Thanks for your patience in checking back on the blog only to find...old posts.  There are a bunch of reasons, but none of them really matter.  The bottom line is, a new site is in the works.

In the next few weeks we'll be relaunching the blog with some new features, some new dialogue and a fresh look.

Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience.  It will be great to connect regularly again. Sorry it's taken so long!

PS.  Totally excited about the launch of a new ministry 'year' in a few weeks after Labour Day! 

Carey

More and more, I believe this is true:  Who we are are will always set the limits on what we can do. 

I used to think that competency trumped everything.  But ultimately, I think character trumps competency. 

You don't have to be a follower of Jesus to know how important character is.  Witness public reaction to A-Rod and Michael Phelps in the last few days.  Character trumps competency - again. 

I am always looking for ways to grow my abilities - to be a better leader, to be a better preacher, to be a better dad, a better husband.  But in each of those fields, I need to put one quest above them all: to have a character more deeply shaped by Christ.

What do you think about character and accomplishment?  What helps you grow your character? 

Our goal in this series is to reflect the revolutionary love of God in Jesus with love that is tangible and reaches beyond ourselves.

We're supporting various causes, from local food banks and toy drives, to buying mosquito nets to save kids lives in Liberia, to building a health clinic in Guatemala, to raising money to do a better job at our local mission in 2009.  In short, we're asking people to be more generous than they have ever been before. 

Reflections so far:

• I am amazed at how much preaching I've done and how much preaching I've heard that's actually aimed at changing thinking.  Even though there is always a "to do", it just seems small scale compared to what is happening in this series.  People are doing good, not just thinking about doing good.  I love it.  What would happen if preaching had that impact more constantly?

• Many people don't go to church because Christians don't do what Christians are supposed to do.

• Being generous begets more generosity. My instinct (that I ignored) was that people might give to one cause, but not to multiple causes.  Wrong.  Heading into week three of the project, people seem to be ramping up in generosity, not scaling back. So proud of them!

• One of the failures of recent Christianity is its failure to be tangible or practical (in the sense that it impacts daily life).  Thinking about this one big time.

Any Connexus-ers want to talk about your reflections?  Any in the wider community want to share your thoughts?

Looking forward to week three coming up.  And, oh, if you want to save a child for malaria for $7...click here.

Why is it we can treat strangers better than we treat the people we know best?  Likely because we haven't judged them yet.

That's why so many couples find the early years are the best years - no long history of judgment there.  What if we lived every day with our spouse like it was our first date?  What if we gave everyone we knew the benefit of the doubt - the same courtesy most of us would extend to strangers?  What if we forgave the past in a way that allowed us to be truly alive in the present?

That's my challenge today.  Got a full day to embrace it.

I wanted to share my reflections on it too.  A year ago I might have disagreed with him.  Not so much any more.

In the church I was with before Connexus,
we had done a lot of marketing (at least for Central Ontario).  We did
flyers, billboards, radio ads and more to invite people to church.  We
always said the best way we wanted to grow was through personal
invitation, but we marketed anyway.

Without a doubt, people with
no church background came to church because of our marketing, and some
of them came to faith.  That's awesome and I wouldn't trade it for
anything.

We have marketed less since starting Connexus. 
Frankly, we didn't do an ideological shift.  We just stacked up our
first year expenses and an easy thing to not spend money on was
marketing. So we cut it.  We've done a couple of small flyer drops and
one full page ad (last Christmas) - hardly enough to register one drop
in the ocean of material people see.  Other than a weekly radio show we
do, we don't spend any money on marketing regularly.

Being a year with almost no marketing though, I think I've learned some of Tony's lessons and a few more. 

• When you don't market, the only way to grow your mission is to have people invite friends. 
  When you rent theaters half a day a week to host church, you gain
  little profile. People hear about us now because someone who is excited
  about Jesus and the environments at Connexus tells someone else.  Only
  now, a year later, are we starting to get any recognition by reputation
  in the community.

• Once we cut our marketing, we realized fewer people were telling
  their friends about Connexus or what it meant to follow Jesus than we
  had assumed.  It's given us a chance to cast vision far more clearly with our folks.

• When people don't invite their friends, one of two things has happened:
  • You're not doing a good enough job in realizing your true mission as a church.
  • They've been in a Christian bubble too long and have forgotten what it's all about.

• Not marketing made me and others reflect on our purpose. 
  Jesus said
  we would be known as his followers by our love, not by our image. But
  it's easier to promote than to really love.  I hope our next series (Revolutionary Love)
  might begin to put our toe in the pond on loving the wider community
  unconditionally.  I hope in a year we are known by our forgiveness,
  love and grace.  You don't need to market that.  It sells itself.

• We realized that marketing really attracts church people. 
  Is it that they want to be associated with successful churches?  But we
  are keenly aware that our mission is not to suck other churches dry,
  but to suck the malls, beaches, hockey rinks and ski hills dry.   Not
  marketing helps us NOT attract people from other churches.  That's good.

• I think in the end, we stopped asking people to "be" the church.
  If you look at the early church, they grew because Christ was with them
  and they loved and gave radically.  They didn't mail people flyers. It
  makes me ask whether we are bold enough to actually be the church in
  our culture, to love as radically as Jesus loved.

I don't want to come across as owning all this stuff yet.  It's a
growing edge for me.  I want to be more radical and bold in my faith,
not less.  And if this portable church is going to impact a community,
word of mouth is a great way to go.

I know at both our campuses people show up every weekend because somebody told them about Connexus.  That excites me. 

Maybe we are becoming the church. 

I was a little surprised (and excited) when we polled the room at the Orange Tour stop in LA Friday to discover that 75% of the people in the house had planted a church within the last year.  That's exciting.  California is a beautiful state geographically and naturally, but deeply secular the moment you get around people.  God just seems to have been vacuumed out of the ether. 

Friday night I had dinner with Raf, a church planter from Poland.  As we talked about his country, I learned there were 40 million people, 70% of whom don't go to church.  To serve those 40 million people are only 400 evangelical churches (all the other churches are Roman Catholic).  400 evangelical churches - 40 million people.  The average evangelical church has 40 people.  And according to Raf, the secular landscape there is even deeper than in California or even Canada.

I had some great conversations with so many leaders these last few days - people who are deeply committed to making an impact on their home territory for the Gospel. 

It made me really grateful for the team at home at Connexus.  A few lead pastors and I swapped theater church stories, and I continue to thank God that people at home are so willing to sacrifice so much so people can have a full relationship with God. 

Church planting is hard work.  You sacrifice just about everything and are guaranteed nothing in return.  But I LOVE people who take that risk.  Glad to be heading home to hang out with hundreds of folks who have done just that in Central Ontario.

I've been so grateful for the time with him.  And I have really appreciated a chance to explore a bit of the West, having never been here before.  We had a crazy itinerary, but by far the highlight for me has been our day trip into Yosemite Valley National Park. It's like God did some extra work on the West Coast.  Never seen so much natural beauty before. 

I'm not by nature a "nature" guy, but Yosemite in particular amazed me.  In fact, nature itself has been the highlight of this trip.  While we dropped by Las Vegas and spent several days in Hollywood, Santa Monica and even got into a taping of the Tonight Show,  the time in Yosemite, Death Valley and the Grand Canyon stunned me to new levels. The pictures barely convey the experience.  Some of you know what I'm talking about because you've been there, but for a guy whose spent all his life in Central Canada or the east coast, this was refreshing and majestic.

When your breath gets taken away at almost every turn, it does something to your theology.  At least it does something to mine.  It gives me a deeper awe, wonder and trust that I don't want to lose when I get back home.  Remember when the Grinch's heart grew three sizes one day?  I think my heart did that (hope I'm not a grinch, though...).

It also brought to life three phrases we use all the time at Connexus when teaching our kids about Christ:  wonder, discovery and passion.   From pre-schooler through to high school students, we want our kids to develop a wonder about God, to discover Him, and to passionately pursue and serve Him.  This week, I've felt like the student again.  It's been so wonderful.

What gives you a sense of wonder, discovery or passion? 

Like just about everyone else, I was glued to the tv last night watching election results come in. I watched Barack Obama make yet another exceptional speech last night.  Whatever you think about Obama's win, the man has to be one of the greatest orators in a generation, if not in a century. 

But beyond that, I was watching the crowd.  Like I can't remember seeing in a long time, I think I saw hope in people's eyes as 100,000 people gathered in Chicago.  Not just tears of joy.  Not just the smiles that comes with victory.  But I think I saw hope.  I think I saw in people a belief that things are going to get better.  That's been so rare lately in either Canada or the US. 

It reminded me of how important hope is.  How much we need it not just in our culture, but in the church.  I think hope happens when people begin to believe that tomorrow can be better than today.  Hope happens when we realize we can accomplish more together under great leadership than we can on our own.  Hope happens when we realize there is more power in "us" than in "me".

And it got me thinking about our faith.  Of any group, followers of Jesus have more to hope for than anyone.  Under Christ's leadership we can accomplish far more than we ever could on our own, and that we trust Him to do what He has promised.

I'm praying today for the new president elect and for our prime minister, because the scripture asks us to pray for our leaders.   But I'm also praying that we would learn to hope in God at such a profound level that even now, we believe we can help make tomorrow better than today under Christ's great leadership.

Hope is soooo wonderful to have.  What fuels your hope?  What pours a wet blanket on it?

My 16 year old son Jordan and I in town for the Orange Tour later this week and decided to explore the area.  Kind of a father and son road trip.  It's so great to finally do one!

We decided to head up to Santa Monica and scooted over to Hollywood, accidentally found Beverly Hills and spent time at Malibu.  All places we'd heard about but never been to.  I had never quite been in a place that felt, honestly, so secular before.  Not a trace of God.  Almost no churches (I know there are all kinds of mega churches in California but you can't see them driving around). 

Probably never seen so many square miles of affluence in one region either.  Jordan and I had dinner in Hollywood and happened to hear about a street party on Santa Monica Boulevard that night.  We went, and I have to tell you, it was a party.  A huge party.  Tons of fun, and also the center of the gay community in Hollywood.  Two things happened: I found myself really grateful for the people around us. My heart went out to them (unlike the guy with the placard on the corner who was telling them they were all evil and God was going to kill them unless they repent.) And second, I wondered how on earth you would become effective at ministering in this kind of culture?

I know a few church leaders in Southern California and follow a few others.  It gave me a whole new appreciation for what our friends at River Park Church in Ventura County and Discovery Church in Simi Valley (we worshiped with them this past weekend) are trying to do.  It gave me a whole new appreciation for Erwin McManus' decision to open Mosaic's services at the Mayan Nightclub to begin conversations with Hollywood about Jesus.  Every Sunday, their e-teams scrape urine, feces and debris from the walls and washrooms so worship can happen there a few minutes later.

Usually, when you meet people where they are at, it's easier to begin a conversation.  If you start with grace, it's amazing where the dialogue can go.

Got me thinking about how to do a better job meeting people at home where they are at.  Made me really grateful that we're at least meeting in theaters...where thousands of people go every week in our little communities to laugh, cry, be entertained and watch films about life. 

What do you think?  How can we better engage the culture where it lives?