I came upon an article about church planting and was encouraged by this:

Gary Rohrmayer, director of church planting for the Midwest Baptist Conference, told me of a 1,200-member church that planted a church. The new church quickly grew to 200, but in the same time period, the 1,200-member church grew to 1,600. Seeing that the established church had actually added more members, leaders wondered whether they should put their resources into expanding their own ministry instead of planting another church. When asked how many adult converts they had seen in that period, however, they named eight. The new church had about 100. “You [tell] me whether you should start another church or not,” Rohrmayer says.

Quoted from: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/september/36.68.html

At the Exponential Church Planting conference we went to in April, we both were excited by what God is doing in the U.S. and in the world right now through church planting.  God is a God of communities, and through new, innovative communities of faith He is drawing disciples to Himself.  It is awesome.  Jesus is at work; we’re just along for the ride!

In a time of financial stress on many marriages, why are there less people getting divorced?

The Wall Street Journal had an article today about it:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124743668592229179.html

The conclusion: they can’t afford it. Many couples separate but do not want to lose money on their house so end up living together.

Here is the REALLY INTERESTING part of the article: One couple is still living together, alternating sleeping on the couch or in the bed and here is what it says about them:

Both say they are actually getting along better now that they are no longer in an emotional marital relationship.

“We’re a lot kinder to each other,” says Ms. Word, adding, “We’re not so offended and bothered by each other.” Mr. Word says, “We’ve actually developed or redeveloped a friendship that I think had gotten lost a little bit.”

Interesting huh!? Suddenly they learn to extend grace and forgiveness to each other because they are forced to. Suddenly they can be selfless instead of selfish because there isn’t another option.

Until Death do us part

This is why Kaelin and I made sure divorce was never an option to even consider. If we’re free to go as we please, we’ll get to a point where its easier to break the relationship than to admit we’re wrong or to break up instead of going through the pain of forgiving the spouse of their sins against us. If we treat marriage as a permanent fixture, we’re forced to deal with ourselves – admitting our own failures and forgiving ourselves- and to forgive our spouse of their wrong doings, annoying habits, inadequacies to please our every need, or simply differences in preferences.

Tim Bock of Jesus People once said: At the heart of community is forgiveness. A marriage is one of the most intimate communities, and therefore requires the greatest level of forgiveness.

Here’s our July update letter, with info from the church planting assessment.

Click to view the PDF

To my sweet little guy!!

He's pointin'!

What a miracle you are!

Paul gets the Good Sport Award. Recently, I have been cutting his hair!  I “forgot” to take a picture of the first cut…  I realized if I were going to continue in my new skill I would need some instruction.  So I went to my sweet Aunt Char, who is a professional, for some lessons.  Here Paul is on my second try:

#2

Nice, but #3 was even better:

#3

Pretty good, huh?  Looking handsome!

I love the themes that Obama’s administration has brought to the public discourse.  Most especially I like the idea of unity amidst diversity (which is a Biblical concept).  We are a diverse nation with different histories, cultures, beliefs, and stories.  And yet through that we can gain a common thread of unity as a nation and people.

I find it odd how many agree with these sentiments and yet uphold a clear desire for DISunity and division.  We see this in how accusatory our culture is.  We no longer stand FOR something, we stand AGAINST something.  We accuse the other – the one different from ourselves – for all the evils of this world.

We see Christians blaming the Muslims and upholding a treatment of fear and hatred.  It’s pretty ridiculous to blame an entire people group for the atrocious acts of members of that group.  These Christian have lost Jesus’ command to love your neighbor and to not repay evil for evil.

Talk about forcing your beliefs on someone else and directly seeking division.

We see secular humanists blaming all the world’s evils on religion.  Bill Mahar does this a lot.  The British Humanist Association is running an anti-God campaign (read about that here).  Honestly now!  That’s simply absurd.  Most wars, genocides, and mass atrocities (such as the numerous ones last century) are rarely because of religion and almost always out of lust for power, disputes over resources (such as land), or ethnic/cultural hatred.  I wrote about the benefits of religion a few months ago.   Humanism has lost its upholding of human values to instead uphold dividing man.

Scripture tells us that Satan is the great accuser.  Our culture has embraced this Satanic value and is drawing lines that divide us.

Why is that?  Well, our culture has adopted the view that mankind is essentially “good”.  This means that evil must come from something external, and hence we blame things on people’s genetics or on ideas or on religion.  This naturally turns to blame and to pride.

In contrast, the Bible teaches us that God created us in His image, that we are created with the desire to be good and resemble the goodness of God.  However, we all choose to sin, to reject God and to lift up something else – usually ourselves – in God’s rightful place.  We are ALL sinners and we are the blame for the evil of this world.  This is OBVIOUS from looking at anyone, especially at ourselves!  No one in exempt, no man can boast.  Our only answer for that evil is Jesus, who conquered sin and death.  When you realize that, it naturally leads to humility and a value of forgiveness.

Us on the last day of the assessment

Last week we went to the Converge Church Planting Assessment (see FAQ).  We were “Conditionally Recommended“.  There are four results we could have gotten, ranging from Recommended to Not Recommended.  We got the 2nd to best result, which is really what we were hoping for.  It was great news to us and of much encouragement!  It means that a group of veteran church planters and ministry leaders believe that God has gifted us and called us to plant a church!  This drastically pushes us closer to planting and is a HUGE confirmation of what God has been leading us toward.

Thank you for all your prayers during that week! They were felt!  This was the first time that Luke was away from his parents with a babysitter for long periods of time.  He did really well!  Praise the Lord.  Kaelin was able to make all the important parts of the assessment.  God clearly orchestrated the week for us!

The assessment was fun but also intense. It was like being at an interview for four days straight.  There were 13 candidate couples and a few dozen assessors.  We preached, presented, went through interviews, and participated in group activities that were monitored by the assessors.  We also did some personality assessments (Golden, DISC, and StregthsFinder).  The whole process was to give the assessors insight into 16 major areas of our life and personality, including evangelism, leadership, devotional life, and marriage.

The week was a ton of fun and a great learning experience.  We were really blessed by all the wonderful, God-seeking couples at the assessment and pray that God will use all of them mightily for His Purposes.  We also were greatly encouraged by the assessors who were all loving, gracious people who Jesus has been using to build His church.

Us presenting 5 adjectives about each other. Kaelin said for Paul: Zeal, Forthright, Gentle, Observant, Knowledgable. Paul for Kaelin: Determined, Maximizing, Loving, Playful, Uplifting

You’re probably asking:  Now what?
As I said, this was a huge confirmation for the path we’ve been on for two years.  Paul will going going into this third and final year of LDI next year.  Through this next year of LDI we’ll work on our “conditions” – such as preaching experience and experience with other church plants.  So for that, we need to raise more support (or seek how else God wants to provide for us).  We also are going to be seeking God for more specific guidance on the details of what church planting will look like for us.

You may ask, Why Plant a Church?

Church planting is basically starting a new Christian Community – which is a church.  So why plant a church?  Simply enough: because there are lots of people who need Jesus (like over 70% of Americans, depending on whose stats you use).  Jesus is going to keep building His church until He returns, and since the time of the Apostle Paul, He has worked through planting new Christian communities (Church planting) or growing established communities.  Jesus brings lost people to Himself in new churches, especially here in America.  On average, for an American church over 10 years old, 1 person comes to Christ for every 89 people in the church.  In a church plant that is less than 3 years old, 1 person comes to Jesus for every 3 people in the church.  “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor 1:27).  In the humble circumstances of church plants that have less resources and less people, God often works mightily.

Ultimately, people come to know Jesus by seeing Jesus in Christ’s followers.  Church plants are exciting times where Christians are mobilized to engage, love, and serve the world around them.  Starting a church afresh also creates new ways for Christians to connect with the lost culture around them and to build relationships with the broken souls God puts in their path.  Thus, a church plant helps share Jesus with more people who need Him!

I recently came upon an article about an Amish bank run in the Wall Street Journal.  The article revealed about how modernity is creeping into Amish culture.

This is particularly interesting because the Amish set up their religious practice around the idea of separation from the world.  They don’t think technology is evil, but they value community and its influence on faith; thus, they have sought to control what technologies they adopt and how they interact with the world.

Mervin making mattresses out of a workshop on his property.

As the price of land has gone up, the Amish moved more and more into manufacturing positions, originally in home-based woodworking but then more started working at nearby manufacturing plants.  Earning upwards of $50 an hour and working 12 hour days, they became affluent and – naturally – fell into consumerism, buying things they didn’t need or acquiring extravagant things like homes in Florida or velvet lined carriages.  The article mentions how as affluence and consumerism has gone up, community – such as the value of helping neighbors and sharing either one another – has languished.

This highlights to me the failure of “religion” - religion being defined as “practices” that people must follow.  Ultimately, that’s merely legalism; it seeks to control behavior but does not get at the heart.  I know, because I’ve fallen into this many times!  The Amish tried to control behavior in order to protect the heart of their people (which is admirable), but their hearts naturally still fell into sin and yet still hold to their legalistic standards (as the Bible predicts, see Romans 7).  Thus, we have Amish people still driving horse and buggy but decking it out with velvet and LED lights.  They are abiding by the rules but totally missing the heart behind why those standards were set.  They probably think they are justified BECAUSE they are following the rules, being completely ignorant of the sin of their heart.

This highlights what the Bible declares as most important: our relationship with God. Christianity is NOT about following specific practices: doing this or not doing that.  Nothing we DO earns our way to God; we can never perform perfect enough to reach God.  It’s about loving Jesus because He first loved us and gave His life to bring us out of our sin and into God’s holy presence.  If we really believe that and strive for that, it totally flips our understanding of “religion”.