Switching Fridays

Luke 23:44 - It was about the sixth hour and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour

In our American Calendar there are two major Fridays we highlight. They are called by different names and I think they should be switched. On Thanksgiving we gather with loved ones (or friends or strangers) and enjoy (or make do or drudge through) interactions, and finally we overeat and then pass out, but we awake (or just don't sleep) to a Friday that is a very good day for businesses. We go out and spend way too much money on things that will end up trashed or obsolete within 3 years. The businesses call it Black Friday.

    Black Friday is an accounting term. It’s simple, when you balance your books and you are in the negative (owe money) it's called being in the red. On the flip side, if you end up with a surplus (make money) it’s called being in the black. Being in the black is a good thing. It’s overall good for the business and the economy and the person (provided you spent well and can get past the feeling of buyer's remorse).

    The Friday before Easter is actually an observation of a much more meaningful day. Before we have ham and deviled eggs. Before we search for candies and baskets. Before we wear new clothes with pretty pastel coloring. Before we celebrate new life. Before we remember Resurrection. There is what we call Good Friday. It’s the day we remember the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

    On this Friday, God the Son, who added humanity to His deity and walked the earth for 30+ years, was murdered. He was tried unjustly, spoke no lies, and sent to die by simple popular opinion in a horrific way (Luke 22-23). But none of these things were the real reason He was nailed to the Cross. 1 Peter 3:18 tells us that He suffered on the Cross to “bring us to God”. That Jesus, though He was righteous, carried our unrighteousness and bore it on the Cross so that we could receive His righteousness.

God wanted us to have peace with Him, and we couldn't reach it. He wanted us to be healed from our sin, but our medicine would never be enough.

In speaking of Jesus about 700 years before Jesus ever existed, the prophet Isaiah spoke of His sacrifice. In Isaiah 53:5 we find that He carried our grief and took our chastisement so that we would have peace and healing. It was His love and my unrighteousness that held Jesus to the Cross. God wanted us to have peace with Him, and we couldn't reach it. He wanted us to be healed from our sin, but our medicine would never be enough. So He had to come and He had to live and He had to pay the price for my selfish heart. His love for me and you and the world compelled the greatest rescue mission ever, and on “Good” Friday Jesus paid for our sins.

I propose a switch. Since “Black” Friday is good for businesses, let’s call that one Good Friday. Since on the day we celebrate the payment for our sin (Jesus death on the cross) God made it black, let's call this Black Friday. If you know the freedom of His Sacrifice, consider this day a great day to pull back and remember what what our rescue cost. It’s a great day for sober thankfulness and grateful thought to our loving Saviour. If you don’t know His sacrifice or have any other questions, then today is a great day to ask. Make this Black Friday a day that you’ll learn how significant Easter Sunday is as well.

Dear Rowan- 1 Corinthians Recap

Hey Rowan Students,

It was awesome to be a part of the Rowan Vendor fair again this year. We just wanted to take a minute to invite you into our little community in your community. We are a small church with big hearts for Glassboro, and we wanted to invite you to connect with us if there is anything you need. From counseling, prayer, questions, and community, we would love to engage you and care for you in any or all of those ways. Our regular meeting times are Sunday at 6PM for a church worship service and Community groups on Wednesday at 7:15PM (Dinner at 6PM) and Thursday at 900PM.

Last Sunday was our first week teaching through a book in the Bible called 1 Corinthians. It was the first of two letters written to the church that was in the city of Corinth. It was written by Paul or St. Paul as you might know him.  A quick catch up is that Corinth was a place of great wealth and idea. It was a very busy port City allowing other ports in the Aegean Sea and further west an efficient and faster path towards Rome and east. Bottom line: tons of money flowing through the city, mixed with lots of blue collar jobs and sailors coupled with some intense Greek Philosophizing. It was crazy. Open philosophical discussions like battle raps, prostitution everywhere for the sailors who enjoyed their short lived shore leave, gods of all kinds requiring all kinds of worship, and crazy wealth like Trump, all mixed in.

“Corinth was a place of great wealth and idea.”

Then the People of the Way came. That is how you would have identified someone who worshipped Jesus as Lord and Saviour at that time. As they reasoned together, and some started to follow the Way of Jesus, they had to decipher what their new lives would look like given all the stuff they were involved in previously. Jesus was calling them into some very different things and the changes and lifestyles got a bit mixed.

In our first week we highlighted the main issue that the church in Corinth was having was division (1 Cor 1:10-17). Division over who they listened to. They thought that, like Greek philosophy, perhaps different leaders of the Way had different philosophies on how to live life. They got stuck here and it affected their pride. They thought each one was better than the other because of interpretation, leadership, their own giftedness, etc.; it was leading to a lot of confusion. The rest of the letter looks at how a church can get totally nuts when it begins to worship everything except for God.

So join us as we continue this journey in the weeks to come, and don’t forget to hit us up if you have any questions or need anything. Ever.

Rowan Move-In: Why We're Here

It's simple...Glory

We are here for glory. No. Not our glory. God’s Glory. The glory is His to begin with. Consider, for a second, that the God of the Bible is real and is who he claims to be. Then it’s very clear that our purpose, and the only thing that fills us, is to glorify God, While we search for this purpose in the chasing of our comforts, pleasures, and relationships;  God is saying “I made these and here is how they work. If you want real joy, listen to me.” Suddenly, when we use them His way, these temporary, fleeting things can fill the  infinite void in our hearts. 

We here at Missio Dei want nothing more than to love and serve our communityi as an opportunity to show the Gospel. In that way we can glorify God by making much of Him to everyone, and in turn be a church that is pouring itself out for the Glory of God and the good of man. We understand that this may leave you with a thousand questions, questions we are more than excited about working through with you. We have a reasonable faith that is the best news for all people, and we would love to talk to you about who Jesus is and what that means for us, so approach us at an event, call, text, tweet. Reach out however you want. We’d love to start a dialogue

Advent Season

[image via himbeerbel]

What does the word Advent bring to mind? 25 day calendar boxes filled with chocolates or little toys? Lighting special candles? The Final Fantasy VII movie, Advent Children (It's real, Google that that mess)? What you need to know is that Advent is important, hugely important, and it is far more than candles, presents, chocolate and retail nightmare known as Christmas.

Our culture is identity driven.

Advent is the season that celebrates the coming of Messiah, Jesus the Christ, into human history. The celebration traditionally begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas which we celebrate on December the 25th. However, more important than the what, is the Why. Why Advent season?

Our culture is identity driven. Don't feel bad, every culture that has had people in it has been identity driven. Unfortunately our culture finds it's identity in things. Labels, clothes, wealth, status, the cars we drive, the house we live in, our success, and on and on it goes. This mentality has transformed the holiday of Christmas into a consumer-crazed epidemic of stuff gathering, a slight twist to Scrooge's famous quote, it is harvest time for the retailers. That's why Advent is so important. It gives us a chance year by year to redeem the season with a different focus.

The consumer mentality has transformed the holiday of Christmas into a consumer-crazed epidemic.

Advent for us will be centered around Jesus coming into history to redeem it, and the future, for His glory. We will look at the Scripture and history to understand how this season can be redeemed and help shape a different time in our culture. Pastor Matt Chandler at The Village Church in Texas has great resources for this season, and we will be mirroring some of their seasonal philosophies (I am not big on the re-inventing the wheel since Ecclesiastes clearly tells us we can't). Follow the link here to get your mind engaged with where we're heading this Advent season.

Processional Forgiveness and The Lost Virtue

Long ago in a galaxy far away, I went to a very fundamental, very conservative school. We had 7th-12th grade chapel 3 times a week, with a rotating list of pastors and speakers. As clear as the type face in this article, I can still remember this phrase spoken by one of the speakers at our chapel.

"I'm sorry, I was wrong."

It was spoken in context of when we sin against each other. For my middle school years I thought that was in essence the words of forgiveness, but the realization of Biblical forgiveness has left that phrase lacking. So hear are a few steps that have really been helpful to me as God has brought His word to bear in my life.

Step 1:The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennet used to sit on one of my grandmom's end tables, mostly for decoration I think. All told it has some good stories for kids about many virtues, but in keeping with our Western world values it misses one virtue...HUMILITY. This is where forgiveness starts.

Step 2: (when we sin against someone) Martin Luther in his famous Wittenburg graffiti started off his Protestant Reformation (if only he knew) paper with this simple concept: The Christian life of one marked by humble repentance. That's cause he also knew it was marked by prideful sin. Feel free to include I'm sorry,I was wrong in your forgiveness request, but follow it up with, will you forgive me? I'm sorry I was wrong is only good by itself when you make a mistake (i.e. Spill soda on someone, cut someone you didn't see off while driving to work, etc), not when you sin.

Sometimes we think that being ready to forgive means the person is forgiven, but that is not true. (Click to tweet)

Step 2: (if sinned against) Be ready to forgive, and if necessary confront. To quote Rex from Toy Story "I don't like confrontation!", but seriously I don't. Of these two I am far more willing to readily forgive than to confront, but that darn Jesus who loves me so well is always confronting me with His Bible...ever have a similar experience? NOTE: Sometimes we think that being ready to forgive means the person is forgiven, but that is not true. Being ready to forgive requires us to humbly give up our feelings of vengeance, or retribution, and to complete the process requires the need for humility on the part of the one who committed the transgression initially. Also, just because the process is complete doesn't mean trust and relationship must resume as it was previously. There are times when the sin demands trust be rebuilt from the ground up, and the relationship may need to stop for a season and resume in a dramatically different way then previously. Don't let the process of forgiveness lead you to foolishness.

 Just because the (forgiveness) process is complete, doesn't mean trust and relationship must resume as it was previously. (Click to tweet)

Step 3: You cannot forget. God cannot forget. When we place our faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. God then views our sin through the lens of the atoning work of His Son. When the process of forgiveness has taken place you must view the forgiven sin of the offender through the lens of the Love of Jesus that He has for you and the offender.(**Remember previous "Also" comment) If you have been forgiven, don't let guilt and shame shape your life. Instead, let the forgiveness and love extended remind you of the Cross that saves you. Remember, Paul tells us that "It is your Kindness Lord that Leads us to Repentance". Let the Cross "spur you on to love and good works" that change who you were to who God calls you to be. 

From St. Louis With Love

I was just mulling over the content from the preaching of Dwayne Bond (thus the James Bond reference in the Title). He is an Acts 29 pastor in Charleotte, NC, and spoke on Lessons Learned from Church PLanting.
He gave us a list of things that we can be tempted in as we walk down the road to church planting (or anywhere in leadership for that matter):

Perform, Pretend, Control, Worry, Hate

The interesting thing that I kept thinking was how UN-remarkable the list itself was. Much like the qualifications for an Elder (1 Timothy 3:1-7 , Titus 1:5-9) are required of all believers elsewhere in the Bible, the difference in them is the call God would put on individuals lives. Thus this list is a potential pitfall to any in leadership of our formative years, but also to any that attend and find themselves called to the mission of Missio Dei. It is very insightful to lay these ideas out since for many of us we can relate with several if not all of these lines of thinking to the detriment of the gospel work in our lives.

Here is the core lie that we work from in each of these 5 bad fruits:

We perceive our reality in light of our expectations instead of re-calibrating our reality and expectations around Christ.

Perform

The snare in performance is when we allow our performance to make us feel good abut ourselves in our accomplishments. OR conversely we let our performance make us depressed because of our lack of accomplishments. Our identity is based on what we can and cant do, when instead it should be on Jesus and what He has and will do through us despite ourselves.

Pretend

In essence this is basically "painting on a happy face". Often in Christianity we like to look better than we actually are. We believe that by pretending to be "better" we will somehow magnify the amazing power of the Gospel into some Holy elixir that cleans up all our crap and turns it into roses. In reality all this does is rob the gospel of it's power by making it UN-appealing for all those people who are actually broken and know that there is no way they will ever be clean. These people are right, they never will be clean, so how bout we show them that we aren't actually clean, but simply holy, set apart by Jesus because of His perfection not ours.

Control

Somehow if we can exercise authority over all the areas in our lives we can maximize our opportunities and it will all get done right. NOT! In leadership this mentality robs people of the opportunity to grow, minister, fail, learn, and lead by giving opportunities and then re-claiming or scrapping them at the first sign of mis-managment or failure, or gives the opportunity but not the authority thus keeping it under our control as the leader (micro-management). In general when we attempt to control even our own lives it sets us up for the ultimate failure by replacing God with ourselves. When we are on the throne that is God's it only goes one way. BAD.

Worry

Have you ever worried about the worry that worrying causes? I know. It's bad, right? Worry in leadership sucks you dry! When you worry you take the Sovereignty of God away from Him and make Him as frail and capable of failure as you are. Let me help you out, whether in leadership or not, YOU WILL FAIL, hard and often. But God won't, in fact He is so the complete perfect that He takes our fails and makes than His successes (Genesis 45:4-8). Yep He's that good.

Hate 

Players gonna play; Haters gonna hate. In leadership this is when we seek out anyway we cna downplay the success that others have, or highlight our successes in comparison to others failures. The point is to blow up our ego while shattering others. This is a common practice whether inside or outside leadership. One-Uping, humiliation, false humility, sarcasm can all be tools of the well versed hater (all of which I feel i am very good at, unfortunately). The Kryptonite to Hating is contentment. Being content where God has us and in doing exactly what He has called us to. After all it's all about Jesus any way. His glory not my name.