If we really had the guts, some of us would have to admit our faith is cheap.

Never tested.

Rarely wrestled with.

Never sacrificed for.

Just handed to us. By our family.  Our surroundings.  Our culture.

Not an encounter with God. Just something we do.  Our lens for thinking about and understanding the world.

And like a leaf being swept down the white-capped rapids of a raging river, our faith is just going where the motion naturally takes us (or sometimes leaves us drowning against a protruding rock).

Cheap faith.

In that context, the question “why?” is an assumption-bucking question.  It’s paddling upstream.  Swimming against the flow.

“Why?” is powerful.  It can also be incredibly dangerous.

In the hands of a cynic it can breed a sense of meaninglessness, contempt, and even less trust (if that’s possible for a cynic).  But asked with the right motive, “why?” can bring strength, deep conviction, and even greater freedom.

This week at CityCom, we launched a brand new series aimed at asking “why?”  (Or in our case, “Y.” You know we just can’t be normal).  Click here to hear the audio of the opening message called “Y Ask Why?”

Jesus loved to ask “why?“  But unlike the religious leaders of His day, His “whys?” weren’t aimed at protecting cultural assumptions.  Jesus’ questions cut His listeners to the core and exposed their motives.  With Jesus, it’s not just the action but the driving force that really matters.

What’s your why?

Why do you believe what you believe?

Why don’t you believe what you don’t believe?

Asked with the right motivation and within the scope of true community (like drinking alone, asking why alone may be a sign of trouble ahead), the question “why” will destroy cheap faith. Because Jesus Christ is not a philosophy to be embraced, He’s a “Person” to be encountered.

And He’s not afraid of your “why?”  In fact, He just might meet you there.

There’s always an underlying motivation driving the birth of something new.  A felt need, a discontent, frustration, passion…a desire to be different, to add something new to the conversation.  There are lots of churches out there trying to be different, trying to grasp the direction of the culture and speak to it, us included.  So over the last decade or so we’ve seen a wide-spread shift to implement expressive changes like contemporary music, casual dress, social networking, you name it.  We could easily compile a very long list.

And much of what we do at City Community Church would be reflected in that list:  our musicians are cutting edge, we’re all over Twitter and Facebook, and if I needed a tie for some unexplainable, cruel and heinous reason, I’d probably have to make a trip to Goodwill to pick one up (I’m firmly convinced neckties are a result of the fallout of original sin).

But those things are window dressing.  We can very easily fall victim to changing the outward expression without really dealing with the core of our motivations and worldview.  That’s the hard painful work most of us choose to avoid.

So what drives City Community Church?  What’s our motivation?  Why did we start this grand experiment?  I’ll at least share our hope:  It’s in how we want to see people.

Let me tell you a dirty little secret.  I believe in Jesus, I’m creative, I’m passionate, I’m motivated…and I’m innately and hopelessly selfish (and so are you…sorry).  It would be so easy for my buddy Nathan and I to leverage our influence and entrepreneurial capacity to turn CityCom into a pathway to fulfilling our own personal dreams, and to simply see the people around us as commodities in that pursuit.  If I’m being completely honest (shhhh…come real close…I have to whisper) a lot of churches do exist simply to fulfill their own organizational agendas or those of their leader.  No one would admit it, but it’s true.  It’s human nature, it can sneak in subtly, and we all have to guard against it.

So as we launch City Community Church, our deepest desire is to unearth the unbelievable, untapped, uncultivated God-imparted possibilities that reside inside of everyday individuals.  We want to be curators of people potential.  And not just so we have musicians to staff Sunday services, workers for the children’s ministries, and ushers to collect the offering.  It’s not that those things aren’t valid (or needed), they’re just not our ultimate definition of success.  We don’t just want to mobilize your Sunday, we want to empower your Monday.

So don’t just wait for us.  Our job is to help you uncover your God-birthed vision, not design, create and implement one for you.  Look for us to push, prod, inspire, challenge, and flat out irritate you into becoming all that God created you to be, in the context of the daily life He’s called you to live.  For the record, that starts with Jesus.

Now you know.  Now we’re accountable.  Let’s get to it.

Our amazing volunteer bookkeeper came by the office today and told me what may perhaps become my favorite story since the launch of City Community Church (and that’s saying something).  This past weekend as the team was counting the offering, she found a dirty little plastic bag with 85 cents in it.  Not three shiny quarters and a new nickel, but lots of filthy pennies, nickles, and dimes.  The coins were so dirty she had to soak them in Pepsi to try and clean them off before adding them to the weekly deposit.

Now there’s no way to know who put those in there (if you’re reading this and it’s you, and I totally have it wrong, my apologies).  But one of the things I’ve loved so much about this church right in the heart of downtown Indy is that we literally have homeless guys sitting next to millionaires each week.  I just have this picture of one of our homeless friends spending days collecting those coins from storm grates, sidewalks, and gutters around the downtown streets, wrapping them carefully in a recycled plastic bag, and eagerly bringing them to church this past Sunday.  Who knows?

But I do know that every penny matters to God because it’s never about the money, it’s about what the money represents in our lives.  And just like Jesus’ encounter with the poor widow who put her last pennies in the Temple box (Mark 12:41-43), these 85 beautiful cents mean as much to Him as if it were a million dollar gift.  That’s cool.

Just got back from our first ever City Community Church “Guys Night Out.”  I give the new friendships a 10, Scotty’s Brewhouse a 10, and Terminator Salvation a 6.5.  But hey, stuff blew up and that was, after all, the goal of the evening.

As much fun as we had tonight, I was reminded of one eternal truth:  relationships take time.  There’s no fast-forward.  No microwave button.  No shortcut to creating genuine, authentic, life-giving relationships.  You just have to commit to the journey.  And journey we will (a little Yoda-speak…makes me sound smarter).

Thanks to all who joined us tonight.  Hope some more of you can make it next time around.  Let’s continue the pursuit together.  Maybe next time instead of just watching stuff blow up, we’ll actually blow some stuff up together…

…well, ok, maybe that’s not such a good idea (any homeland security officers out there monitoring my posts, that was totally a joke).

Nathan and I just got back to the hotel after the opening night of the ARC All Access Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina.  It was a great evening of worship, challenge, and reconnecting with new friends and church planters from all over the country.

I love the spirit of ARC pastors. My heart is naturally drawn to them.  There’s a sense of reckless abandon in the ARC, of freedom to follow God-given passions without boundaries or barriers.  That’s so refreshing in a culture where most churches are more concerned with looking backward than into the future.  I really feel at home here surrounded by like-minded people.

But back home I’ve also found myself interacting with pastors and spiritual leaders who question the validity of my innate expression and vision for church.  There are days when my mind swirls with the all the different voices and opinions, and in earlier days it would have overwhelmed me.  Today, I’m honestly learning to welcome it.

One of two things always happens when I open myself to challenge:  my mind is exposed to something I just wasn’t thinking before, or I deepen my beliefs and solidify my “why.”  Either way I win.

I think a lot of good-hearted, God-fearing people run from challenge.  They only hang out with people who think like them, talk like them, act like them, and encourage their preconceived notions.  But if our perspectives can’t survive exposure to opposing viewpoints, how authentic are they in the first place?

In the midst of all the voices, ask yourself one vital question:  “what is God really saying?”