So I have this suspicion that keeps sneaking up on me.  I don’t like it but I just can’t keep dismissing the thought. It haunts me to the point that I think it might be true.  True of me.  Maybe true of others.

I have a feeling many of us who call ourselves Jesus followers worship a God who actually doesn’t exit.

The issue is not my orthodoxy.  I believe God is real and the Bible is deadly accurate.  Here’s what I fear: the version of God myself and others engage most days is off the mark.  Off center.  Not actually who He is.  Not the God the Bible actually reveals.

You ever get the feeling that the "version" of Jesus you have settled for or that someone pushed on you is not the real deal?  When you read the Bible, ever get confronted by surprises that just don’t fit the concept of God you’ve carried in your mind?  Do you ever wonder if any of us worships the real Jesus?

In the next week or so, I want to explore this possibility with you.

Let’s get this rolling….anyone else haunted by this possibility?

Last week we had some amazing conversation about welcoming new guests.  It was fantastic dialogue. 

As new people walk through the door though, many of them are families.  I know as I walked through neighbourhoods in Barrie on Saturday leaving doorhangers on peoples doors, it was pretty much commonplace that every house had kids under 10.  And about 92% of those families don’t go to church.  And of the 8% who do, how many families feel really equipped to lead their kids spiritually?

At Connexus, being a church that engages families is critically important.  Not just engaging them Sunday…but equipping them to engage spiritual and moral issues at home.  Tomorrow, I fly out to Seattle to spend two days with Reggie Joiner and the great folks at Orange to help Seattle area church leaders better engage families. 

The best way to figure out how to help families is to hear from families.  So now that the kids are back in school, I’d love your reflections on the success and struggles your having in engaging your kids spiritually at home.  What’s working?  What’s not?  How easy is it to engage spiritual questions? What could church leaders do that would help you do a better job?

We’re all ears for our ministry here at Connexus and beyond into the wider church.

Surfing the neighbourhoods last weekend just reminded me deeply how much work we have left to do in this area!

Last week at Connexus, we did something called Heart Break.  You can read about it here.  Essentially, we spent seven days in directed prayer, asking God to make our hearts break over the things that break his heart.  We did some unusual things (praying for each family in two cities, reaching out to 2000 families and more…)

But many of us also fasted.  And that’s what the buzz was about this weekend.  A surprising number of people gave up food for the week.  Others surrendered caffeine, e-bay, facebook, music, radio and so much more.  The bottom line was to simply fast something that you would notice was "missing" on a daily basis, and use its absence as a prompting to spend time with God.  I think it genuinely moved people in unexpected ways.  And that can only be good.

Three things occur to me as I stepped back into "normal" this weekend. 

1. My life is driven by a ton of routine.  Like most people, I do a lot of the same thing day in day out.
2. Apart from my morning time with God, there is little down time in my life.
3. I have issues (lots) that I need to keep working on with God.

This thought occurred to me: what if we fasted more (not just food, people gotta eat) to deal with those things we know God wants to deal with in our lives?  What if I gave up something smaller than all food this week or somehow broke routine, and each time I broke routine or noticed what I was missing I brought that issue to God in prayer?

This week, I think I’m going to give up chewing gum for seven days or so.  I love gum.  I chew it all the time.  I am hoping it will remind me to work on one issue with God this week that I feel he’s moving me to respond to.  Every time I reach for gum, I’ll reach for Him instead.

What do you think?  Does it hold promise?  Can you see yourself doing
this?  Would it help you? Think we would change more in the next seven days than in a
typical seven days?

You can pretty much be guaranteed it will happen at some point this month in your church, no matter what kind of church you are a part of.  Somebody will walk in for the first time.  Some with friends, some all by themselves.

The discussion about welcoming people to church this week on the blog has been envigorating, challenging and thought provoking.  I’m not done thinking through it and I’m glad you’re still feeding back!

Here’s what’s on my heart after a week of fasting and more directed prayer: people’s stories. 

I met with a guy this week who two weeks ago thought about killing himself. I got to share his story.

Someone I know saw a guy last week who looked like he had it all together – tons of money, in great shape.  But he was empty inside beyond belief.  His family had left him.  He felt incredibly successful, and unbelievably alone. When my friend said he felt like he should give him a hug (a man hug), the guy broke down and started crying, saying he had been waiting for so long for someone to care about him.

As I drove through traffic today I kept looking at the people around me and asked God "What’s their story?"  He knows them all.  As I prayed through four pages of the Barrie phone book I kept asking, "God, what’s their story?"  Linda is a story…I am a story…you are a story.

Somebody’s story is going to walk into your church this month.  For some of us, that’s one person.  For others, dozens of stories.  For some churches, hundreds and even thousands of new stories will walk in the door.

Are you ready?  As Chris said on the blog, church has got to be about more than just the "show" or even the experience.  Are you ready to engage someone’s story?  Are we ready as a community to embrace people and hear their story enough to let God write a new chapter, even a new ending?

In this province alone, thousands of people will try God one more time (or for the first time) this weekend.  You ready?  It would break God’s heart, I think, if we weren’t.

Praying about all this as we head into the weekend, for you and for us.

God write stories. 

I don’t know how many of you read the comments when you’re on a blog, but I didn’t want you to miss this one. I wish every church leader could read this comment.

This is from Linda, who started attending one of our campuses a few months ago.  She is brand new to church.  The question she’s struggling with is why she’s not sure she fits in yet. The metaphor she uses to describe her experience is a perspective I honestly have never heard before.  Here are her words, which she wrote in response to my post earlier this week:

I’ve been trying to think how I can
explain why I still feel a bit out of place going to church. I
understand that people who have attended church on and off all their
lives wouldn’t (couldn’t) understand what it’s like for someone who has
never been. So here’s the best way I can explain it.

You get invited to a party with
friend. You don’t know the host of the party, but your friend has a
close, personal relationship with him, and they said everyone is
welcome. So you go, not knowing what to expect, and not knowing the
host.

What you find is amazing, welcoming people, a great environment
to meet new people that is not intimidating and info about how to meet
the host. However, you still haven’t met the host of the party. That
makes you feel a bit uncomfortable, because you’re still not sure what
he’s like.

So the next week, the same host has a party, and you go
back. Week after week this happens. But you still haven’t really, truly
met the host. Yet, everyone else at the party has such an amazing and
loving relationship with him. You would love to have the same
relationship, but are still unsure how to meet him.

If you read her entire comment, you’ll see more layers to it. She’s loving our Sundays but not quite ready for community group.  Maybe we need a step (like Starting Point) for people like Linda (hope to begin offering that in the next 12 months). 

But here are two thoughts that are in my head as I process this:

• Over the summer, I feel I have been as clear as I’ve ever been about salvation and how to begin a relationship with Jesus, the host (plus we ran Simple by Andy Stanley in July – an unbelievable explanation of what it is to be a follower of Jesus).  I’m not sure I currently know how to be clearer on how to have a relationship with Jesus.  Question: do our metaphors for relationship with Jesus work anymore, or do we need new ways of communicating how to enter a relationship with Jesus Christ? Are we preachers still using a language that primarily speaks to the already convinced?
  

• Is there some way our Sunday community could better come around folks like Linda to help answer her questions?  Are we either a) too hesitant to have spiritual conversations in our foyers or b) too over-the-top when we do (every knee bowed, every eye closed…you are going to give your life to Jesus…:0))

How does Linda’s metaphor make you think in fresh ways?  Do we need new ways of talking about faith with people who are new?  What would they be?  How can the gathering community play a more helpful role?

Fire away. I’m all ears.

Church leaders like me are particularly prone to believing that certain things make people keep coming back to a church after they start attending. 

I’m tempted to believe that relevance alone can do it.  Or that being cool or cutting edge can do it.  Or that having great music or great preaching or great kids ministry or great production or great coffee or great facilities or great parking or great toilets (kidding, but I guess you can’t have bad toilets) will make a church irresistible.   And to one extent or another, all of those matter.

But the video game your 12 year old thought was totally cool 16 months ago is on the garage sale pile for next weekend.  Cool doesn’t last.  Good restaurants have better toilets than most churches (and granite countertops too).  Someone pointed out that far and away churches in North America have the best communicators.  Listened to any politician other than Barak Obama speak?  Most preachers can do better than our Prime Minister or any leader of the opposition.

iTunes has better music than most churches (although I love our worship team and Andy Walker!!!).  Your iPod can tune you into the best communicators in North America or the globe for free each week. 

What makes people stick in churches?  Relationships.

Authentic relationships with God. Authentic relationships with people.  That’s why our kids ministry is built not on class rooms, but on groups.  That’s why we are going to try even harder to connect their parents this fall.  That’s why we do little things: like at both campuses last month moving coffee from a into more optimal places in the foyer so people could linger longer and connect better.  And big things….like Group Link. It’s why we’re nutso passionate about getting people into groups (Group Link @ Connexus is September 21st) – so they can grow in their relationship with Jesus and each other.  Not so they can be part of an institution, but so that their relationship with Christ and relationship with people can grow.

This is big on my mind this weekend, not just for us but for all churches.  Many of us in this part of the country/continent expect lots
of people to come back to church and come out to church for the first
time this weekend.

So we’ll keep cleaning toilets and preaching as best we can and knocking music out of the park as often as we can and brewing better coffee. But above all, we want to set our priority
on growing our relationships with God and each other. If we set that in our hearts this weekend, I wonder what will happen?

What’s your experience of trying to connect at church (ours or others), and what encourages you to form meaningful relationships?

I don’t want to clog up the Connexus blog with all kinds of extra thoughts, so I thought I’d share a bit more here.  If you want to know what’s happening this week at Connexus, check this out and follow updates here.  We’re fasting and praying over the things that break the heart of God this week.

Ten of us gathered to pray this morning at a high school in Barrie.  Wondered whether we’d fill the hour.  Had no trouble with that.  And subjectively, I think I began to feel more of God’s heart for families.  Barrie and area has just over 170,000 people in it.  Of those, here are the demographics for under 24s:

• 11,070 college aged people 20-24
• 12,960 high school aged teens
• 26,235 elementary aged kids
• 10,830 preschoolers

I started to imagine what would happen if those numbers were written on the back of every volunteer’s name badge in our family ministry environments.  We might be caring for a dozen or two children in Waumba Land each Sunday, and  we would congratulate ourselves for sure if we reached 150 kids in Waumba Land.  But what if each Sunday we realized that there were 10,830 preschooler in our community and most don’t go to church (only 8% do)?

Would our hearts start to break more each Sunday if we realized that there are over 26,000 elementary aged kids in Barrie? Almost 13,000 high school kids?  11,000 college kids?  Those numbers are starting to grip me….  In Orillia, there are over 9,000 people aged 24 and under.  The math again becomes overwhelming.

What about their families?  What about their parents?  What’s going on in those homes?

I feel like we barely have our toe in the pond on reaching families…but then we worship a God who breaks rules and walks on water. 

What would motivate us better to care for families in our communities better? Today, I’m praying God would bust my heart over this stuff more than its ever been busted.