This is Wendy.  In this picture Wendy is sliding down a bouncy water slide with about a hundred kids, college students, and parents.  Wendy is a huge part of Fellowship Church! She tells me each week how much she loves the community, the services, and especially, the kids.  Each week Wendy spends time preparing to teach toddlers about Jesus, and tells me that she loves it so much, she would do it every week if she could.  Every time I see Wendy, she has a smile on her face.  One of the most amazing things about Wendy is that she is 70 years old.

70 years old.  She’ll never even read this blog because she doesn’t get online.

I believe she is the eldest regular attender of our church, and this is her sliding down a water slide at our Party in the Park last week.  She doesn’t mind that there’s “no around around her age” or that “the music is a little too rocky”  She loves Jesus.  he changed her life.  And now, with a smile on her face, she wants to help Him change other people’s lives too.

And she is so important to our community!

Love it!

I was listening to an interview this afternoon from one of my favorite writers, Donald Miller.  His new book comes out this fall called “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years”.  In the interview, Miller spoke of the importance of story and the study he’s done on the literature genre called story.  His insights were very interesting, but one of the most interesting things he said dealt with the main character in a story.  Your story.  My story.  It doesn’t matter.  He said that, in literature, the main character has to want something, or there’s no point in reading or participating in the story.  He also went on to imply – though he didn’t actually say this – that what the character wants says something about the character of the person, and how interesting the character is or isn’t going to be.  So I took a look at the things I want and the things I will do (or not do) to get what I want, and hopefully this will give me a good feel for what kind of story I make.
One of the things I want is to see my community transformed with the love of Christ.

What about you?

Darren Bell: Guest Blogger

Okay so yesterday I wrote this post about a comment someone had written about this post.  I already had it in my mind to use this comment as the spearhead for conversation, and then many of you went out and wanted to see it.  Not surprising.

The reason I was angry at this comment was not because they disagreed with my post.  This person (Darren) rarely agrees with my posts, and I rarely ever edit or delete comments outside of swearing and mean-spiritedness.  But I thought that this comment was aimed more at me personally then at the post I had written, though he attempts at patching it up by saying “Marty’s the man”.  Apparently Darren believes that the purpose for my posts and preaching is to infiltrate the world with my philosophy (because no one else ever does that when they write), rather than trying to start up conversations.

So, let’s let the conversation begin.

“All your posts are subjective, but you pawn it off as these universal truths that are broadly applicable to anyone and everyone.

The things you experience and perspectives you collect in your own life, guess who they are valuable to? Only to you. Maybe to the people right around you, just so they can understand how someone they care about thinks. And MAYBE after thinking about them a long time, after considering the more fundamental forces underlying them, after seeing how other people have experienced the same things and how they dealt with them (and not just New England Christians and ‘Type-A’ personality people) then you can make a post about your own impressions and what you have found to be true about people.

I only know what is true about me, but I know their are other people like me out there. This post is very judgemental, and probabaly hypocritical towards  you for things I also do. But whatever, your blog pisses me off because of the things you believe about people.

For a church that screams for being open minded and trying to reach out and making people feel welcome, what I see you doing most often is breaking people down and catoragizing them into groups that you can understand and putting labels all over them. Not the people that you interact with every week in small groups with, but the people ‘out there’ and the ones you are trying to reach. These over here are the “New Englenders” and they all act the same way and have the same mindset towards God; these over here are the “Web 2.0″ people, and with the right strategy we can reach out to them; these people are the “Holden Crew” and they are a little stuck up and I want to get them to like poor people more.

Maybe I’m speaking too broadly, but if you tried to put a label on me and had a specific strategy for how to ‘reach out’ to a person with my label I would never in a million years come to Fellowship. People usually do have slants and leanings, but the second you peg someone one way, they love to show you all the other ways you failed to characterize them, and that they can’t be put in a box. Again I’ll say it, Marty is the man. But I perceive many of the things you do not as trying to reach out, but trying to assimilate.

I do not hold to the truth that with just the right strategy, with just the next amount of knowledge about how a person thinks we can be effective through planning and strategising to work in a persons life effectively. Lonnie and you always said ‘we are what we are’ and people can take it or leave it. You already know that that is how I see relationships, as Ven Diagrams where people have a relationship in the areas that they share interests or are able to find common ground or a common world view. I see a person’s relationship with a church the same way. But more often then not I feel that your preaching and your blog are all about defending the mission of Fellowship instead of carrying it out. Trying to convince people that community is important rather then ebracing people that already believe community is important. Cause not all Christians want a church that focuses on community, some people get the most out of the systematic theology that a Bible Church offers. Or the dancing of a ‘sprit filled church’.

How many of the people at Fellowship believe community is important? How do you extend Gods kingdom by telling them how it is more important? Is community the ends or the means? If it is the means then don’t hold it up as the goal. Let it just be the soil.”

Conversate please.

I’m still pondering the thoughts of the last few days in my blog,and now I come to focusing a bit more on where I started:  – The first step in New England.

Because I live in new England, I get to be used by God to reach people from new England (pretty Obvious, huh?), and one of the things I’ve been processing this week is where is the first step (as far as leadership is concerned) toward leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.  In order to answer that question, I must first answer this question:  What is the greatest need of our community?

There are going to be a great number of needs in any community, so right now I’m asking myself, “Where God has placed me, what is the greatest need?”  And then, we should begin to tackle that issue as a church.  I wish caring for people outside of our comfort zones came naturally for everyone, but it doesn’t.  In fact, for years the church sat in its comfort zone, taking care of itself, and rarely thought about the needs of those outside of its own four walls.

Today there are those who would say that organization and leadership is not important, and that everyone should just do there part (interestingly enough, even saying that is a form of leadership).  But if it wasn’t for a group of people in the 80′s who believed God loved everyone, not just those inside the church, and were intentional about reaching people outside of their own church, people “just being” nice to others was not going to happen.  And if it wasn’t for Luther and some of the other Reformation characters in the 16th century, the church would have been stuck in an even longer period of spiritual draught.

To break the castle of the status quo, you have to first crush the large rock wall in front of you.

So the question I’m asking for Fellowship right now is this:  “What is the greatest need in our community?”  Understanding that we need to continue to meet needs within the body and continue to constantly move closer to a God who loves us and has our best in mind – what is the need in our community?

Don’t stop sharing now, by all means, answer the question in your community…

I have this dream. It’s a simple dream really. It starts and ends with people just enjoying being together and growing together. Not under the false pretenses of being a part of a certain status like economic, family, or religious experience, but under something deeper. It doesn’t seem deeper, but it is. By the simple idea that they just really enjoy one anothers company.

To start off, they (the people) might not exactly understand why they would want to be in this community, but they take a chance. A chance to learn, grow, live, influence, and maybe even laugh with their newfound community. Over time they would even use the word “love” to describe their journey with the community they have take a chance on.

Now remember, there is no common sense or special commonality that brings these people together, except maybe a strong desire to love God more, though they might not really understand what that means, and may not even really ever understand fully. So they meet regularly and eventually grow to a place where they can take a chance and influence others in their journey too.

Obstacles (and in some cases tools) to this dream are technology, complacency, prejudice, pride, and comfort. Taking a step towards community can be hard when you have a preconceived notion of what your day looks like,and change is hard to come by, but my dream relies on people all across New England moving out of that notion and connecting with God and people.

My dream is authentic community, and I have a long way to go. But here are 4 ATOMic steps and prayers I’m taking and praying to reach my dream:

1. Authentic community – “God, help us to drop our walls and be authentic.”
2. Transormation – “Transform us as we move toward You together.”
3. Outward reaching – “Help us to not be focused on ourselves, but to make reaching out to others
    habit we’ll never take for granted.”
4. Multiplication – “And use us to influence others to move into this journey we’re on.”

Critics please?

In this post, Susan commented that she “really enjoyed the discussion.”

Last night, a lady in our church got this bright idea to invite some of her friends to an inpromptu potluck grill out (aka barbeque, cookout, shindig, etc…).  This week Carie is away taking a class for AP Spanish certification (or certificacion, if you please), and so I popped over to the house of the fam having the grill out and we had a great time eating and chatting and enjoying one another’s company.  Four or five families took the family up on her offer and community was built – just like that.

Now in the process, Susan shared something that was she was going to be going through on Thursday and it led to this pretty intense, 2008 style discussion where everyone chimed in and gave their opinion (their were a wide variety of opinions by the way) using Scripture, real life circumstances, and stories of what people around us have gone through considering this subject.

In the end, I was able to see about 4 different opinions to a really hard topic and appreciate why several people in my church think and believe certain things about life.  And I wonder what would happen if more people decided to give away their nights to a community of friends and acquaintences in an effort to get to know people more, rather than sitting in front of a tv or working on the lawn. (2 things I didn’t say in this statement:  1.  Sitting in front of a tv is wrong.  2.  Working on the lawn is wrong.  Thank you)  Would our lives change for the better or worse?  Would you feel stifled with too much community or could you use a bit more, even with your friends?

Would you, like me, feel stuffed like Thanksgiving after 2 pieces of chicken and an interesting couscous dish?

So I’d like to thank my friends (4 different life groups in our church represented) who took a step with me and in the spur of the moment decided they could use a night with friends.  I sure could because I miss Carie a lot!

This post was specifically written for Randy Elrod’s Watercooler Wednesday!

My friend Jeff Campbell, who also is the life group director for Fellowship Church, just posted a blog where he maintains that the blog magazine “Wrecked for the Ordinary” has published a 2nd article he wrote called “Walking a mile in your students shoes.”  Jeff is a great writer and has a great mind and I’m so proud to be able to work on a regular basis with people like him.  Enjoy the article, and check out his blog too.  It will blow your mind.  Typically it does mine anyways.  And his picture’s on the bottom of the page.  So cool.

Give it up for Jeff!

 Welcome to MoMo’s! HERE are the guidelines. If this is your first time giving your “amazing story”, PLEASE take time to read them. It will save us both a lot of time.

To join me, write a post today (or a post you’ve written from last Monday to Sunday) sharing something tht has happened to you this last week - anything funny or interesting, crazy, fulfilled, too busy, hilarious, wistful, or any number of out of the ordinary happenings that made you happy or miserable last week.  Put a link in your post to this post permalink (not my general URL) and then put the permalink of your post (not your general URL) here at the end of this post. Thanks.  By the way, I do this because I love stories.  To tell them, to hear them, and to read them.

So tell me your “Inspired by the truth” story every Monday…

Here’s mine.

This was a weekend of community.  I love community.  I’m growing to appreciate it more and more. 
Here’s the way my weekend panned out, and you can tell me whether Carie and I were communified.

Fridays are date nights, and this weekend wasn’t going to be any different.  Carie had planned on making a wonderful dinner and we were going to hang out and relax.  This was a beautiful plan,and it almost worked out.  Then Al called.  His wife had to go to the emergency room.  Their two kids needed to be taken care of, and I was the perfect candidate.  So I went to their apartment and enjoyed the beautiful sounds of their two  year old Wyatt screaming his head off because he wanted “daddy and mommy to stay with him.” 

“Frankly Wyatt, I couldn’t agree more, but we’re going to have to work this thing out, all right?”

We didn’t work it out for at least another 20 minutes when I got brilliant and put the Disney movie “Cars” in the DVD player and he was hooked for another 5 minutes until he fell asleep for 2.5 hours.  That amount of time can be translated to the amount of time that someone else had come in to take my place and watch the kids at that point.  Sweet!  I didn’t even have to change the baby.  Carie brought over pizza (she had been with Al & Erica) and we had dinner with the new babysitters for the evening, then we shared with them the news that it was date night, and we would now be leaving.

Saturday morning I woke up.  Jay and Erin were moving from Spencer to Worcester, and I was helping them move.  Carie had a BIble study to attend.  So I took the next several hours (from 9:20 am – 12:30 pm to help them move their stuff out of storage into their moving truck and then on to their new home.  It was a great time, and not ridiculously hard.  In fact, what made the time even more amazing was that the weather people around the Massachusetts area hotted and hollored about the tremendous amounts of rain that would be gathering in central Mass the entire Saturday.  You could imagine our surprise when the sun came out for several hours, along with very nice temperatures.

I drove home and Carie was enjoying the beautiful New England day on our porch, allowing the sun to beat down on her beautiful skin.  I hung out with her.  Then Darren came.  Then Michelle came.  Then Jessica (Carie’s sister who lives with us) woke up (yes, it was about 1:30pm).  Then Al and Chris joined us. Then Tom and Tina came.  We all hung out.  We laughed.  Some of them (Darren, Al, and Chris) made videos.  We played “Loaded Questions.”  We ate dinner together.  We played boggle.  Basically, several of us just hung out and enjoyed one another’s community.

This morning we went to church and I had something to do with that too.  The community was great and I am so thrilled about the people coming into the life of Fellowship Church.  Amazing!

Then this afternoon Carie made an impromptu call to Erica about the people in their household coming over to have dinner with us.  So this would include Marty, Carie, Jessica, Al, Erica, Wyatt, Liam, Chris, and Joann.  I thought I’d call up Darren, Pam, and Brandon for good luck and we had another fit of community over Burrito pie and chips. We all had a great time getting to know each other more and chilling over games, food, and conversation.

It really was a whole weekend of community.  I love meeting with friends, both new and old, and I’m looking forward to growing with more people who like to build community as time goes on.  I just don’t understand the mindset of people who want to make it in this world on their own.  I look at my family and friends, and thank God everyday for who I’m becoming because of their influence.

What about you?  Do you have time for your community?