03.06.21 - week 95
are you ready for the new?
as we (slowly) move out of the year of COVID into whatever new season is ahead, as chicago turns from winter to spring, as i move into the start of the church god called my wife + i to launch, i have been thinking quite a bit about this verse:
luke 5.37 - and no one puts new wine into old wineskins. if he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed
jesus is contrasting his new kingdom with the kingdom of the old testament and the old covenant. he is saying that if you try to understand him through the lens of the old ways, you will miss it. even more, if you try to operate with him in the old ways of thinking, you will ruin things. the new doesn’t work in the confines of the old.
every pundit and prognosticator out there loves to tell us how much the world has changed. that the restaurant business + secondary education + dating + church + etc etc will never be the same. i don’t know how much of that is true and how much of it is still unknown, but one thing i know for sure: if we take the old mindset into the new reality, disaster is ahead.
old solutions to new problems leave everyone frustrated.
old strategies for new opportunities leave everyone frustrated.
this principle doesn’t mean the bible isn’t true anymore or that we don’t need to pay our bills or something foolish like that, but it does mean we need to re-think some things. the way we worked before, may not work. the way we rested before, may not work. the way we thought about money before, may not work.
god wants to do something new in you. he wants to do something new in me. this is so simple, but important to recognize: if we take our old mindsets about money + family + communication + government + discipleship into the season ahead, we will ruin the NEW thing god wants to do through us.
isaiah 53.19 behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? i will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
KG Korner
(a few wise words from lady kristen macdonald)
Have you ever heard of the ‘Iceberg Illustration?’ The one that shows the huge part below the surface that represents everything that no one can see. It’s the idea that leadership or ‘success’ has a foundation that always includes persistence, failure, sacrifice, disappointment, discipline, hard work, dedication amongst other things. What would you say in your life has caused blood, sweat & tears but has been well worth it? Is it your family? Maybe you’ve raised kids who are contributing members of society and they love Jesus and you’re just so proud. Is it your business? Have you built something from the ground up that you are proud of that provides for your family and makes a product that you worked really hard to create? Is it your relationships? Have you knit together a community of friends you love and that others look at and admire? Maybe it’s your golf game. You have had private lessons and spent hours at the course by yourself perfecting your score.
This weekend seems like the unveiling of an iceberg for Luke and I. We are launching our new church on Sunday and I’ll just say it has been a long time coming. Since I met Luke at age 14, I knew he wanted to be a pastor. That was part of the deal when we got together; and what I learned was that if that was the call on his life, then that was the call on our life together. Over the years God has taught us persistence through inviting friends and through the opposition we have faced in weeks when there have been big events. There have been moments of failure when we poured our hearts and souls into something and it didn’t go as we thought it would. But we got up and tried again. There has been so much sacrifice of time and energy that we might not get back but we look forward to glory when we will see the reward. We have had disappointments in turn-outs or in people because people are well, people. God has taught us discipline in doing the things we have to do so that we can do the things we want to do. We have worked hard, long hours to make something the best it can be or to build into relationships because that’s what ministry is. Ministry has taught us so many lessons and is beautiful and messy and humbling and a journey of trusting Jesus.
All of that to say, our journey to get to this day of starting Good News in the Neighborhood has included all the things described on the bottom of the iceberg and yet those are the very things that have prepared us to get here. Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” God is a God of preparation. He has used every turn of events to get us to this place to point to him and say, “only He could have done it.” Preparation is good and God uses it but it’s usually not glamorous.
Whether it was David or Mary or Daniel or Esther, God allowed preparation in their lives that we know little about but was used to bring them to a place of readiness to do what he had called them to. I want to encourage the person in the preparation phase, it’s not in vain, God will use it. It will be the foundation upon the rest of the iceberg He is building to tell His greater story that by grace includes you and I. We are excited and hopeful of what God will do in and through Good News in the Neighborhood but I never want a glossy photo to hide all the hard and messy moments that have gotten us to here because they point to the fact that God can use anyone. Even when it doesn’t feel like he’s working, He always, always is! Please pray for us as we launch our church this weekend and if you live nearby we would love to see you!
#cupofleadership
accept this difficult but unchangeable reality: many of your relationships exist because of a role. you think it’s a friendship, but it’s not. and that’s ok. like really ok. you are ‘co-workers’ or ‘teammates’ etc, which usually means that when the job or season is over, so is the relational connection.
rather than being frustrated, give more to the long term friends you have and insulate your heart from the unnecessary hurt caused by conflating roles and relationships. most people are for a while and when we think it’s something other than that (especially in ministry relationships) we injure each other.
book review
embodied : transgender identities, the church, + what the bible has to say by preston sprinkle
the last few years have brought an explosion in the normalization of transgender identities. this book does a wonderful job of expressing the experiences of people in this system as children of god experiencing confusion, not just a political football. sprinkle eventually affirms a historic biblical understanding of gender, but he earns it with page after page of heartfelt engagement with those experiencing dysphoria. my favorite part of the book was the section deconstructing modern cultural gender stereotypes (as an example, did you know that 100 years ago in america blue clothing was feminine and pink clothing masculine?) and comparing them to the concrete behaviors the bible calls men and women too. we aren’t the same, but our understanding of that must be rooted in scripture, not culture.
if you have a person in your life living this issue or want to teach about it more helpfully, this book is a stellar read.
#superchristianguy
stuff to click on
if you like this newsletter .. a friend of mine + i do a video version, this week was episode 7 — we talked a bit about purity culture + deconstruction
some of the lines in the verses on this new song blew me away … such poignant beauty