I'll admit it...I've never been a "prayer warrior". My get it done nature and short attention span makes it difficult to sit still and pray for really long periods of time. I've often used this as an excuse to simply not pray. However, most things in life worth achieving are somewhat difficult and so I've been working for some time on my prayer life. 

It has seemed that God's chosen timing on issues in our life this past year has had an undeniable link to our prayers. It's not that God is giving us everything we want when we pray but more like prayer has been a catalyst for the movement of God doing what he's always meant to do in our lives. It's served as a great reminder an motivator of just how crucial a part of God's plan prayer is.

I'd encourage you as I try to encourage myself - bring everything before God. Pray like he can and will answer your prayers. You and I have the catalyst to see God work wonders.

Sometimes our stengths in one context are our greatest weaknessess in another. This is the truth we've come to discover. What makes you good at one thing can make you totally unsuited for another. Take an olympic weightlifter for example. A weightlifter can do some impressive things - like lifting hundreds of Kilos. Can you do that? Me either! Are you wowed and awed when they do? I sure am! However, seeing that same impressive physique in a tutu attempting to play the mouse king in the nutcracker would not be impressive. It would be downright rude and awful, I think. The exact thing that makes them a great weightlifter, their size and physique, s exactly what inhibits them from being a light footed and beautiful dancer or look good in the aforementioned tutu.

Such is life though. No one looks good when working outside of their area of strength. No one is going to think "God got it right when he made Olga there to be a dancer". See, God designed each of us for a purpose and the fulfillment of that purpose is one of the primary ways God gets glory from our life. Those who most point to God are living most closely the life he has called us to.

I think the role of shepherd is one that ought to be doing our best to get people living in the place where they are most giving glory to God. While we give them Bibiical knowledge, help in discipleship, councilling and other helps shepherds need to help people know who God has made them to be and how they can best display that as God's work of creation so that God recieves maximum glory from that life.

Thinking this way is really helping me to determine both how we can disciple mature believers and reach those who don't know Christ. If we were all made in God's image and we give God the most glory where we're most who he made us to be then a big part of the Church's responsibility is to help those who don't yet see that they're made in God's image to see that and then to help those who realize that to increasingly become the people God made them to be - by adpoting his ways and using what he's given to them to the maximum potential...all for God's glory.

All too often though we're a weightlifter in dancer's clothing. Get on with being who God made you to be. Embrace your weaknesses and let his plan for you be your strength. This is a lesson we've been learning.

Sunday was a beautiful and intesne day for us. It was our last Sunday at WLA and they were quite kind to us. At the end of the service they had a few of our friends and co-servants say some very touching and meaningful words, they prayed for us and they had a farewell reception after the service. We felt very blessed.

Fortunately they did not sing Michael W. Smith's "A Friend's a Friend Forever" (athought they did an excellent Downhere song dedicated to us). As cheezy as MWS is those lyrics often come back to my mind. Maybe it's the slightly constipated tone of MWS's voice or just that phrasing that makes me remember but they truth is "a friend's a friend forever, if the Lord's the Lord of them". It's a lesson we learned back in Calgary and has been reinforced during our time in London. 

I believe that God has always meant our relationship to him to be personal, but not individualistic. He means for us to do life, life in Christ, in Community. Our friends are there not only to share a laugh with but to strengthen and encourage our walk with God. I have come to believe that Gospel truth and Gospel Community are the two non-negotiable components of the church. the truth keeps you grounded in God and the community keeps you grounded on earth. They go together and it's meant to be that way.

At some point in our life you will realize this. At some point God has or will use someone to lovingly correct you. He'll bring you through a tough time by the encouragement of a faithful sister. He'll bring you from the brink of dispair by the love and laughter from a dear brother. 

Aisde from the Gospel, God has created nothing as necessary or beautiful as community. This is a huge lesson for a strategic pragmatist like me. I fail at it miserably sometimes. However, I am resolved to make an infectious community one of the defining features of the yet to come church in Toronto. Hopefully, when people leave to follow God's call we will bless and drain them too :-)

 Mel and I spent all day today at a parenting Marathon with our friends the Postma's and another couple. Mel and I are really deeply committed to parenting Layla as well as we possibly can. It reminded me of one of the things we've heard over and over again about church planting - your family is more important than the church. 

Sometimes people get this really wrong. Church planters, me included, can get tunnel vision and start to focus too much of their life on the church. However, I've heard time and time again people say that I need to keep my wife and family first. They are my most important flock. No matter what God does in our church, no matter how much fruit or how little nothing is going to matter as much as how I do when shepherding Mel, Layla and any other children God gives us.

Taking care of my family first is the first lesson I've learned this year. Elementary? Yes. Does our society do it well? No. It's worth mentioning again and again. Thanks to the folks at Converge for highlighting this for us and to Chris Postma for being a passionate reminder to me these past few years that this deserves to be on the front of our minds all the time. 

Today marks the official one week left mark in our time at WLA. It's weird. I feel like there is some unfinished buisness but trust God to work out the details. Anyone else out there who can relate to the weirdness of leaving? Did you learn any crucial lessons as you left?

Speaking of lessons again - next week I think I'll blog on 5 major lessons God's taught us about life, ministry and planting as we've been on this journey the past 18 months. Hopefully it'll spark some great conversation.

 I picked this up off of Ed Stetzer's Blog. Ed is a planter, researcher, preacher and writer who I've found very helpful in learning about the young unchurched and church planting. These are great questions to be asking yourself and your accountability partners:

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?

2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?

3. Do I confidentially pass onto another what was told me in confidence?

4. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work , or habits?

5. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?

6. Did the Bible live in me today?

7. Do I give it time to speak to me everyday?

8. Am I enjoying prayer?

9. When did I last speak to someone about my faith?

10. Do I pray about the money I spend?

Read the rest at the link above. 48 in total!

 As our time in London winds down I'm giving some thought to what major lessons we've been learning as this journey has progressed. I think I'm going to write about some of them next week. It lead me to think though that everyone is on a journey and learning life lessons too. I wondered if anyone would care to share the lessons God is teaching you these days and perhaps a bit of the story that's brought you to learn that lesson. You can leave a comment or post it on your own blog and I'll link back to it.

Back at our assessment  in Minneapolis one of the assessors said to Mel and I "it's good to see you have a theology of pain". He was referring to some comments we made about testing as a natural part of the Christian life and our belief that God sees us through those times, even if it's hard and he's teaching us hard lessons.

I agree. It's good to have a theology of pain. To be honest up until last week our theology of pain was not tested against the reality of experiencing pain or trial. We might be able to say the right things but it doesn't mean we'll actually live it once trial comes.

Well right now I think God has chosen to put this theology to the test. We still need to sell our car. There are new and as of yet unanswered questions about our house in St. Thomas. I've spent a lot of time this week trying to figure out how to get across the US border in a healthy and legal way. It's been an interesting week.

Fortunately we haven't buckled. Good thing. If we buckled under this pressure we have no buisness planting a church.

So why am I writing this? Primarily I'd like you to pray for us. These are bing things and require prayer so our very big God will take care of them in his time. I also mention this because it might just be that you haven't developed a theology of pain. It comes back to the blog post Craig Whitney of ELI fame posted earlier this week. Do you have a theology that can become an ideology and so can inform your methodology? Can your theology inform your practice? If you have a theology of pain, what is it based on.

So Barbara and I continued this conversation over the weekend. He points are made well in this last comment. The question I asked her was what do we consider "the Word". Is the Word synonymous with preaching? If it is then Piper is absolutely correct. However I don't feel that is true. The Word is the Bible. Absolutely - God's word has a special power. However, I don't see where the Bible mandates that the word must be communicated through preaching in order to have maximum power. There is certainly a lot of Biblical support for the word being communicated through music. There's a whole book of the Bible that shows us that. Is drama less able to powerfully communicate the message? Is it less faithful? I think that depends on the content and not the method of delivery.

My friend Craig Whitney happened to write about this today and sent me the link. I think he's asking great questions. If I put this into his frame works I'd say that my theology puts the emphasis on the Word and faithfulness to it's message to give the power and less so to the method used to deliver that message. If a drama in the midst of a sermon helps make the point better so be it. If it's bringing a prop on stage to make your explaination more solid, do it. If it's a video, so be it. My theology of putting the focus on the message leads to my ideology of using whatever means is best suited to communicate the heart of God's word to those listening and will, I believe, lead to my use of visual and dramatic aids when I preach.

I love this conversation. It was a blast!

I woke up this morning, checked my twitter feed and at the top of it was a tweet from John Piper. I really love Mr. Piper. His books have been really quite helpful for me. However I totally disagree with his tweet this morning and think I would be helped by having a conversation about it. To get started you must read this

You can likely understand how this gets into the bonnet of a guy who's been doing arts ministry for 3+5 years and is looking to plant a church with a high value on creativity. However, more to the point, i get kind of riled by this because I think we're making big assumptions about how we must do church and I don't see mcuh biblical evidence to support our assumptions. Piper is not alone in making these assumptions so today he is just to one refuling my thinking. 

As I read the article I see Piper basically saying that we shouldn't use examples from real life to illustrate our point because it's not preaching. I'd contend that this is exactly how Jesus preached! When Jesus addressed a group of people he most often did so using story and parables. Jesus of course referenced the Old Testament and I'm in no way saying we shouldn't use Biblical texts as the truth and point of our preaching but what I am saying is this - what is the modern day equivalent of illustration and story telling? In 2009 do we not most often choose to tell our most complelling and rich stories through the visual arts? In Jesus' day good story telling was all they had. Should we remain there or ought we not take advantage of all that's before us in communicating the message, complete with illustrations, that God has put on our hearts. Piper assumes drama and video is there for entertainment. I assume those media can at times tell a story more effectively than my words can. Unless Piper is suggesting we stop telling stories altogether in our sermons then I think perhaps the point here is being missed?

Help me, please! My intention here is not to slag Mr. Piper. Again, I have mounds of resepct for him. However, I just don't see the sense or even Biblical justification for what he's saying. If you've got an opinion I'd LOVE to hear it!

So last week I was blogging about humility. Admittedly I got to a certain place and stopped. I wasn't sure what I wanted to say in conclusion. I sat here trying to write the post and it didn't come. It came to me today as I was listening to a podcast. It occurred to me, through the podcast, that if you want to know if you or anyone else is humble just look at the way they treat others.

Consider Jesus washing the disciples feet - perhaps the ultimate showing of humility. I mean here is God, who humbled himself and took on human flesh, not only being human but being the guy who serves humans. He's taking pretty much the lowest job in the world. And he's not doing it for money - he's doing it to show us something. He's showing us how to serve and how to live. When everyone else thought they were too good for the job Jesus served them this way.

The bible says that we ought to think of others more highly than ourselves. I think that might be it - when we put others before ourselves and serve like Jesus served we are moving towards real humility.

Does that fly with you? Is there more to it? If so, please, help us all with your thoughts!

Our time at WLA is winding down. What was a bit of a lull last week is now a flury of acticvity as we try our best to leave things well conditioned for the next person who God calls to do this work. I thought maybe in amidst this flurry it would be good to have some extra prayer. These are the things we feel we need particular prayer for:

Pray for the continuing process of WLA finding my replacement.
That we would sell our car before July 31
That God would go before us when we try and cross the border on August 1.
That we would reach our funraising goal on time. We are still short but God can provide!

James chapter 5 reminds us that we do not receive because we do not ask. I know I'm a person who struggles to trust God enough to ask him. Please join with us in making these requests of God and bowing to his will for our lives. If there is something we can pray for any of you concerning please let me know!

I don't know how many of you read the comments here when you're not a part of them but I'd encourage you to. I think the best stuff on this blog happens in the comments. Take yesterday for example - Lindy has actually taken time to do some research on the topic of humility and just added so much to this conversation for me. If I was a reader like yourself I'd feel ripped off had I missed out on that "extra" content. 

Anyhow, Lindy's comments lead me to my post for today which is to ask this question: Where is the right middle ground when it comes to humility. I think there are generally 3 kinds of people you meet all of whom present problems when it comes to being humble.

Person #1 is simply not humble. They adhere to the common belief that being totally self assured and over-confident is the best way to live. We call it having good self esteem (sarcasm).

Person #2 is the exact opposite. They can't handle compliments because nothing they do can be any good at all. This is the stance many Christians take. They rightly believe everything good comes from God and that they are sinners, totally unworthy of God's grace and mercy. However, they either fail to recognize that God has given them gifts and talents for his glory or they fail to take and give credit for those gifts. God has made us all good at something and that capacity for good is in you. So doesn't it stand to reason that we'd take credit for the ways in which we steward that gift well AND at the same time GIVE creidt because we know where that capacity comes from?

Perons #3 is appropriately somewhere in between. They understand how they measure up to God. They understant their limitations. However, they also understand that God has made them good at some thing(s) and to deny that is to deny God the glory of his most wonderful creation - humans and humanity.

Let's stop there. Is there a person #4? Do you think I exaggerate too much? Am I right in saying person #2 represents too many Christians? Should Person #3 be what we strive for?

 It might surprise some of you to know that humility is something I (Tim) think about a lot. It's a delicacte complex topic and really has so much to do with our movement towards what God wants us to be that it deserves a lot of our attention.  I'd love to know what others think and have a conversation about it so I'm going to write a few things here this week and ask you to jump on in if you'd like.

I think the right place to start is by defining humility. You see sometimes I wonder if we're not chasing the wrong thing when we say we're pursuing humility. Here's some things I pulled of wikipedia to guide this conversation:

Humility: A quality by which a person considering his own defects has a humble opinion of himself and willingly submits himself to God and to others for God's sake

"True humility" is distinctly different from "false humility" " which consists of deprecating one's own sanctity, gifts, talents, and accomplishments for the sake of receiving praise or adulation from other, as personified by Uriah Heep. In this context legitimate humility comprises the following behaviors and attitudes

1. submission to God and legitimate authority;
2. recognition of the virtues and talents that others possess, particularly those which surpass one's own, and giving due honor and, when required, obeisance;
3. recognition of the limits of one's talents, ability, or authority; and, not reaching for that which is beyond one's grasp

Let's just stop there for now: do you accept that as the definition of humility? Is there something lacking? Is this the definition you think most people you know would adhere to?

"My Command is this: Love one another as I have loved you. Greater Love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."

John 15 is such a great chapter. Many of us have read it dozens of times. The beautiful picture Jesus paints of a vine and branches bearing fruit is vivdly stamped on the minds of many people. It's stamped onto my brain. I was reading it again this morning and this verse just jumped off the canvas of the story and grabbed me. I've read it many times but something new occured to me this time. 

So Jesus commands us here to love with the same love he did. Then he tell us what his love looked like - he loved so much that he layed down his life for us. This became literally true for the disciples (all but John) that they'd die for their friends - for the believers - to see the gospel spread they would all literally lay down their lives. 

I wonder what that looks like today? The reality is that most all of you reading this, as well as the guy writing it, won't die for our faith. As true as that is I don't believe it means we're off the hook. We're still commanded to lay our lives down for our friends. 

In our individualist, consumer driven society we've lost a sense of true community. Self sacrifice and biblical community go hand in hand. That kind of radical sharing of life and support would go a LONG way in speaking loudly to a world devoid of real community about this Jesus we serve. They can read the bible too...and if our lives don't match up we're in serious trouble. 

I think though there are some of you who have experienced this kind of community. Who in your life has been an example of self sacrifice for the sake of Love? Who has best modeled Jesus radical love to you lately?