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.

Sorry for another video post, but I have to put this out there.  Love bragging on other people, and my friend Mike Perez deserves some major kudos (not just for his talent, but because he embodies in his life everything he expresses in his art).

Many of you have already heard Mike’s spoken word piece “Just Worship” that he so powerfully shared at the close of our City Community Church message series called [blank] last month.  Well, Mike and one of my other favorite creatives, Adam Bocik, re-recorded the audio and set it to music along with visual images.

Enjoy…and do us a favor, pass this along to other people who need to remember what real worship is all about.  Thanks for the reminder Mike.

Thought I’d share some fun videos from our new CityCom series: AWAKENINGS.  I doubt we’re going to win any awards, but we do like to have a good time.  Absurdity with a point we like to say.

Meet Carl.  Carl isn’t a big fan of waking up, or really of just being awake in general.

Even at work, he’s figured out some incredibly creative ways to stay asleep.

Mix in a nasty sinus infection, and Carl may never wake up ever again.

How about you?  What are you awakening to?

I find myself somewhat reflective today.  CityCom is one (as in years old).  This “grand experiment,” this “adventure in Indy” we call City Community Church officially came to life one year ago today: March 1, 2009.  It’s still so surreal in such a beautiful sort of way.

But today there is no cake, no gifts, no party. Some birthday, huh?

Maybe we’re overly-sensitive, but we’re cautious of celebrating existence. Existence, just being here, really doesn’t mean much in God’s Kingdom.  In fact, God doesn’t really look too kindly on just existing.

Check out Jesus’ words from Luke 13 (emphasis mine):

^6-7Then he told them a story: “A man had an apple tree planted in his front yard. He came to it expecting to find apples, but there weren’t any. He said to his gardener, ‘What’s going on here? For three years now I’ve come to this tree expecting apples and not one apple have I found. Chop it down! Why waste good ground with it any longer?‘

^8-9“The gardener said, ‘Let’s give it another year. I’ll dig around it and fertilize, and maybe it will produce next year; if it doesn’t, then chop it down.‘”

To put CityCom’s birthday in Jesus’ terms: we don’t want to celebrate that the tree is still standing, we only want to celebrate if it’s actually producing good fruit.

So, no church growth statistics today (although a few of them might impress you). Just people. Beautiful people. That’s what I want to celebrate.

People taking “one step closer to becoming fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.”

People accepted for who they are, but challenged to become all God created them to be.

People embracing a journey of risk, adventure, and transformation.

People longing to know what it means to be The Church, not just go to church.

This is the fruit. The fruit we long for.  The fruit that we celebrate.  The fruit we desperately hope is pleasing to God.  And we’re seeing signs of it.  Beginnings.  “Buds.”

I’m so grateful to all of you who, in one way or another, have made City Community Church come to life.  May we bear much fruit. One year down, and the adventure is just beginning.

My friend Geoff Wybrow hit me with a challenging statement yesterday:

“Offend people with the truth, not your character flaws.”

Some days we offend people with our brokenness, our insecurities, our selfish motivations, with the baseball bat of our own pain that we willingly or unwillingly take to the heads of others like an angry mafia boss (sorry for that visual, I’m a big fan of the movie Goodfellas).

But at times the truth really does hurt.  At times it should hurt.

Most prophets in the Bible weren’t real good at making friends.  Their words were too piercing, their obedience too radical, the Spirit of God too active in their declarations.  Isaiah walked around naked for three years, Hosea married a prostitute, and the prophet Nathan (no relation to my buddy LaGrange) called King David a liar and a murderer.

Bad social skills or insider’s information on some hard truth?

This past Sunday at City Community Church, we were confronted with some hard truth.  Not condemnation – that outward-in, man-made, guilt-ridden obligation that leads to resentment, not long-term transformation (Jesus never worked that way).  But conviction – an inside-out revelation from the Holy Spirit that shows us our brokenness and calls us to repentance. I want to share some of it with you.

Here is the video created by Rachel Richard that interrupted (yes, literally interrupted) the music towards the opening of the service (don’t adjust your volume, there intentionally isn’t any):

And click the link below to hear the powerful spoken word piece (this is a must listen) from our friend Mike Perez that brought the day to a close:

Just Worship: Mike Perez

And if you’ve got more time, linked here is the complete message from my friend and co-pastor Nathan LaGrange:

[blank]: Dismantled: Nathan LaGrange

Love to hear your thoughts.  Have you ever been offended by some hard truth?

Comment at http://www.beyondtherisk.com

I once asked a young youth pastor for his perspective on creating effective youth ministry in a local church environment.  His answer stunned me:

“I would never hire a me.”

Excuse me?  What?

“As soon as a church hires a full-time youth minister, the people no longer take individual responsibility for the young people around them. It becomes my job, the institutions job, to make disciples of the kids.”

Interesting perspective.  But it forced me to ask a difficult question: “have I lost my own sense of personal responsibility?”

In a culture where Starbucks serves me coffee, Apple serves up iPhones, and Walmart seems to fill in all possible remaining gaps, it’s easy (even for me…maybe especially for me) to view the church as another faceless institution that provides “spiritual consumables.” Want proof?

A few weeks ago, a guy approached me in the lobby after our weekend service to ask for some help understanding the Bible.  My gut reaction?  We should design a class I could send this guy to for basic Bible instruction.  Only later did it hit me, I should just personally show this guy how to study Scripture.

When the 7.1 earthquake demolished Haiti, my immediate thought was “CityCom should write a check to a relief organization.”  It took some time, and a little conviction, before I pulled out my own checkbook.

American culture rewards those who figure out how to make life more convenient. I love that.  But what if Starbucks required you to jump behind the counter and make coffee for someone else before you could get yours?  Or if Apple insisted you work the assembly line to activate your iPhone subscription?  Or Walmart made you stock shelves in order to shop there?  Would you do it?

That’s more like the Gospel Jesus modeled. It’s inconvenient.  It costs.  It serves.  It takes responsibility. And that makes me uncomfortable.

The church doesn’t exist as a faceless institutional answer.  You and I are here to become the church, and that requires immense personal responsibility.

What personal responsibility am I placing on “the church” to avoid owning it for myself?

Post your thoughts at http://www.beyondtherisk.com

As a church leader, the reality is unavoidable. News stories circulate the statistics through Christian networks and publications with great regularity. Western Churches are dying. Closing their doors at an alarming rate.  And my honest, and undoubtedly controversial, question is this:  is that really all that bad?

I’m the co-pastor of a local church in downtown Indianapolis, and I unabashedly believe that the local church is God’s designated expression to bring His hope to the world. But I sometimes wonder if all our efforts to keep churches in business are actually working against God’s designed purposes for those churches to begin with.  Really, I haven’t been drinking.  Let me explain.

We have an undeniable propensity to see the church as an entity instead of a people, an institution instead of a movement. So almost involuntarily over time, our focus turns toward acquiring and keeping resources that sustain the organization. Efforts which may or may not lead to the expansion of the Kingdom of God.

“Preserve and keep builds my kingdom.  Create and release grows God’s.”

In fact, almost without warning, our church and its existence can easily become our definition of God’s Kingdom in its entirety. The complete answer to the question, rather than just a piece of a much larger landscape.

In business school we learned the product life cycle.  Eventually, regardless of longevity, all products become obsolete. It’s inevitable.  But that doesn’t necessarily eliminate the demand for what those products provided.  Cultural shifts or technological breakthroughs may simply create a better way to accomplish the desired outcome.

Let’s be honest, if McDonald’s goes out of business, people will still find cheap, artery-clogging food to eat.  If GM shuts it doors, transportation won’t cease to exist.  If Apple files for bankruptcy, our generation will still create technological tools that allow us to snobbishly mock users of Microsoft products.

“The church is a means, not an end.”

And if my organized expression of the local church ever ceases to exist, God’s Kingdom will still expand (ask any of the skyrocketing number of Christians in communist China).  Because the church is people, not an institution. If what I know as church isn’t expanding the Kingdom, wouldn’t it be best to release those people and resources to start new faith communities that are?  After all, the church is a means, not an end.

City Community Church turns 11 months old this weekend, and I hope with all my heart that we celebrate 10 years, 25 years, 50 years as a local church community.  But only if we’re truly advancing God’s agenda in the world. If not, we need to go out of business and release our resources to those who are. Getting CityCom to its next birthday milestone can’t be our focus.

Preserve and keep builds my kingdom.  Create and release grows God’s. And isn’t that what the Church is supposed to be all about?  Love to hear your thoughts: www.beyondtherisk.com

A few months ago I shared some medical challenges that my family was facing via this blog and at our weekly gathering for City Community Church.  There have been some very encouraging recent updates, so I thought I’d post them here for those who are interested.

MANDY: my wife’s thyroid issues have all come back clean and clear, and following a couple of preventative procedures she is fully on the mend and back to keeping me and the kids in line (wish her luck with that one).

AUSTIN: my 4 year old is getting used to his new glasses, and if his mom and dad can be more disciplined with his patch therapy, there’s a long-term possibility his vision could improve enough to lose the eye correction altogether.

DISNEY: our sweet little Boston Terrier Disney…well no, she didn’t resurrect from the dead.  But we did get a new miniature addition to the family: a Yorkshire Terrier named “Buzz.” (as in Lightyear).

ME: after two miserable months on anti-seizure medication (if I was mean, nasty, or completely unpleasant to any of you, I do have a medical excuse), I decided to see a new neurologist here in Indy.  This second opinion yielded new perspective on my symptoms and reversed my initial “risk of seizure” diagnosis.  Instead, it seems I have a condition known as Optical (or silent) Migraines.  While still a neurological event, it is not as serious as a seizure disorder and can hopefully be managed without medication.  In fact, I just finished the five week detox (those meds are serious stuff) and am completely off any medication for the first time since early October.

We’ve been excited to share these developments with you, and really to say thank you for all the prayers and love we’ve felt these last few months.  Pain, suffering, and events beyond our control are often God’s greatest shaping tools.  And as much as I hate that reality, this quote from my original October post rings truer than ever today:

I don’t want a belief system – a philosophy – that gives me easy answers I can frame and hang on the mantle, an opiate created to dull my pain.  I need a Savior willing to embody my suffering, to redeem it, to shape me deeply through this far-too-often unexplainable journey, and to both weep and celebrate with me all along the way.

Sometimes our stories seem to have happy endings, and sometimes the pain and confusion is a long-term companion.  But I’m learning to hang onto Jesus no matter what the journey brings, because I trust Him to use both joy and pain to unfold His perfection in me. I pray the same is true in your life.

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.