Missio Dei Communities

“Tempe City Church” is now “Missio Dei Communities”.  Please visit us at our new blog.

 

So this is the New Year

So this is the new year and I have no resolutions. At least not yet.  One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Socrates.  In it he says: “An unexamined life is unworthy living.”  I have found that before I’m ready to make any resolutions it’s absolutely crucial that I take an honest and evaluative look back over the past year(s) to do a gospel informed examination of how I’m livin’.  Because I can’t force anyone to do this kind of introspection, I’ll just VERY STRONGLY RECOMMEND IT (that’s right in all caps) you spend some time with God and some other friends asking the following:

1.  What are the relationships that I can look back on that God used to to influence / grow me this year?  How have they driven me to realize my need for Christ?
2.  How has my understanding / appreciation of the gospel deepened over the last year.
3.  Where did I come face to face with brokenness this year? How did I / Did I confront it with the gospel?
4. Do I sense the gospel compelling me to act in new ways this coming year?

Then, if you are into them- make some resolutions that are seasoned with “gospel intentionality.” What are some of your thoughts??  Any other good questions you are thinking about as you examine your life?

 

Play Ball!

Hey we are going to try to get some friends together to play in the Tempe City Co-Ed Softball league. If you wanna play we are going to have to know pretty soon (As in by Sunday) so please shoot me an e-mail (kevin @ tempecitychurch.com) a text, or leave a comment to let me know if you want to play. There are seven games starting in Feb. The schedule would come out after we have a roster and fee submitted.

The 411:

Cost: $25 per player

Game Day: We are shooting for friday nights but they may end up on Sat.

Roster: We need 15 people (guys and gals thus the co-ed)

Age: You gotta be 18.

 

Sunday Review / Preview

Review
Last Sunday we continued the True Story teachings by hitting Redemption.  Jesus’ life, His ministry, His death, and His resurrection get filled up with meaning as we see them in the context of the bigger story.

Here is a PDF (True Story: Redemption) of the story  I wrote and read on Sunday night. If you missed Sunday Night, please download this and read it. My intention was to encapsulate the story of Jesus’ earthly life highlighting the themes that had been developing in the first three acts of the story.

Preview
This Sunday we come to Act 5:  The Church.  We will tell the story, and then get really practical, down and derrrty about what that looks like for our community, Tempe City Church.

Please make every effort to clear your calendar, get your nap in early, have lunch not dinner with the fam, and clear your excuses  cache to be there on Sunday night.  It will be very important for our entire community to be on the same page as we move forward in our mission together.

 

What is the Ultimate Christmas Movie?

Christmas is known for a couple things. First and foremost of course is the crazy miracle that God Himself became flesh, taking the form of a servant, and living like those He created in the world that had rebelled against Him in order to redeem it. Such an awesome true story!

Coming in a close second (please note the sarcasm) is the ever famous Christmas movie. That’s right Christmas is the time for those favorite movies that seem to only play during the month of December. So here’s a question: What is the Ultimate Christmas Movie?

 

Christmas Eve I-HELP

If you are planning to help out tomorrow night with I-HELP feel free to show up anytime after 4:30  Make sure you bring any food to the Dorsey Center at Grace Community Church by 4:45.  If you have any questions about anything at all, email Leslie at lesliegonzalez3 (@) gmail.com

 

R U In Missional Community?

I have the TCC People List on this Excel document.  We have 76 people who call Tempe City Church their church community.  Currently, we are batting a thousand with 76 people in a Missional Community.  Not bad!  That would earn us high marks on our Missional Report Card.

But here is the question Kevin and I were wrestling with yesterday:  Are you simply in a Missional Community or are you in missional community?

Marks of Simply being in a Missional Community:

• Your name is on a list.
• You attend a weekly meeting, putting your 2 hours in.
• You think “they” should do things differently.
• The people in the MC are your “Church/Christian Friends”.

Marks of being in missional community:

• You are intentionally reorienting your life around your community and mission.
• You find yourself processing life through the lens of “we” not “I”.
• You think “we” must do ____ differently in light of the gospel event.
• The people in the MC are your Family.

Let us never allow the form to excuse us from the function.  The form of the Missional Community is good.  Yet, if it excuses us from really pressing into the function of living a life centered on the gospel in community on mission, what use is it?

 

The Story So Far…

We have a crazy phenomenon taking place.  There are about 70 people who are Tempe City Church.  However on any given Sunday night we have from 40-50 people gathering together to be equipped.  Believe it or not that’s actually the norm for people getting together as a church family any given Sunday.  This situation though causes a bit of a stir though when we decide to have the Sunday’s build on each other in a progressive story.  Last week I didn’t develop the idea of “The Story of Christmas” as fully as we had the previous week and definitely have seen the confusion that may have caused.  Stories without a context tend to be quite confusing!  So we wanted to make sure that everyone was able to track with what’s going on Sunday nights and where we are at in the story so far…

Review

For the past few Sunday nights we have been going through the Word as a Story. We are looking at the story of God in five parts (creation, fall/rebellion, promise, redemption, restoration), showing how God has been on a mission to restore and redeem His creation unto Himself throughout history. We are telling these stories because we believe that God’s revelation of Himself throughout all of history gives context to the story of Christmas.  It is the best way to understand the depth of that first Christmas.

It’s been interesting to say the least as we try to engage with familiar stories in a new way.  We have been asking questions trying to see the implications of the story for ours lives.  Those questions have been revolving around the central themes of the God of mission, the people of mission, and the arena of mission (a helpful perspective we got from Chris Wright’s book The Mission of God.)

Week 1:  Beginnings

The first week we saw how God, an eternal, personal, Being who has always existed, created this world and established His good reign over all that He had created. We also saw how He gave the apex of His creation- man who He made in His own image- the privilege of ruling over that creation. God set up the arena where His mission would take place and it was very good.  They were able to find unhindered joy in the things that their good God had created for them.  Adam and Eve were also blessed with the joy and intimacy of daily walking with and learning from Him, the almighty and loving Creator. (Gen. 1, 2, Job 38, Is.14, Ezek 28)

Week 2:  Separation

Last week we “storied” through Genesis 3 where God’s creation, humanity, rebelled against Him choosing to decide for themselves what was right and wrong. They believed the lie of the serpent that God’s rule was oppressive not good and chose to eat of the tree that God told them would cause death. This rebellion of humanity tore through the fabric of peace “shaloam” on the good earth that God had created. They were suddenly filled with shame and hid (reactions we saw we still do today in response to sin.) Because of this decision, the just and good God who had created this world had to punish His creation (the snake and the humans) for the way they had chosen to live. The good world that God created was suddenly thrown into tumult. We talked through how all of our lives (ever single relationship we are in) are still horrendously effected by the rebellion that occurred in the garden. (Gen 3, Rev. 12.6)

Just in case you are thinking all is lost and this creation is destroyed forever we pulled out at least three rays or threads of hope that were present in the story:

1. We see hope in that God promised a victor, a hero, one who would some day crush the Serpents head.

2. We saw hope in the way that God continued to relate to and provide for humanity even after the rebellion- He did NOT abandon His creation!

3. Another way that hope was seen in this story was that God protected Adam and Eve by making it impossible for Adam and Eve to get back to the tree of life at this time. They had chosen death and so were unable to eat of and enjoy the life that tree offered.  God said he was blocking the tree off “lest they eat of it-” We wondered if that might be eat of it and live forever in their sin soaked situation? Either way we see that God is still active in their lives. (By going outside the story we see that tree is also in Revelation 22.2,14- after God has restored His creation to live under His good reign and enjoy Him forever.)

In the story so far we don’t know how God is going to redeem or rescue His creation, but we know He always does what is good and right and that He will keep His word.

This Sunday we will be talking through most of the Old Testament…. Should be good. See ya there-

Kevin

 

Just a Thought

What do you think of this quote? Do you think it’s accurate as far as a way in which we are to engage the Bible or do the authors seem to be way off?

“…The bible provides us with the basic story that we need in order to understand our world and live in it as God’s people. We know that it is one thing to confess the Bible to be the Word of God, but quite another thing to know how to read the Bible in a way that lets it influence the whole of our lives. There can easily be a gap between what we say we believe and how we live. If God has deliberately given us the Bible in the shape of a story, then only as we attend to it as story and actively appropriate it as our story will we feel the full impact of it’s authority and illumination in our lives.”

Quote taken from pages 21 and 22 of Michael W. Goheen and Craig G. Bartholomew’s book The Drama of Scripture.

 

Say What? TCC Dictionary

Last summer Marcia Christensen got Kevin and I magnets that say “Sweet”.  She said the only reason she gave us “Sweet” is because she couldn’t find “Stoked”.  Last week Don said “Sick” in a sentence.  Why do such strange phenomena take place?

When you spend enough time in community with people you pick up on other people’s lingo.  Not only do you pick up on lingo, but sometimes “lingo” is actually created.

Here is some of the TCC lingo you may or may not hear:

Hugely (adj):  denotes the massive and important nature of the information or person being described. “Understanding that the gospel is central to all of life is hugely important.”

Gospelling (vb):  to bring the implications of the story of the bible, the good news of Jesus, to bear on a specific area of a persons life.  “Kevin’s idol of independence was really getting in the way of him loving someone in his missional community.  So I gospeled him.  (I connected the dots and showed him how he was not believing the truth that he needs the Church and can’t do it on his own.)

Mission of God (n):  God’s ongoing intentional work in all of creation to redeem, restore, and renew His people and His creation unto Himself.  “The Bible is not simply a bunch of rules or stories; rather, it is the grand narrative of the Mission of God.”

Missional (adj):  denotes something that is related to or characterized by mission, or has the qualities, attributes or dynamics of the mission (Wright, Christopher.  Mission of God, 24).  “TCC is a body of missional communities that exist to be part of God’s work in this world.”