Contagion

Bill Hybels, founding pastor of Willow Creek Community Church recently said this...

"The goal (of the church), is to slowly make believers independent. We (as a church and pastors) should focus our attention on introducing people to Christ, and then helping them grow to a certain point. After that--they should feed themselves and focus on helping the church introduce more people to Christ."

What do you think? Is it too much to ask people to focus on helping a church introduce people to Jesus? Is it possible for someone to feed them self? Does a pastor really know that much more about the Bible than everyone else (or maybe worded a better way would be "should the pastor know more?) Does schooling really qualify someone to know more about the Bible than the next person?


I'll just add one comment. At TXC our goal is always connecting the disconnected to Jesus. Whether we are talking about sex or judging others, the bottom line is that whatever we discuss or wherever we go, our end goal is ALWAYS connecting the disconnected to Jesus. For example, we talk about sex so that we have a correct view of our sexuality and God so that we can better connect the disconnected to Jesus.

A touchy area that we are moving into is the debate of Christian music vs. secular music. Now I'm not even going to go into the whole "Drums and electric guitar are evil and invoke evil spirits to have their way" argument. We just aren't going there. Neither will we discuss why syncopated rhythms are of the devil. I find that a total waste of time. Now that that's out of the way.

What classifies Christian music? Is it the words? The instruments used? Is it the label that produces the artist? What happens if a Christian artist writes a song that has no words to indicate that it was written to God? How is it still "Christian"? What if a "Non-Christian" artist writes a song that could clearly be used as a song for worship to God? Are we allowed to do that?

I've had this conversation with few people and someone once said "If it's good music don't you think that everything good comes from God?" That got me thinking and I think I agree. I know that Satan can come clothed as an angel of light and deceive us but I'm not sure that discerning whether a song is Satanic or not is too hard of challenge. It may come as a shock to some of us, but we've been playing some "non-Christian" music in our pregathering line up for the last 11 gatherings. These songs are written by people that may or may not be Christ followers but the lyrics of their songs point us in God's direction.

At TXC every sunday worship experience revolves around 1 theme. Even though we are in the middle of a series on sexuality (and there aren't many worship songs on that theme) we try to direct people's attention onto that theme while singing (we've got some growing to do in this area). There are so many good "songs" (is it possible to drop the Christian/non-Christian label?) out there that speak truth and so we are choosing to leverage that truth and use it in a way that helps to support the supreme truth of God's word.

This week will be the first time we experiment with this live. We're stoked as it communicates so clearly what this week is all about. Come ready for something a little different!

For those who have a church history and it was generally a good experience, we have a hard time letting go of the past. We remember how good it was and singing those old songs bring back nostalgic memories that bring about a certain amount of security that only they can bring. Maybe it's a song that sparks the memory of when we first committed our lives to Jesus or when we got baptized. For a lot of us, church is church and world is the world. There is no cross section, especially when it comes to Sundays and the music.

Christian heritage is not a bad thing by no means. We can't throw out the baby with the bathwater and yet, it seems like maybe the baby is growing up but we want it to stay a baby (I'm starting to confuse myself now!) We want to hold on to things that maybe shouldn't be held onto cause it holds us back from moving forward.

We are a new church and because of that, we have made some choices when it comes to music. We have made the choice that we will embrace our "newness" and use songs that are new! What this means is that I have to let go some of my preferences in order to embrace the new. It doesn't mean that I have to let them go in my personal life but in order for our faith community to move forward, I need to let go of those preferences when we meet collectively for the greater good of the community.

We've made the choice to leave some of the songs that we have traditionally sung over the years in the past. Our reasoning for this is that we are specifically trying to reach people who are disconnected from Jesus and because of this, we don't see the need to sing songs that were sung 30 years ago or 300 years ago for that matter. They have no relevance to them. Sure there are some great hymns with rich theology, but why can't we write new songs with rich theology?

We have been in the process of writing our own songs and will continue to do so. Our goal is to be as authentic as we know how and part of that is having a unique flare that stays true to who we are as a faith community. That doesn't mean that we will never sing the pop worship songs but we don't feel that being cookie cutter and copying someone else's creativity is that glorifying to God.

Our intention is not to pursue the disconnected at the expense of the connected by any means! But it should be the goal of every person that is connected to Jesus to see everyone that they know in their sphere of influence connected to Jesus in some way, shape or form. I guess we also have a high standard for those who call themselves followers of Jesus. We all need to be encouraged in some way or another but at some point we have to start feeding ourselves, stop expecting to just get fed on Sundays solely by "the pastor" and look outside of ourselves to all the people that are disconnected and put their eternity (which is being lived out right now) before our personal preferences.

Got the tire changed. Well actually I didn't do all that much. Dave came and picked me up and when he dropped me off, helped me fix it. You know, it's really quite embarrassing how unhandy I am. I've changed tires before and would have been fine changing it myself even though I've never changed a flat on this van. But watching how quickly Dave figured it out made me sick. That's one huge benefit to having him on our lead team is how much he can figure out without really trying.



Well...I think it's time for another nap (that's one thing I know how to do quite well!)

It took everything within me to roll out of be @ 6am and get ready to go to the gym this morning. I was in a habit of going everyday around 3 weeks ago and then I got sick and haven't been able to muster up the will power to get back...until today. It took some coaxing and slapping around, but I got up.

As I was driving down our mountain, something didn't feel right. The van was wobbly. Got out...looked back and yep...a flat! I jammed it into reverse and climbed back up the mountain. When I went to find the spare I realized it wasn't where I thought it was. I'm assuming it's under the van but it's raining right now and I'm not into fixing it at the moment.

In a few minutes I guess I'll text my buddy Dave and see if he can come and pick me up and take us to "the office"

So I'm not sure what I'm more disappointed about, getting a flat or not being able to chisel out my Greek god of a body at the gym.

I'm ready for a nap.

Ah...it's always fun talking about lust/pornography/masturbation in church. It's usually a little awkward...especially when you're talking to adults and yet the response we got was crazy! It seems like it should be a juvenile topic talked about with teens because adults should be beyond it and yet it's something that needs to be discussed because it's rampant in the church as a whole. What gets me is that because "we aren't touching", we shrug it off as a normal thing. If we're single it's a coping mechanism until we get married and all our lustful thoughts and the need to act out on those thoughts will all go away because we now have a hot wo(man) to look at and have sex with. But all of us who are married know that it doesn't go away...it gets worse. (The temptation anyways) Cause if Satan can get you addicted to lust/porn/masturbation, he's one step closer to destroying your marriage.

If you missed the gathering today and wanna catch up on the message, you can listen to it here.

We had a lot of fun today! The morning started off with a bang as our sound guy was unable to make it soooo...guess who was the new sound guy? Yes...that's right. Me. Have I ever mixed sound in church before? Yes...that's right. NO! So I was a little nervous. On top of that we didn't have a bass player so it was a two man band (which, once again, they pulled off with an insane level of excellence!) The whole deal was a little nerve wracking at first but once I figured out what did what, it was all good. My worshiping leading played into my ability to at least hear what was good/wrong (Even though my ability to fix the problems was very limited!) While I was speaking, Dave the worship guy came back to the board and manned it, making me sound as good as humanly possible.

We also didn't have our omega team helping out with set-up/tear down with Upstream Kids but Tina pulled it off with flying colors. I went over there before the gathering and I was blown away by how much time and effort she put into prepping for it and it's not wonder to my why the kids come out grinning from ear to ear.

We continue to be blown away how God can use such limited resources (mainly us as people) to get his dream accomplished. It's usually the days when we think everything is gonna bomb that we get the most compliments on the whole thing and today was no different. It's always funny getting a comment on who amazing the worship was when you've only got an electric guitar and drums.

It's a good feeling to know that we can pull off a Sunday with such limited help. This also gave more people the opportunity to step up to the plate and help out with the take down afterwards (which happened in record time as well).

We're starting to see people connecting after the gathering, either just talking or going out for lunch, which is exactly what we had hoped for. Just going to church and not doing life with the other people there doesn't make any sense. And yet so many people do it week after week thinking that this is what it's all about. It's as these relationships are developed that true community is established and our core gets stronger.

I remember close to 1 year ago calling up Cineplex as my heart pounded a million miles a minute. This was the very beginning of the journey and the details hadn't even been thought out yet. It was just a dream and a huge one at that.

I thought that this would be too good to be true and I really thought it wouldn't work out. I figured that some other church would be in SilverCity Mission for sure. As I called them up I found out that no other church was renting it. I was overwhelmed. I had no idea what to do because we hadn't even gone to our church or the district with the proposal (there wasn't one yet!). I managed to strike up a deal that allowed us to put it on hold for a few weeks so I could gather my thoughts and figure out what our next move was gonna be. To top it off, the guy at the district I was supposed to talk to was on holidays, along with my Sr. Pastor so I was kind of caught in a really tough spot. Wait to start dreaming or just get it out and see where it goes...I chose the latter.

Later that afternoon I bombed out to the Junction and as soon as I got onto the property, I had an absolutely incredible feeling wash over me. I've never had something like this happen to me in this way before. It was just like God was screaming at me "This is it! This is it!" I immediately phoned up Bek and I said "I can't really describe this, but I think this is it!" I was ecstatic. I just knew that this was going to work out.

That seems like so much longer than a year ago. Despite the fact that we're only 6 weeks into this, it feels like we've been at it for years. (Even though we don't function like we've been doing it for years :) It's amazing how a God dream can cause you to believe for the impossible and if you were to step outside the whole experience you'd have a heart attack because of the absolute insanity of the whole thing. I never thought I would/could ever lead a church. I never really wanted to. God just completely rocked my world and now that dream that came a year ago is a reality and I honestly can't believe it. I'm so grateful that God uses us because of our weakness, not in spite of it. That way, in the end, he gets the credit. I'm glad I've got a plethora of weaknesses...God's getting a lot of credit for this one!

Whenever Riley wants to watch cars, we usually ship him off to his room where he's a got a little 13" tv to watch his movies on (It'll be coming out as soon as we get a house with a play room). We do this primarily because we are sick of watching his movies. Well today I'm on daddy duty and decided to let him watch it on "the big tv" (a whopping 27"!). To him...it's huge. We also have a cheap surround sound system that does the trick in a small room and to him...it's just incredible! He's sitting on the couch says "Cars driving behind me!" It's just priceless and awesome at the same time to see him discover something that just blows his mind. His eyes are glued to the tv when usually he's walking around playing with the movie providing ambient playtime noise.

What struck me about this is how often I take just the regular everyday things for granted like surround sound and food and my house and van (albeit a mini van that is starting to fall apart) and a beautiful wife that makes me look good cause she looks so good and two kids that are perfect (most of the time) and an awesome church to pastor and...God.

Now I'm not saying that God is "regular". But he is regularly doing things in my life and so often I just overlook them because I'm used to them. It took my son to experience surround sound for me to remember that just because I'm "used" to God providing for me that I shouldn't stop being completely amazed by Him and what he's doing in my life. That I shouldn't stop searching for God in the everyday things that I'm a part of.

Today I'm making the choice to let all of who I am encounter all of who I know God to be. I'm making the choice to let my reality be invaded by God from angles I normally wouldn't let happen. I'm choosing to see/hear God in the chaos and in the beauty. Today I'm choosing to experience God in surround.

We have been discussing as a lead team that we need to get starting living out our vision in our city. We spent the first 5 weeks talking about who we are as a faith community and that we want to make a wake that reaching into our community and across the world. We can talk about that all day long but if we don't act...it's just words.

So I'm throwing it out there. Where are the needs that you see in Mission? Are there people that you know that are in need right now that could use our help? Maybe you have a dream that you've been wanting to see happen?

Whatever it is, the more eyes and ears we have, the better. I'm really anticipating that our UnderCurrents will be those eyes and ears once we get rolling. In fact, my dream is that those in our UnderCurrents will just act and meet the need without feeling the need to call the office, ask permission, see if we have money, blah blah blah. Instead, they will be a network of communities that is actively looking out for each other and pools their resources together and gets it done.

So let's stop sitting around and start being who we say we are.

I just finished bombing through the book "The Big Idea" and I loved it! I got through this sucker in a few hours and I only do that with books that are good (and easy to read). The whole premise of the book is to focus everything that you do as a faith community around 1 idea. Stop sending out tons of little ideas (which is just usually disorganization in my opinion) and focus on one thing. From the kids to the adults, worship to speaking, small groups and outreach events, one idea. Obviously this will change but lets say you are in a series for a month. That whole month should be dedicated to communicating one idea in a multitude of different ways.

We've been doing this from the start at TXC. We aren't where we'd like to be but we are doing our best to communicate one idea each Sunday with the adults and the kids. Once our UnderCurrents get fired up we'll see what happens there. We may start some up that are simply a deeper study of what we talked about on Sunday. I think Sunday isn't a very good venue for group interaction (lots of people don't want it either) whereas an UnderCurrent provides a place where people have volunteered themselves to be in a small community of people and will feel more free to discuss what the theme on Sunday was. ( I bet we could have had some heated discussion in our UnderCurrents regarding this last Sunday's theme. This Sunday will be even better!)

We've had a dream from the beginning of TXC to be a church that plants other churches as well as becoming a multisite church in Mission. Sounds like a crazy psychotic dream...I know. Mission only as 35k people so it will be an interesting journey but we won't let that stop us. We've still got a long ways to go but we're getting closer and as we go that route I think taking the good stuff from the Big Idea will definitely aid us in keeping us all on the same page.

One of the things I love is the teaching team. My friend Jeremy Postal calls it sermonizing (I think that's another one of his invented words?) Basically it's a group of people that get together and brainstorm for an upcoming series. With the Big Idea each time you get together you are brainstorming 9 weeks in advance (maybe longer?) so you are always way ahead of the game. I love this because it enables you to get insight from more people that just yourself. Right now Donovan and I comprise the teaching team and he's got some crazy insights that I could use. Everytime we get together my jaw drops to the floor because of something he's said. I also love the idea of being so far ahead as it gives you way more time to prepare and change things up if need be.

I'm stoked to get the process moving a little bit further down the road. We've got all our series' planned till September and in June we're going on a Staff Retreat where we'll plan out another whole year in advance. I think that the more we can get ahead, the more freedom we'll have.

For a church our size, we have an amazing leadership team. Each person is insanely driven and has a huge passion for what they do. Even though the whole team (except for me at this point) is volunteer, you really wouldn't know it. They pour themselves into TXC and it shows in huge ways.

Our most recent addition is Donovan Price and that has proven to be a very wise decision. We had a weekly leadership meeting last night and he just started unloading some more of his dream for UnderCurrents and community involvement and I was blown away. If you haven't thought about being in an UnderCurrent, it's probably a good idea that you do. We are only getting started and are planning on launching 3-5 within the next week or two. However, this is only the beginning. I'm not gonna give away Donovan's thunder, I'll just let it roll in when the time is right. This isn't just a little group of people who are getting together for a little Bible Study. This is going to be a movement of people that make such a huge impact on Mission that people won't be able to help but get caught up in it. Seriously. And there is no better person to be at the helm of this movement than Donovan. His passion is crazy and he gets our vision with crystal clear clarity.

If I had the choice (which I do) to lead this church by myself, I wouldn't choose it for the world. I love the people I lead with and can't wait to see what God does through them in the coming days.

I seriously have the most amazing wife ever! In a week and a half we will have been married for 7 years and they've been the most amazing years of my life. People talk about the 7 year itch or how their first few years have been disastrous but I honestly can't say that we have faced any of this. It's been incredible so far! She keeps getting hotter as the days go by and I fall in love again every day. She is the best mom I've ever seen. For those that have seen her in action know this is true. She just has a way with our kids when it comes to discipline and loving them that is unparalleled (in my opinion).

What prompted this post is that she is gone today. She's back at work! This time it's with Cadbury. Today was the first day in a year that she's been away from the kids and I think it was tough on her. She did look mighty fine in her business attire but I think she'd rather be at home. And I really gotta give her credit cause I'm at home with our two kids and I can't get an ounce of work done! I've got messages to write, ads to design, newsletters to send off, etc. What have I got done? Yep...that's right. Nothing! I might need to get some tips from some other stay at home dads cause this dad needs some help! The good thing is that she is only working 3 days a week. that gives me two days to hammer through the stuff I need to.

The point? My wife rocks! She's still got it going on and I'm the luckiest man alive to be able to spend my life with her!

We had such a good day yesterday! It was the first of a four part series talking about The Naked Truth. I wasn't really nervous going into it but I definitely thought we'd have more negative push back than we did. In fact, I don't think we had any. People were amped! The guys were excited (what's new?). It was fun having props to aid visually. We had a bed up on the stage that was highlighted by the spotlight and then out in the lobby we had two male/female icons sort of forming a gate that we had to walk through to get the cafe area.

And just for the record, I painted those icons all day Saturday and that isn't gonna happen again! We waited too long to ask someone else to do it so I just decided that I would. Ya...that was a complete gong show! We'll leave the props up to the creative people...now we just have to find them!

I talked about redeeming our sexuality and challenged people to stop calling themselves Christians if they aren't willing to follow Jesus. Basically...if you don't want to follow Jesus...don't. But if you say you are going to follow him, then do. And this means that you follow Him with your sexuality. When you say you follow him you are telling the world that you live by his game plan, not yours. And when you say that you follow Him but your actions don't line up, you are just wasting your time.

I should also clarify that there is a difference between messing up, getting back up and continuing to move forward verses living in complete rebellion but pulling the "God's grace covers" me card. My whole point is, if you don't wanna play by God's game plan...don't. And stop living like you are but pulling the God card out. PICK ONE!

And the funny thing is...people loved it! It was a harsh challenge but one thing we've been discovering over the last few weeks is that when you raise the standard, the people who are serious about it will rise to the occasion and those who aren't...will leave. We are raising the standard and that's that.


In other news, Upstream Kids was crazy again this week! The kids were having the time of their lives and they were learning about Jesus in a way that they will remember for weeks to come. Tina is by far the best Kids pastor I've ever seen. We'll be fighting off other churches that want to hire her in the future for sure. Our Omega team is going to be gone for the next few weeks and then they will be finished at the end of March so we are going to have to step up as a faith community and start investing even more into our kids. For some of us that means that we're going to have to sacrifice attending the gathering so that our kids can get the best experience that they could imagine on Sunday mornings. The aren't the church of tomorrow. They are who we are as a faith community right now. If we don't invest in them today, tomorrow they won't be here!


I challenge you to take a risk this week and invite someone that doesn't already go to church. I've got stories to tell of someone who invited a friend that doesn't go to church and now the chain reaction is crazy! The worst thing that could happen is that they say no. Ya you'll feel like an idiot but what if you knew they would have said yes and you chickened out? Idiot doesn't even begin to describe how you'd feel. I've been asking my friend for the last 5 months...one day he'll come.

One of the ways that we try and communicate what we're doing at TXC with people who aren't connected to Jesus is by putting ads in the paper. If you know anything at marketing at all, this type of marketing is very quickly losing it's edge. People are bombarded with so much advertising that they just start ignoring everything. I find myself only paying attention to an ad that is funny.

However, this has been one of the most beneficial things for us to do so far. It may not work in the future but for now it's getting people talking and actually checking us out. The amount of people definitely makes it worth it.

Well, today "The Naked Truth: candid conversation about private issues" will be in our local paper. It makes me laugh when I think about the response we're gonna get. You'll just have to check it out in the paper or on the website (once we get our crap together and get it on there). I'm sure we are going to get a few people thinking we are absolutely evil. That's fine. You know what I really care about? If one person starts to see their sexuality in a way that God sees it and chooses to follow him with their "whole" lives, not just their mouths. I'm not really concerned if someone from another church gets all twisted up over what we're gonna be talking about because this is such a real issue and even the church has got it all screwed up.

Anyways, we're gonna have fun with this one. Up on the roster this week..."Redeeming the Sheets".

One word of caution...if you don't like the word "sex" or think sex is dirty...don't come!

This is some funny stuff right here. I'm always up for a good laugh and I think today is the day that we're gonna start implementing some insanity!



1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point A Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.

2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice.

3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, Ask If They Want Fries with that.

4. Put Your Garbage Can On Your Desk And Label It "In."

5. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks . Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.

6. Finish All Your sentences with "In Accordance With The Prophecy."

7. As Often As Possible, Skip Rather Than Walk.

8. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.

9. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is "To Go."

10. Sing Along At The Opera.

11. Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Can't Attend Their Party Because You're Not In The Mood.

12. Have Your Co-workers Address You By Your Wrestling Name, Rock Bottom.

13. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream "I Won!, I Won!"

ht: Mark Batterson

Man...this guy just keeps posting exactly what I've been thinking. I came into this very cautious and with a guarded perspective because I knew this was going to happen. This post is along the same vein as his last post (which a referenced in my last post)

Our bottom line is that we are all about connecting the disconnected to Jesus. We will always be about this. We aren't about coddling and spoon feeding spiritually fat Christians. At a certain point in the life of Christ follower, they have got to start feeding themselves. They can't expect to come to church "to get their needs met". If this is the case, I'd argue that they aren't mature and possibly don't understand what it really means to follow Jesus. Our aim is to equip you to reach those who are disconnected.

We want Sunday's to be fun and done with a certain level of excellence but we don't do that just so you can invite your friends. We definitely want you to feel confident to invite your friends but when we do something with excellence it's about honoring God, not showing off how good we are. (Trust me...we've got tons of work to do) We see Sunday's as an eqiupping/sending time so that during the week you can be connecting with your friends and eventually connecting them to Jesus. I don't understand how it's the churches' job to share Jesus with your friends/family.

Anyways, read the post and be reminded that we won't back down from the dream that God has put into motion.

I read this post today and it came at just the right time.

I'll let it speak for itself because it says everything I would want to say. Let's just say I've been encountering this a bit, and this pastor just reinforces what I've always believed and gives me confidence to have the courage to stick to our original vision.

I've just got a question? When someone says that you aren't a "deep" enough teacher, what does that mean? Does "deep" require you to talk about the end times and whether or not we are going to be raptured before the tribulation or not? I could go on but you get the idea...it seems that "deep" to some people is the discussion of meaningless stuff because what it does is allows them to remain in their disobedience. They haven't figured out that what the Bible is really all about is seeing the Kingdom of God rule on earth and that you can't go any deeper than that.

As far as I'm concerned, if we follow Jesus and are trying to live lives that follow His example and standard, we are going to be deep. We can sit around and argue about the impossibility of the trinity or we can actually start contagiously living out our faith. I'll pick #2 everytime! I really do believe that if we could just learn how to follow Jesus, a revolution would take place. I think the problem is that we like our lives too much to wanna give any of it up.

Bottom line: We preach Jesus...if he's not deep enough for you...talk to our relocation specialist! He'll find you a church that will be everything you ever wanted it to be!

Up until tonight I was apprehensive to whether we should start our undercurrents yet. It just didn't feel right but I read a quote by someone that basically said "Good leaders don't wait until everything is perfect". When I read that I realized that I was just being a wimp and I needed to move ahead even though I didn't have all the answers yet.

So we called a little shindig at our house and invited whoever was interested to come out and chat. We ended up having just enough people before our house would have been crowded out and the vibe and energy was awesome. It was so good to see people connecting with each other that may have seen each other on a Sunday but just hadn't had a way to connect yet. We don't really have a game plan yet but we got people to sign up if they wanted to just attend, host or lead an undercurrent so now we will get in contact with those people and go from there. I think there were around 6 or 7 people interested so that's a really good place to start from.

It'll be really cool to see these people on Sunday now that they know a whole bunch of new people. It makes all the difference in the world when you start to network with others versus staying in isolation. That was the whole purpose of our "rant" on Sunday, to communicate the need we have for community.

I'm really excited to see where this is going to go. It's the future of our church and I'm glad that I decided to just shake off my insecurity and take the risk.

Tomorrow night is our first gathering of those interested in UnderCurrents. UnderCurrents are smaller gatherings of people that do life together throughout the week. (For the record, I may get bashed for the name of these...but I honestly can't stand the name "small group"...it sounds so Christianese and it makes absolutely no sense.)

I'm not sure how many people are going to come or are going to be able to find my house but we're gonna meet anyways. We really don't have much to say because we don't have a definitive plan. All we know is that we aren't designed to go through life in isolation and we have to intentionally invade each other's space if community is going to happen because we all love to play games and wear masks to keep each other at a distance, myself included.

Donovan is overseeing the development of our undercurrents and he has a dream for how it could look. A while ago he was watching this documentary on a guy searching for a lost city in a jungle and couldn't find it. He later died in the jungle. But it doesn't end there. Another guy went out in search for it later on and found the city. What he found out was that this city was not like a traditional city you would see with walls and such. That's probably why the first dude couldn't find it. This city was designed like a crooked wheel. In the center was a hub. It was the main gathering place. But out from this hub were tons of different roads leading to smaller sub communities of people. And from those sub communities were roads that linked together and subsequently more roads leading out to new sub communities. They would come together to trade and do whatever they did back then but then they would go back out to their sub communities. What they realized is that just because they didn't all live within the same four walls didn't mean that they were part of the same city. They all knew that their livelihood depended on each other. If one community was sick, another would travel through the road and help out. they wouldn't all come back to the main hub and try and figure out what to do. It was organic and grass roots based.

This is what we see our church looking like. In a sense it's messy. It's decentralized. Everything doesn't rely on "Sunday Morning" or the church office to figure out their lives. It just happens because our lives are so deeply integrated with each other. We don't meet in our Undercurrents 'just to meet' and go home. It's a natural thing that happens because we're already living our lives together. If someone gets sick in an UnderCurrent, the people from that community gather around to help out. If it's a greater need that the immediate community can't solve, the next UnderCurrent that is closest to them comes to their aid. These communities (Undercurrents) aren't just about meeting for a bible study because that's what 'good Christians do'. It's so much more than that. They can look and feel like whatever those in it want it to look or feel like.

How do we do this? We don't know. But on Tuesday @ 6:30pm at our house we're gonna start exploring what this could look like. If you wanna come the only requirement is that you bring an appetizer or dessert for me to eat!

I gotta be honest, it's been very tough for our family in the financial department as we've planted TXC. I was prepared to go to the wall to see this dream take off and that's what we did. As I kept putting necessary things that we needed for the church on credit card after credit card, I had hope that we would get paid back once the church was off it's feet. I know it's not the best way to plant a church (on credit) but I felt so strongly that this was God's dream that I didn't even think twice. It had to be done.

But last week I kind of hit a wall. All of our credit cards/lines of credit had run out. This was a challenge for us personally as well because the interest payments were taking up any spare change we had for ourselves to live. It was just starting to turn into a gong show and I started to crack. I had no idea where we were going to pay for this debt. I know that we had already paid off a 25k sound system in a matter of months but it seemed like we had used up all of our available options. Then yesterday rolled around.

At the beginning of the gathering one of the ladies that has been with us from the beginning came up to me and said that "one of her friends" was going to give us some money. To be honest, I didn't get my hopes up. I mean, I was hoping alright but I just tried to stay cool cause who knows what would happen. What I didn't know was that her husband was going to come up to me after the gathering and give me a huge cheque from the company that his co-owns! They tithe off of their profits and he said that God has been extremely good to them this year and that this is just where the money needed to go. When I opened the envelope my jaw hit the floor! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I had to look a few times just to be sure I wasn't fooling myself. After a few looks, I realized that it was real.

So what this does is almost completely wipe out any existing debt that had accumulated since September and gives a completely fresh slate. The beautiful thing is that the debt from September was all necessary things to get us off the ground. Now that we have all of this stuff we don't have to spend too much more. Now it's all just dreaming for the future and not worrying about the past.

It's funny and brutal at the same time how just when I was starting to lose hope and really had no options, God comes through. It just floors me everytime. This truly is God's dream and that is proven over and over as I don't have the ability to pull off most of what happens. We are attempting something that is impossible for us to achieve and I've been reminded once again that it's the impossible that is an invitation for God to, once again, show who's really in control.

This has been one crazy week! It all started last Saturday with our little one, Emma, getting sick, which started a nasty domino effect which has finally come to an end. It is near impossible taking care of kids when you are sick, let alone when both adults are sick. It was so awesome having our good friends Dave and Charlene drop us off an endless supply of gingerale and some drugs that put a stop to the madness. Seeing we weren't able to get off our hill, their bravery (coming into the quarantined bunker) saved us days of being sick for sure!

On another note, I met with Donovan today to talk about the development of our newest vein of TXC, UnderCurrents, and things are looking really good. If there is anything you will soon find out is that he is one passionate dude! He's got some fire in his belly that is very contagious. He's going to be sharing some more of our dream in Sunday and if you fear trusting other people and learning to live your life in close proximity with others, I'm pretty confident that after hearing him you'll be changing your mind. Even after hearing what God's been showing him, I was getting stoked!

I'll also put an advance invite out there to our UnderCurrent ShinDig this tuesday, Feb.6 @ 6:30pm at our house. If you need directions, either grab them on Sunday or fire me an email and I'll get them to you. If you can find a babysitter, we'd ask that you go with that option. If not, bring your kids and they can just be added to the mix. To get in the door you need to bring either an appetizer or a dessert.

This is going to be a very informal night and will probably just last an hour. We're just going to be discussing what the future could look like. To be honest, we don't have a super detailed plan of how this going to look. It's going to be a grassroots thing (if that doesn't make sense, come on Sunday and it will all be perfectly clear!)

Other than that, nothing exciting has happened over the last week. Just a whole lot of sleeping and feeling sorry for myself.

See you in a couple of days! If you're feeling really brave, we'll see you @ 7am on Sunday at the rear entrance of the theatre to help set up!