Different Way of Being

This past Sunday we concluded our vision series The Method and the Madness. We hope that you have appreciated our “thinking out loud” about what we are focusing on as a community. Airing out the background strategies and concepts at Westside is necessary because of the diversity and breadth of our community. When we take time to go through a process like these past few weeks, we have the chance to draw together in common purpose.

The three elements of this vision series were communication, community and compassion. My thought as we conclude this series is this: how do these three vital components intersect? What is it that acts as the animating core for the various pieces of our vision? After considering this over the past week I want to simply suggest that it is our intention to organize ourselves around the person of Jesus and the opportunity to make Him known in the culture that surrounds us. We want Jesus to be the center of what we say, how we relate, and what we do.

First, communication. Westside thinks through its communication strategy because first, there is something to be said (good news), and second, because there are resistances in our culture to the message we represent. So we try to find a starting point in the common life of our audience before we move towards what we call “the deep voice of Scripture”. We think that there are enough examples in Scripture for us to adopt this as our method of communication, especially in a culture that is post-biblical. This is simply our chosen strategic move, but at the heart of what you will hear us say each week is “take a look at Jesus -- who he is, how he lived, and what he has done for us”.

Second, community. We realize that the very idea of “church” brings with it concepts about religion that people easily trip over. The word religio (Latin) has literally to do with binding something; a religion is an idea that binds us to a worldview and a way of living. While religion can have its benefits, religion can also bind us to fear and dysfunction. We believe that Jesus showed a different way than the way of religion. At Westside, we want to take seriously the idea that we are bound to Jesus as the center and focus of our community, as the one around whom we form friendship and give support. For after all is said and done, we are not so much bound to an idea as to a person, the one who called us together. The great ideas of the Christian faith -- love, forgiveness, and change -- are relational ideas and they call us to be involved with God and with each other in redemptive ways.

And finally, compassion, the natural extension of our communication and community. This past Sunday we remembered the famous hymn from Philippians chapter 2:5-11:
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

We have come to believe that Jesus-inspired compassion is the natural result of a message and a community that is focused on him. And this is because we recognize that Jesus is the gift of God’s overflowing and out-going love, a love we want to carry into our homes, work-places, and neighborhoods. But we want to think even further beyond those natural connecting points, consider the world we live in, and begin to move towards the change that can come when we decide to act with compassion.

So here is the essence of what we are saying: Jesus needs to be heard in what we say, how we get along with each other, and in the ways we choose to live in the world – and this ‘different way of being’ is something that needs to be lived out in the culture that surrounds us.

This coming Sunday, we begin a new series we are calling The God Debate, a discussion on the interface between classic Christian belief and what is often called “the new atheism”. We hope that you can join us at 9:29 or 11:11 am.

Bob