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Our leadership team has now completed two meetings (via iChat) with our branding consultant, Matt Reiswig. Having Matt’s professional guidance is already proving very valuable to us. He’s been giving us homework, which mostly consists of answering a lot of questions about our goals and values, and the goals and values we want our church to have.
This process of choosing a name for what we’re doing feels a bit like naming a child. We want it to be meaningful as well as attractive, and one that we all can be on board with. It may take us a while, but we don’t want to rush through it.
In the time we’ve spent so far, we’ve already begun to hone and sharpen all the ideas and aspirations we have for this church plant. By the end, we expect to have an even clearer vision of exactly who we are and what our mission is to be.
We’ll keep you posted, and we look forward to the day when we can unveil the name we decide upon together. But have patience; we don’t know how long that may be!
My friend Jen sent me a message about an extraordinary place to eat here in Denver. It’s called “SAME Cafe” (So All Might Eat) and it has a very interesting approach.
View the TIME magazine article about it.
We’ll go this weekend and post a review.
I’ve never planted a church before, so I’m getting a little training called the MCAP. One of the discussions we recently had centered around the balance between Being and Doing. In the process of becoming like Jesus, there seems to be a pendulum that swings… from studying, learning, and ministering to our needs so we can Be like Jesus to putting faith into action, going and sharing our faith, serving others, and Doing what Jesus wants us to do. Anyway, if you’re interested in the discussion, here is the question and my response.
QUESTION: Describe some of the challenges and tensions of finding balance between Being and Doing – This relates to the tension of integrating aspects of spiritual formation and the missional impetus to go.
RESPONSE: I’ve always had a difficult time with discussions like this and splitting Being and Doing. For me, if you’re a soccer player, than you must play soccer. If you are a fisherman, than that means that you spend time fishing. You can’t Be a fisherman and not Do fishing. And you certainly can’t Do fishing very often without Being a fisherman. So, in my simplistic mind, you are what you do and you do what you are.
As it relates to spiritual formation I’ve noticed that some people are naturally drawn to intellectual discussions and others are more action-oriented. While my wife would be motivated to join a book club and discuss intellectual things, that would bore me to tears. I would be motivated to join a hiking club. In the first club, the members might enjoy discussing and learning about hiking and eventually take part in hiking and thereby they would be hikers. In the later club, the members would take part in hiking and might eventually read books on hiking and discuss hiking. They, too, would be hikers. So I don’t think there is a right way or a wrong way to become a hiker, but no matter how you come at it, if you are going to one day be an experienced, knowledgeable hiker, you have to eventually Be AND Do hiking.
In all of this rambling, I’m trying to say that while I understand the discussion of balance and tension of spiritual disciplines with doing missionary action, I believe that the two are so closely nit, that it’s like trying to split the double-helix of DNA. You can’t be an effective missionary without spiritual disciplines and you can’t have healthy spiritual disciplines without doing missional action. Some people might need more spurring in one side of the equation than the other, but eventually both sides should be working in tandem. My guess is that if you showed me a person who’s spiritually undisciplined, they wouldn’t be very effective in missional living. And if you showed me someone who is missionally effective, they’ve learned that spiritual disciplines are their lifeline.
It was beautiful outside, so we wolfed down lunch, threw the kids in swimsuits, and went to Southlands outdoor mall where we played in the fountain. Clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped, so we put on our towels and headed out.
We got home, put the kids down for a nap, and it started to hail. We had no idea that we had just dodged a bullet. Today, five tornados touched down in Colorado… the worst was at Southlands mall just 15 minutes after our departure. We’re thanking God for his protection over us as well as everyone at the mall.
Check out Jaclyn’s most recently published article here.
Click HERE or the pics on the left… we’ve updated our flickr stream with some recent photos of church friends, the zoo, hanging out, hiking, hairdos, and more.
This week, “Miguel,” our resident guitarist, brought along his instrument and we sang a few worship songs. The sound of the music and singing attracted the kids, who were soon in the center of our circle, dancing along as we sang. We were all smiling at their expression of joy; and I have to think that God was, too.
Sunscreen, sunglasses, and sunhats! Can't be too careful when you live about 20 yards from the sun.
The giraffes are Raya's favorites; especially right now when there are 3 babies.
This nice zoo worker had a piece of giraffe fur for the kids to feel. She answered all our questions about the giraffes. Raya was pretty entranced.
Just as we were about to leave, we saw this!
