Glimpse

Last Sunday our talk at Westside was entitled “Glimpse”, the second instalment in “The Rumour” series. This brief devotion will help you follow up on what was said and hopefully begin to show the logic of how the various pieces fit together. We invite you to read Ephesians 2, the Scripture text upon which the talk was based. And even more, we invite you to think about how this ancient text – when read with an engaged mind – can really transform the way we think about life.

What began in the eternal mind of God (Ephesians 1), now takes root in two very historical and tangible events: the event of Jesus (2:1-10) and the event of the community which forms in his name (2:11-22). Our text speaks of how each of these events contain within them both personal and communal meanings to consider.

What does the Jesus event mean for us as individual persons (2:1-10)? The defining idea here is that the promise of human significance is dependent on Jesus, specifically his death and resurrection. We could say that, in Jesus (in all that he is and all that he does), humanity is embraced by God, and that because of him, we move from alienation and estrangement towards meaning and life. Famously Paul said that the best way to see this is that “we are God’s work” (literally, his beautiful work, his poem). Jesus is the one who recaptures our significance and wins it back for us.

In light of these things, what is the meaning of the community formed in his name (2:11-22)? While the church has an admittedly checkered history, it is helpful for us to see that there are radical possibilities for human social life which naturally extend from the Jesus event. If we work from the idea that “Jesus himself is our peace”, it begins to dawn on us that the lines that have been drawn between groups of people are able to be transcended. In the gospel there emerges the beginning of a new kind of humanity. That is a startling idea. Paul says that the people who form their social life around the person of Jesus, actually grow into a place where God lives.

This Sunday brings the third installment in our series, a talk we are calling “Touch”, our take on Ephesians 3.

Join us at 9:29 or 11:11 if you can; or tune into the podcast through the week.

Bob-O

Two for One and Outsourcing Significance

When something stops changing, it stops living. I’ve asked our Director of Spiritual Formation, Bob Osborne to add a voice to this email devotional. He is one of the best leaders, thinkers and conversationalists I know and I’m really excited about the richness and depth he’ll add. Let me give you a few thoughts about it before you plunge into what he’s put together for this week.

When it comes to almost anything, there is a part that ‘hits you’ off the top and comes for free. You could call that ‘understanding at the surface’. The decision to move past that level of understanding when it comes to the way of Jesus is one of the great adventures of your life.

I chose the word ‘adventure’ carefully, because that’s exactly what it’s meant to be. The absence of true adventure is at the heart of almost every distraction or destructive appetite. Every high-stakes thrill we ever see in a movie is an echo of the real adventure we were made for. Not so much hanging by a partly severed rope out the back of a train taken over by terrorists while bullets fly… But the soul-rocking thrill of playing some small part in another person’s ‘shift in destiny’.

I hope this isn’t trite, but let me take it further. Indiana Jones gives us a wide-screen hint at ‘overseas adventure’. You can step into the real-world version by joining one of our missions teams. Hear me on this, the adventure is not the same – only related. I’d also argue that the challenge of ‘meaning making’ and ‘purpose building’ is a much greater thrill than chasing bad guys in a run away jeep in some foreign destination.

Do you like political thrillers and edge-of-your seat leadership challenges? There are several groups of leaders at Westside or your local church that are pushing themselves to come up with some ‘unanticipated way’ of combining passion and resources and innovation to shift history (or at least shift the history of the organization or the department they are leading – or the personal history they find themselves moving through).

Has the idea of battle always drawn you? There are great opportunities to apply strategy and tactic to the ongoing struggle for attention span and the opportunity for influence. I often challenge our production team that our Sunday presentations are not a matter of ‘filling in the blanks’ each week. Instead, it’s a wide open opportunity to do anything short of committing sin or breaking laws as part of an attempt to surprise people with the life of Christ. For those 75 minutes every Sunday and at other times through the week, we battle against ‘every other thing’ Canadians could be doing and attempt to create a point of consideration about the way of Jesus in some unexpected way.
There are times when friends or acquaintances talk about my career as though it is a ‘sacrifice’ I move through daily. It isn’t. It really isn’t. It’s a daily opportunity to lean into the adventure of creating impact and surprising myself. Deep in the winter of 1991 while at University one Thursday night, I made a choice to follow the thrill of trying to ‘make meaning’ and ‘pursue purpose’. That choice has led to a photo album full of unexpected relationships and opportunities. Trust me – I traded up when I made that choice.

All of that lies behind the decision to ‘go deeper’ when it comes to the ‘way of Jesus’. It’s never about knowledge for the sake of knowledge or just ‘great ideas’. The thoughts and ideas presented here are intended to be the very deep framework onto which you can bolt the beginnings of your own adventure. We may not use the word ‘adventure’ often and we may not be describing ‘scenario’s’ and ‘steps’ that are only 1 or 2 steps removed. This is about an invitation to the deepest parts of where that process begins – with who Jesus is, and how He views the world and what He has to say to us. The adventure is something you must uncover as you ‘think with His mind’. Bob and I are going to work together to make this journal a digital companion to the Sunday teaching and an opportunity to do just that.

As always, we are open to your thoughts and feedback.

Have a great weekend,

Chris




Outsourcing Significance

Last Sunday we were introduced to our new series “The Rumour” (spelled the Canadian way), a retelling of the gospel through Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. This brief devotion will help you follow up on what was said. We invite you to read Ephesians 1, the Scripture text upon which the talk was based, and to do so in a translation that is comfortable for you.

Consider this thought: while Paul usually begins his letters with a point of thanksgiving (see Philippians 1:3 for example), in this letter Paul doesn’t give thanks until v. 15. Instead, right out of the gate, Paul seems to explode with the most exuberant language about what God has done and is doing for us. It is the language of praise and blessing, the language of worship, focusing on what God has purposed quite apart from any of us.

Which perhaps means this: that our truest identity is something we receive and not something we create for ourselves. Paul begins his letter where the most important things about us are really sourced – in God’s purpose for us. We had no hand in this reality. We simply wake up to this reality, to the God-blessed world that we are born into, to the goodness of God that comes before us and remains long after us, to the blessing that we are immersed in and surrounded with. And we realize that there is not one thing we have done to make this so. We could say it another way: before the mass of human troubles, before our own troubles, there was original blessing, and this creates the great hope of return.

Sunday’s talk was about the concept of significance, a vital aspect of Ephesians 1. The scriptures affirm our significance because of God’s choice of us; significance is not ours to achieve but ours to receive. As you read the text for yourself, look for statements of meaning and purpose. Then ask yourself the biggest question there can be: what does all of this mean?

This Sunday brings the second installment in our series, a talk we are calling “Glimpse”, our take on Ephesians 2.

Join us for coffee at 9:29 or 11:11 if you can; or tune into the podcast through the week.

Bob

Living in Beta

Live in perpetual beta. It’s an idea derived from the same term used by William Taylor and Polly LaBarre in their book Mavericks at Work, and I think it’s a great approach to life in general. Live in perpetual beta. ‘Beta’ is the term used by software companies when one of their programs is in the ‘testing and adapting’ phase. They’ll often make the software available in a kind of ‘limited release’ so it can be used by thousands of people. Feedback and user results are incorporated in the final stages as a product is ‘tweaked’ for delivery. Beta.

‘Sticky thinking’ is a term we could use for feeling like you’re done or ‘finished’. While it can bring us a great sense of relief (feeling like you’re done), it also puts us in a low energy (and low opportunity) mode. After all, in that kind of setting our daily goal is to simply ‘be’ what we already ‘are’: finished. That’s not really the kind of thinking that springs us forward into great passion.

“…Why worry about a speck in the eye of a brother” Jesus said (rather famously) in Matthew 7:3, “when you have a board in your own?” That question seems to carry the same kind of challenge because it seems as though Jesus is hinting that something about the way we see makes ‘specks’ look like ‘planks’ when we’re looking at someone else’s life, and ‘planks’ look like ‘specks’ when we’re looking at our own. So at the end of the day, perhaps the best advice is to live as though we are in perpetual beta.

This Sunday is the final installment in our series, “Unwritten”. Join us for coffee at 9:29 or 11:11 if you can; or tune into the podcast through the week.

Have a great Thanksgiving,

Chris

Feeling the Weather and a Guided Mind

Here’s a risk: I’m about to describe something I think I’m good at. The risk is that it just doesn’t sound good to do that kind of thing. Maybe the reason it’s worth taking will make itself clear.

Two summers working as a professional canoe guide have left me with a ‘sensitivity’ to changes in the weather. It’s what living outside for prolonged periods of time will do. You gain this sensitivity not just because of the more pronounced consequences (thunder and rain aren’t just ‘atmospheric factoids’ – they are the difference between comfort and danger, and that distance is often travelled in a few minutes or less). You also gain this sensitivity because you just have more opportunity to experience the subtle cues (like a shift in the wind direction or a change in cloud patterns).

The reason all of this came to mind this morning has to do with guidance. It’s something we’re all interested in, whether we’re looking for it in our conversations with trusted friends and mentors, or if we’re looking for it ‘from above’. It’s something we all want to position ourselves ‘to receive’; and we focus almost exclusively on how guidance is sent to us. So when we pray for that kind of thing, we are almost always expressing some version of ‘turn the volume up’. But what about building up our own ability to receive it? Just like you can build a sensitivity to what’s going on in the atmosphere – and learn to read a bunch of subtle cues that are lost on everyone else – could we build an ‘easily guided mind’?

Sailboats lift a great, white ‘wing’ that give them a sensitivity to the wind and the ability to be moved by it. An antenna gives sensitivity to radio waves that can’t be seen. This is all about a ‘triggered awareness’ – we make choices that make changes and those changes allow us to be moved in some new way. I have a couple of friends that ‘triggered’ my awareness to the world of visual and graphic art (something I’m deeply grateful for). How could you and I build an easily guided mind?

I would suspect it has something to do with learning to be more physically present, outward and open. My own ‘weather sensitivity’ came from being immersed in the outside world for extended periods of time. I had to ‘be there’ long enough to experience the subtle shifts over and over again. What sensitivities could be gained by immersing ourselves in other kinds of life-environments like prayer and study, or great conversation, or reflection and introspection? Our Director of Spiritual Formation, Bob Osborne, has created just such an atmosphere on Wednesday nights at 7:07 pm dubbed ‘Suburban Monastery’. If something like that isn’t an option for you, why not look at how you can build some of your personal space to do the same kind of thing?

Join us on Sunday if you can or tune into the podcast through the week. If you’re a part of our digital congregation and are looking for ways to turn this into a more active connection – then let us know who you are (info@wkc.org). Perhaps you have a skill you could volunteer from time to time, or you just want to be connected in some way.

Have a great weekend,

Chris