

"The Collaborative Method!"

They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary,the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. Acts 1:14

One of the greatest lessons that I am learning in my Christian walk is the growing discovery of the collaborative method. This is one of the hardest lessons I have ever learned in my life, and I still have a lot to learn. When the Marine Corps take a recruit, they have 12 weeks on Paris Island to turn those recruits into a team. Their lives and success depends on them beginning to learn thislesson. In sports, we say we can accomplish more together than we can apart. And in the church we have the example of Jesus Christ in his teaching. The promise of a coming helper, his death on the cross which gives us forgiveness of our sins (everything that holds us apart from him and each other) and then he told his followers to stay together for Pentecost. Pentecost was when the Holy Spirit fell upon the diverse group of gathered believers and they were empowered to be a team that would impact the whole world. This was the birth of the “collaborative method.” The word “together” is mentioned 390 times in the Bible. Every marriage has a lot to learn in order to workcollaboratively. Every family has a lifetime of lessons to learn. There are so many lessons to learn for a little league soccer team or an office sales team, but in a church we have no other optionbecause we want them to know we are Christians by our love.

• Long-term commitment is essential.
• Learning and re-learning how to communicate with one another is vital.
• Being able to put our projects on the table for the team to work on is really hard, but its an important step of trust.
• Everyone looking for God’s will, beyond seeing each issue as “us against them”, is maybe the most important ingredient.
• Discovering that great teamwork takes time – so lets keep working on it. This is a really big deal.
  
  Your friend for the rest of my life,
  
  Pastor Tim White
  

Overcoming Unfaith

Mark 9:17-27
In the 9th chapter of Mark’s Gospel, a helpless father desperately implores Jesus to rescue his son. He stands uneasily yet candidly at the crossroads of belief and unbelief. Jesus meets him there.

This kind of faith is not an unquestioning allegiance to ideology. It isn’t reflected in bumper-sticker quips like, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”

The simple, soulful confession of this kind of faith is, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.” This kind of faith exhibits the virtue of skepticism.

In the field of philosophy there are two types of skepticism: Academic and Pyrrhonian. Academic skepticism asserts the impossibility of truly knowing anything. Its fatal flaw is its own logic: How can we truly know that it is impossible to truly know anything?

But Pyrrhonian skepticism accommodates an open-minded pursuit of truth. It acknowledges the severe difficulty of apprehending ultimate knowledge while allowing the possibility of knowing truly.

“Christian faith in God is not a naïve basic truth.
It is unfaith that has been overcome”
Jurgen Moltmann

Scott Burnett

Courage

Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong. 1 Corinthians 16:13

Most people don’t realize it, but the Bible has a lot to say about courage. For some reason, in our society today, courage has become a trait no longer highly prized as it was in our parents’ generation. Our society is enthralled with stories about those whose success came by accident, and we are thrilled when we hear that they hardly even tried – an overnight success! We like the “get-rich-quick” stories. Buy a lottery ticket and become a millionaire overnight – no work necessary. We love the idea of someone discovering us! Maybe that’s why movie stars and pop music stars are the new heroes of our society.

I praise the people of courage who are all around us: the single parent, the businessperson daring to conduct business God’s way in a dog-eat-dog world, the hero struggling to overcome a chronic or even life-threatening illness, the person with an impossible dream! We all cheered Lance Armstrong’s victory in the Tour de France, but imagine his hard-fought battle against cancer! People flock to successes, but some of us live in admiration of the people who fight the odds, holding on to the impossible dream.

Courage cannot be born without the cradle of adversity. If you feel like a failure or that everything is going wrong, let me salute you for your courage! I admire the writer who has never published, the policeman or fireman, and their families, who live with the constant threat of danger, the idealistic school teacher who continues to give everything, day in and day out to each child they’re given; the Small Groups pastor who ministers and really nurtures people’s souls; the person who sticks with their dream even when the results are not encouraging. I am not the only one who notices! There are children watching and learning. There are cynical people who are watching and wondering. God is watching and applauding from heaven!

Lord Jesus, I pray for the people of courage! Give them this moment to hear your applause of heaven! Amen.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Tim White

Me? A Leader?

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.

1 Peter 4:10

Many years ago I thought that being a leader was only for those who had gone to years of seminary or Bible school or had lived long, saintly lives. When I was 24 I was asked to be an Assistant Sunday School Superintendent. I thought the man who asked me must be mistaken or thought he was talking to someone else. I had little training, no degrees, and at 24 hadn’t lived a very long or saintly life. Joel, who turned out to be one of my life mentors, told me two things. The first thing he told me was that leadership was a gift from God and the second thing was that if I would make myself available to God, my Heavenly Father would do the rest.
Wikipedia defines "leadership" organizationally and narrowly as "the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members.” Leadership is the ability of an individual to set rules for others and lead from the front. It is an attitude that influences the environment around us. Those who are leaders in a church community are not bound by this narrow way of looking at leadership. We have the benefit of Scripture and the example of Jesus to help us on our quest of being effective leaders in the body of Christ.

In the book, “Lead Like Jesus” Ken Blanchard notes that before we can be effective leaders for Christ, we need to ask ourselves two questions, “Whose are we?” and “Who are we?” The idea behind the question “Whose are we?” is to discover, who is our primary authority, who is our primary audience? If we define our success by power, position, performance and the opinions of others we miss the point. Scripture teaches that effective leadership has its roots in pleasing God. If our goal is to please God then our attitudes and how we serve those we lead will be encouraging and effective. The second question, “Who am I?” also includes the question, “Why am I here?” Jesus knew what His Father wanted Him to do and walked out that ministry. True success is the fulfillment of the life mission God has planned for all of us. Success in life depends on the relationship we have with Christ and what level of control we will let Him have in our lives.

We have an opportunity to discover how to be effective leaders at Washington Cathedral next Saturday, September 29th at the “Leading Like Jesus”- Leadership Conference. Bill and Elaine Brammer, as the Directors of our Small Groups Ministry, have done an incredible job of putting together a great event. Pastor Tim will share his vision for this next year. I strongly encourage you, if you are already a leader or think that you are being called to leadership, to participate in this day of encouragement and learning.

By Kathi King

Excitement!

It seems that one thing all of us crave is a little excitement in our lives. We love those thrill rides at the theme parks that excite and maybe scare us a little. We love the excitement of travel and seeing new things. We get excited about holidays, birthdays and weddings. We all need a little excitement to feel alive.

As I watch the children around me I wonder at the excitement in their little faces. It doesn’t take much. They can be excited about almost anything it seems. They are excited to see a video of something they have watched many times. They get excited just playing. Children have a wonder in their eyes that helps them see excitement in the world around them. They are always ready for a new adventure.

When Jesus called His first disciples, the excitement they felt was tangible. In John 1:41, Andrew could not wait to run to tell his brother Peter “We have found the Messiah.” There was no way to contain the enthusiasm and exuberance he felt. He had to tell others. Like a little child, he was excited. Jesus tells us that we must come to God as a little child (Luke 18:17). I think that the sense of excitement is part of what Jesus is telling us we need to have.

When we first become believers in Jesus there is that sense of excitement and expectation. It is a new beginning. As we move along, we sometimes loose that sense of excitement. Our spiritual life can get a little dull. God does not want us to have dull lives, but lives of abundance and excitement. The next time you pick up your Bible, take time to pray, come to church, meet with your TLC or help with an event at the church, come with the expectation of meeting God.
Anticipate something special is going to happen. Open your heart and your eyes to something wonderful that will happen.

Our God is full of surprises and excitement. The anticipation and expectation of something happening between you and God, will keep you excited and alive! Come as a child, with wonder in your eyes, waiting to see what God will do next. Look around and feel the excitement!

By Allan Wenzel