Equipper Blog

by Eric Phillips

“The true Christian leader is one who walks with others, leading them to a place where he himself has already been.”

This is an idea that recently has been on the forefront of my mind. Recently I have wrestled with the fact that there seems to be so little power in my ministry, very little true and lasting transformation within our church, and that there seems to be more and more information available yet with such little evidence of the transformative power of the Holy Spirit.

These questions that have passed through my mind for years have become more of a pressing reality, or crisis as you will, as I seek to establish East End Ecclesia. On a daily basis I encounter individuals wrestling with crack addiction, beat down by the cycle of poverty and violence, people who are at the edge of suicide. I face individuals that have been abused and called a F*&% up since they were children, unable to believe that God loves and accepts them. Worst of all I face arrogant young hipsters that in their “self justification through relevance and selective justice”, have no interest in a just God unless His justice remains confined within their superior moral definition.

So in other words I have found myself trying to convey information while realizing that information alone could never free an addict from addiction, convince an abused child that they are loved, or convince a self righteous hipster of their need for forgiveness from a righteous and just God. Within this personal struggle I’ve been continually reminded of passages that I so regularly dance around, passages concerning the our dependence upon the power of the Holy Spirit, passages in calling us to not seek to build the church by words alone, but by the power of God. I have spent much time wrestling with the fact that no matter how great my ability to convey information might be, man cannot be saved by information alone.

Yet in the midst of my intellectual wrestling God has opened my eyes to a reality that I have so greatly neglected. I have been studying many of the great men of faith from times past, some of authentic moves of God that brought true transformation within the society at large, and the first great move of God through the church which was recorded within the book of Acts.

The thing that I found in common within all that I have studied is that God has worked in mighty ways through men and women who have been consumed with a deep, passionate, obsessive, pursuit of true communion with their God. God seems to mightily use those who proclaim not what they have heard about but what they have encountered, lived, and experienced. I’m so challenged as I read what was stated concerning Peter and John as they were before the Jewish leaders “they were common uneducated men, but it was apparent that these men had been with Jesus.”

I believe this is important for us today; it is not our superior education, our relevance, our charisma, or anything else that will have the greatest impact on those around us. It is the intangible reality that the outside world may not be able to pinpoint. It is the man or woman who had clearly “been with Jesus”.

So, closing up the thought I began with: The true Christian leader leads others to a place he himself has already been.

As communicators we are to speak to the church that which we have first heard from our God, as shepherds we disciple as ones who have walked with Christ, and as evangelists we proclaim a loving, powerful, awesome God that we have not just heard about but deeply know. For too long the role of the pastor has been as one giving directions from a map to a location he has not yet been, instead of acting as a guide to a mountain top that he himself has frequently visited.

But on a very real and personal level, I have for too long been consumed with a desire to learn about God, teach about God, and be on mission for Him without first and foremost being one obsessed with spending time with my God, Hearing from my God, and allowing my God to first do within me that which He desires to do within my world.

Eric Phillips is the lead pastor at East End Ecclesia in Pittsburgh, PA.

Lindsey Sullivan.

Junior at Lynchburg College. [lcf] leader.

Though the attractive colors may lure you to this visual metaphor of Excavation, I thought it best to further explain why I am digging deeper.  Reading the picture left to right, our eye rests on the giant volcano first.  We see lava spewing from the top and cascading downward.  We must experience a lava-spewing moment before we are able to get to the X, the Excavation.  So, “What is a lava-spewing moment?”

Symbolically the lava is the Holy Spirit.  As Christ-followers we often have moments in our walk where something happens and we are doused in the Holy Spirit.  Moments such as conferences, one’s day of salvation, or the end of a persevering trial are great examples of spewing lava.  Hopefully, each of you have had a moment where you are standing beside a volcano of God and the eruption of the Holy Spirit in your life is melting everything else away.

These lava-spewing moments at a point in time are called kairos.  As Mike Breen and Steve Cockram of 3DM put it: “a kairos moment is when the eternal God breaks into your circumstances with an event that gathers some loose ends of your life and knots them together in his hands.”

What next? As we don’t remain in kairos time, we then enter into the new part of our walk.  Referring to the picture, this section of our walk looks like the middle dip.  This is where we are presented with the choice to continue in the ways of the Lord post kairos-moment. When we reach the dips in our walk, we have to press into God. Discipline is strengthened, knowledge is acquired, and lessons are learned all in the name of Christ.  Periodically we may have other kairos moments, and then the cycle of eruption to reclaiming the day-to-day begins.

Excavation occurs when a Christ-follower wants more than the kairos moments and yearns for a challenge greater than the day-to-day disciplines.  The letter X conveniently marks the position of the symbolic map of a Christian walk where one asks more of God. The goal of this great shift into God is to reach new heights in one’s relationship with God; a point in which the union between man and Maker is closer than ever before.

Though I am only at the beginning of this journey, I am taking steps toward the Holy Spirit.  And with each forward moving foot, I lean, press, and shove myself into the hands of the Holy Spirit, begging for more of God.  I have learned that even in the moments when God is spewing lava around me, He is alluring me into the woods of my heart (Hosea 2:14).  I have taken it as my mission to find out what God can show me through his Word.  I would love to say that in three months I will have tapped into the endless supply of God’s wisdom and knowledge, but the process of Excavation is not timed.  Yet, it is a journey measured in perseverance and pursuit.

[lcf] or Lynchburg Christian Fellowship is a college church based on the campus of Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, Virginia. Choosing to express church in multiple ways like missional communities, small groups, and a Sunday Gathering is what allows our community to create a discipleship culture as well as reach people with the love of Jesus. Engage the culture. Embrace everyone. Endure the cross. www.lcfva.com

by Adam Gustine

I came to First Free, with my family and co-pastor Ben, when the church was coming out of a long transition period that had followed an even longer period of conflict and trouble. You could say that our church was a test-case for the declining evangelical urban congregation, struggling to make sense of, and respond to, the demographic changes in the neighborhood. Formerly a mono-cultural neighborhood, Bay Ridge and its surroundings are as diverse as anywhere in the city today. I think everyone knew that our future together would look different than our church’s long history, but I don’t think anyone was anticipating what that would mean.

Our church is one congregation in a community of ethnic churches that share space with each other. In some ways, this is not much different than many rental relationships between ethnic congregations. But in other ways, we are starting to see how we can move beyond that landlord/tenant relationship and embrace a multi-ethnic approach to mission in the neighborhood.

The stereotypical strongholds of power and territorialism are starting to come down as we grow together. Ephesians 2 comes to mind as we see a different kind of community coming into focus, where walls that divide are being torn down through Christ as we endeavor to discern a future with some degree of shared purpose and vision, instead of just shared space.

I’m excited to be a part of this process. Living and laboring here is a daily education in cultural difference, a far cry from my middle American upbringing. My assumptions are challenged and values like dying to self and mutual submission take on whole new layers of meaning for me, or anyone engaged in this kind of multi-ethnic missional experiment. We are stepping into a different way of being the church that is new for all of us. We are excited about the possibilities of how God may work through us. Even though we certainly don’t have all the answers, I’m encouraged to see us asking better and more important questions.

Adam Gustine lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Ann, and their two sons. He has been serving with First E-Free Church in Brooklyn, and learning to love his city, since the fall of 2008.

by Evan Curry

“As kingdom people we are called to live in love, which means we are called and empowered to live free of fear. Because our source of worth, significance, and security is found exclusively in God’s love and God’s reign, not our own immediate well-being, and because we believe in the resurrection, we are empowered to love…fear is an indication that we are living in idolatry, not love.” (Greg Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church).

Phil is a homeless man that attends our church. I don’t really know Phil all that well. I am not actively involved in our homeless outreach, which takes place every Tuesday in Bristol. As I’ve gotten to know Phil on Sunday evenings when our church meets, he always greets me with a smile and refers to me as “Pastor.” It has become a highlight of my Sundays.

Two Sundays ago, after I preached a sermon, Phil approached me. He was touched by the sermon. He told me of a situation he had been facing recently—a woman, who had consistently caused him trouble, earlier that week, pulled him down from behind, in which he injured his tailbone. Phil asked, “What would you do?” I told Phil that I know Jesus would tell him to love his enemies and pray for this young woman. Phil responded with skepticism (as we all often do when dealing with issues of reconciliation). He feared that love wouldn’t work. I encouraged him with an example from Martin Luther King, Jr., another statement by Jesus, and told him to keep me updated about how it was going.

This past Sunday, Phil walked up to me during the service. As usual, he addressed me as “Pastor” and then said in a loud whisper, “I did it! I walked up to the girl this week, gave her a hug, told her I loved her, and that she should to come to church with me. And now we are friends!” Quite frankly, I totally forgot about our conversation the week before, but I was impressed that Phil actually carried out the commands of Jesus and it actually worked.

Fear often keeps us from loving others. We are afraid people won’t respond to the love of Christ because “it’s just not practical.” Christlike love is not practical. Fear is totally practical, but it is not a Christian virtue. It is, in fact, idolatrous. If we live in fear, if we are afraid that what Jesus said won’t actually work because we are people in the real world, we fail to see the power the resurrection brings into the lives of people like Phil—walking testimonies that looking out for our own well-being, rather than another’s, keeps us in bondage to fear but loving others breaks the chains of fear. And perfect love casts out all fear.

by Cyd Holsclaw

In preparation for Epiphany, I recently re-read Ancient Future Time, by the late Robert Webber:

“In our spiritual pilgrimage God calls us to break through a passive spirit concerning the baptism of Jesus and recover the full meaning of this event for our own spirituality… It defines our spirituality and gives impetus to the kind of people we are to become.”

The baptism of Jesus is anything but passive.  The heavens open… the Spirit descends.  Since the building of the temple, God has made Himself known in a specific place to a select few Levite priests.  But at Jesus’ baptism, we see God breaking out of heaven, and breaking into the world.  A barrier is torn.

This is both a threat and a promise.  It’s a threat because God is no longer contained, safely tucked away in the holy of holies.  We don’t keep Him in a building on Sundays and visit Him. In Jesus’ baptism, everything has changed.  He visits us where we are.  The old rules are re-made.  We are on unfamiliar ground.  This new beginning threatens to overhaul all of the old ways.  Faith is no longer predictable or formulaic. In the person of Jesus Christ, God is at loose in the world!

But it’s also a promise.  God’s final act of salvation is here.  God is breaking Satan’s dominion over the earth.  This is a cosmic event!  Christ is prepared to do battle with the spiritual realm. Jesus is ‘possessed’ by the Holy Spirit and driven into the wilderness as a precursor to his ministry of ‘re-possessing’ those held captive by the enemy.  God breaks into places of captivity with the power to set free.  God is at loose in the world.  How is this event defining my spirituality and shaping the person I am to become?

Cyd Holsclaw is married to Geoff and spends much of her time homeschooling their two boys.  She is a part of the leadership team at Life on the Vine in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.

By Winn Collier

In our first year, my wife Miska described All Souls as a “three-legged dog.” She meant it an endearing way. Miska has always been drawn to those of us who hop along in life; and she’s always eschewed the pretensions many of us so easily take on. Somehow, All Souls became a refuge for burnt, weary, broken people. Most people had some measure of church experience (we are in Virginia after all). Some weren’t sure what they thought of God. Some felt beat up. Most all of us wanted a space where we could know love.

Into our second year, we’ve actually seen a little community form. For me, the beautiful things are when I see that glimmer of hope or joy return to someone’s eyes or when someone joins us at Jesus’ Table for the first time. Just the other day, one woman told me. “You know, for the first time, I don’t feel like running away from church. I feel like I’ve been allowed to be a person here.” Another woman told me simply, “I think that now I know God is real.”

Our community is about as simple as they come. We read the Scriptures each Sunday. We pray prayers and gather around the gospel. We always pass Jesus’ peace to one another. Sometime someone will have a reading or a piece of art or a story to share. We gather around the Scripture, either through a pastor teaching or through (and these are fun moments) a guided text conversation. Once a month, we have a shared meal. We meet in smaller communities in various nooks and crannies around the city, asking what it means to live as Jesus’ disciples in our world. Most who are with us believe. Some are beginning to believe. Some don’t care much but think there might be something here worth hanging around.

Soon, we’ll turn from Lent to Easter, and on Easter morning we’ll have our second Easter Party downtown. We’ll have music and give away hot organic apple-spiced donuts from our local donut artisan, Carpe Donut. We’ll be out in our city, among neighbors and friends and soon-to-be friends, celebrating that Jesus rose from the dead. We’ll be out there, hopping along.

Winn Collier is the pastor at All Souls Charlottesville and blogs at http://winncollier.com/ and is pretty much a great guy. You can follow him on Twitter here.