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What does deep joy look like?

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During his address to a joint session of Congress, President Trump honored Carryn Owens, the widow of a U.S. Navy Special Operator, Senior Chief William ‘Ryan’ Owens who was killed in a raid on Yemen on Jan. 25.  At that moment, every person in the House chamber, democrat and republican, stood, looked over to Carryn and began applauding.  And, the spontaneous applause continued for over two minutes.  Something remarkable was going on in those minutes!

What emotion was Carryn experiencing during that time?  Probably many.  But, I want to suggest that at her core, the predominant emotion was deep joy.  Let me explain.  In the last year, I’ve learned a definition of joy that has captured me.  “Joy is what my brain experiences when I’m with someone who is glad to be with me.”  I believe that, in the video below, we are witnessing over 500 national leaders saying, “We are glad to be with you even (or, maybe, especially) in your great sadness.  We value and honor you and the sacrifice that you and your husband have made.” And, what we see on her face, whether she could have named it or not, was deep joy.

This quality of joy is at the heart of the vision of the LK10 Community.  We are joining God to see a “revolution of joy” take place around the world.  The epicenters of this revolution are high joy families and groups (sometimes called house churches, etc.)  Places where people communicate that they are glad to be with us regardless of what we are feeling.  And, the starting place for people who want to join this revolution is our basic six week course called Church 101.  Interested?  Go here for more information and to sign up.

Now, watch this short video of Carryn.  (Click on the photo.)  See if you think this qualifies as a picture of deep joy. Pay attention to what you feel as you watch this (joy is contagious!).

 

 

Transforming America. 9. “Looks like he’s going to fire me.”

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Chapter Nine.  “Looks like he is going to fire me”

Note:  To read earlier chapters, go here and scroll down.

Note:  Don’t forget to add your comments/suggestions in the “Leave a Reply” section.

So, these three ideas are beginning to live in my head.  Church as family.  A family where everyone contributes when they gather.  And, most importantly, Jesus as the head, the leader, the master of ceremonies especially when we gather.  But, what in the world would this look like in actual practice?

Remember that, at this time in the late 1980s, I’m the Director of Adult Ministries in a megachurch.  Overseeing small groups, men’s ministry, women’s ministry, adult Sunday School.  One of the areas that I was personally involved with was one particular adult Sunday School class.  At that time, we had a need to do something for older (40+) singles.  So, I started a Sunday School class for this age group.  We began with about 15 people.

I explained to them that this class would be a little different from other classes.  Rather than just another teaching/lecture experience, we were going to explore this idea of learning to listen to Jesus and see what it would mean for Him to lead the class.  My wife, Tamela, was a huge help.  Her gift of hospitality helped create a warm, family-like environment.  And, her gift of worship often led us into spontaneous worship and praise.  (Not things that happened in our standard adult Sunday School classes!)

As this class meet each Sunday morning, a number of things began to occur.  People, in addition to older singles, began to show up.  Younger singles, married people.  It seemed that this was one of the only places in the church where there was both teaching and practice around the idea of listening to Jesus.  Apparently others were hungry for this kind of intimacy with the Lord.

The number of people attending this class began to increase.  Within six months, we had over 125 people and had to move to a larger room.  This was now the largest adult Sunday School class in the church.

Listening to the Lord impacted people on many levels.  Some weeks, for instance, He encountered their hearts in such a way that some began to weep.  This was unheard of in our church.  After all, as Presbyterians, we were God’s “frozen chosen”!

One day, one of the elders asked to meet with me.  She explained that crying in a Sunday School class was inappropriate and that I should put a stop to that.  I told her that it was Jesus doing this not me.  And, besides, I didn’t know how to stop it.

Some time after that, the senior pastor asked to have lunch with me.  There, at the restaurant, he said, “So, John, my sense is that your vision for church is different from my vision.”

At this point, I’m starting to feel scared.  I’m thinking to myself,  “Looks like he is going to fire me.”

To my amazement, he went a different direction.  “I know you would never intentionally be divisive.  But, I think it would be best if you planted a new church.  Take as many people from our church as you can.  You can continue in your current position and start meeting with your people on Sunday evenings here at our building.  When you are ready, you can launch out.  All the money given at your Sunday night meeting will go into an escrow account for your new church.  And, we will pay your salary for a year after you leave.

As I left that lunch, I was a jumble of emotions.  Stunned and scared.  I had never thought about planting a church and had no idea how to do it.  At the same time, I was extremely grateful.  What a gracious offer the senior pastor was giving me!  And, I was intrigued.  It seemed that the Lord was giving me complete freedom and an ideal situation to try and live out these new found values.  But, how would I do this?

Question to discuss with the Lord and your other friends:  When was a time when He put you in a situation that you were totally unprepared for?  What emotions did you feel?

Transforming America 8. His disciples would have laughed at this

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Chapter Eight.  His disciples would have laughed at this

Note:  To read earlier chapters, go here and scroll down.

Note:   It may look like I skipped from chapter six to chapter eight. Don’t worry.  You haven’t missed a chapter. I just reordered the how they are numbered.

Note:  Don’t forget to add your comments/suggestions in the “Leave a Reply” section.

The third aspect of the picture of church in Jesus’ head began to be revealed in this statement…

“Where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them.”⁠1

Whenever even two people meet in Jesus name,⁠2 He pictured Himself being present.  That was the picture in His head.  In one sense, this was not new to me.  What was new was the realization for the first time that, in my picture, Jesus was passively present.  As I mentioned in Chapter Two, he was present as the Honored Guest.  What was also new was the realization that, in His picture, He was actively present.

Good hermeneutics⁠3 required that I should understand this verse, first of all, from the perspective of those who originally heard Jesus speak these words.  It dawned on me that these men had no concept of Jesus being passively present.

See if you can imagine this picture…  A group of the disciples come to Jesus and say to Him, “So, Jesus, we’ve assessed the needs of this crowd.  Based on that we have set some goals and developed a program to meet those goals.  We plan to recruit some qualified people to help and then execute the program.  After that, we’ll evaluate how it went and make some new plans.  Oh, and by the way, would you bless this please.”

Hard to picture isn’t it?  The original disciples would have laughed at this picture.  “The Jesus we know is our Lord, our Leader.  He is actively present and He called us to follow Him.  He makes the plans not us.  In fact, often what He does and where He leads we would never have thought of.  We were surprised when he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well.  We were taken off guard when He called Matthew, the tax collector, to join us as His disciples.  And, we were shocked when He said that He would go to Jerusalem and die.  No, our main job is to find out what He is doing and join Him in that.”

I began to see that what I had been trained to do since I had become a follower of Jesus at the age of 15 reflected the first scenario above.  I was highly skilled at developing programs to build the church.  What I wasn’t good at was listening to Jesus to find out what He was doing.

Some years later, a rather shocking term came to mind that described how I had been trained to do ministry.  I saw that I had been a “functional deist”.  A deist was a person who believed that there was a God.  But, that after He created the world, He withdrew and it was now our job to figure out important principles and make decisions based on those.  This was, in actuality, very similar to the idea of a passive Jesus.  I would have vigorously denied that label of “deist” and yet, in practice, that was largely how I functioned.

The picture of church in Jesus’ head was beginning to live in my head.  The church was family.  Every member contributed when they gathered.  And, Jesus was actively present.  That is, He was the Leader and He brought the agenda.  But, how to put these things into practice in the context of institutional church?  That was to be my question for the next ten years.

Question to discuss with the Lord and your other friends:  Is Jesus actively or passively present in your church.  Who brings the agenda?

1 Mt. 18:20.  The means for this become clear in John 14:16-17 where Jesus explains that the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete, “lives in you and will be with you”.

2 Perhaps this is the most basic expression of church, a “church of two”. An embryonic church?   I’ll say more about the implications of this concept later in the book.

3 This is a fancy word I learned in seminary.  It refers to the theory and method of interpreting a text.  The first principle is that you must understand what the words meant to the original speaker and the original listeners.

Transforming America: 6. Everyone???

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Chapter Six.  Everyone???

Note:  To read earlier chapters, go here and scroll down.

What was the picture of church in Jesus’ head?  The second part of the answer to that question came when I discovered a verse that I had never seen before.  I had been a Christian for 25 years, I had gone to seminary, I had heard thousands of sermons and talks but I had never heard anyone refer to this verse.  Yet, this verse clearly described what happened when the early church met.  (These were the churches started by those who had learned from Jesus.)  Why had I never seen this before?  Why had no one taught on this?  I think it was that paradigm thing again.  I (we) had been reading the Bible through a particular lens and, as a result, some things were simply invisible.  They were there but I (we) couldn’t see them.  Here’s the verse…

“When you come together, brothers, everyone has a word of instruction, a hymn, a revelation, a tongue, an interpretation.  Let all these things be done for the edification of the church.”  1 Cor. 14:26.

I found that he word for “come together” in the Greek was used six times in 1 Corinthians.  And, every time it referred to the church gathering.   So, this was a picture of the churches started by the guys that had hung out with Jesus.  This must have been what was in His mind for church!

Sunerchesthe.  sun = together.  erchomai = to come.  “To come together, to assemble.  1 Cor 11:17, 18, 20, 33, 34; 14:23, 26

The word in this verse that hit me like a ton of bricks was “everyone”.  When the churches in the New Testament met, everyone contributed something.  Really?  This pattern was so different from what I had learned and what I was implementing.  I began to see that what I had been doing might best be called  “spectator church” whereas the New Testament practice would be called “participatory church”.

Week after week, we trained people by our practice to be good spectators!  Oh, we talked about the “priesthood of all believers” but in our most important meeting, what we called “church”, we practiced something entirely different.  Only a very few (the preacher, the worship leader, etc.) were able to function as priests.

I tried to imagine someone practicing 1 Cor 14:26 in one of our four carefully orchestrated services.  What would happen if someone stood up in the middle of the service and said “Excuse me, Pastor, I have a passage of Scripture to share (or a song to sing, or a testimony to share, etc.)”  I couldn’t even picture it.  We didn’t have time for that and, no doubt, that person would have been asked to sit down or even asked to leave.

Apparently, Jesus had a high value for  “spiritual families” where everyone had a voice.  Where everyone contributed something in order to see the whole group, the church, become stronger.  Somehow this was a key element in making them “vibrant”,  pulsing with life.  I really didn’t know how to do church this way but I felt instinctively that this was important and it was something I needed to pursue.

Question to discuss with the Lord and your other friends:  Can you imagine regular  family gatherings where only one or two people spoke.  Where everyone else was a spectator every time the family came together?

Photo below:  Me preaching at a typical Sunday “church service”.  Sometime in the 1970s.  (Before my time on staff of a megachurch.)  Spectator church!

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