“I see the strings that control the systems.” Flobots

One of the interesting things about following Jesus is how much of Scripture allows us to see the strings that control the system.  The world operates from a broken posture.  And Scripture allows us to see very clearly how and why we operate the way we do.  It allows us to see the strings that manipulates and controls people.  And once we’re aware of these strings, we can begin to recognize them in people’s lives, even our own life.  We can begin to see from a much different perspective why people move with bitterness, hate, anger, jealousy, and division.

Seeing the strings is a weird thing.  It’s like watching the backside of a puppet show.  In some ways it takes the mystery out of the grand production.  It robs us of the drama we sometimes long to hold onto. In some ways we feel betrayed for not knowing yet in knowing we can almost feel powerless to do anything about it.  The emotions of that transition can easily feel like death.  We’re no longer comfortable with the idea of being naive but we don’t quite know how to live differently.

To know the strings exist is to become aware of the drama that no longer captures us.  We miss it, like a good friend that leads us to drink to much.  The laughter was fun until we woke up the next morning with hangover.

Drama feeds us.  It makes us both laugh and cry.  It reminds us of the interactions in our lives and helps us process our own reactions.  And this human interactions reminds us that we are alive, if barely.  The drama feeds us in ways that leave us malnourished but just strong enough to contribute in a low level kind of way.

Following Jesus means walking backstage and leaving our naive state.  It means walking away from our excuses and obstacles that hinder our growth in so many ways.  It means leaving behind our anger that allows us to remain angry at the person who hurt us.  It means stepping into our own maturity at the expense of the games we play.  In other words, to see the strings means we can no longer remain anesthetized by the play taking place on the stage.  We’re now aware that the strings are controlling us.

To follow Jesus is to cut the strings.  It’s to leave behind religion that so carefully allows us to remain naive.  It means taking responsibility for our lives and nturing our dignity back to wholeness.  It means stepping into the chaos of love and trust.  It means participating in our own restoration at the expense of the pain that nurtured our retribution; pain we so desperately hold onto.  It menas not being defined by what other people say or do to us.  And it means taking the risk to discover the life we were meant to live.

Ultimately it means true freedom.  Care to follow?

If your church is wrestling with engaging what it means to follow Jesus, we can help.  Contact us today to get a free digital copy of our leadership manual.

The following is an excerpt from Thrive Year 1 Quarter 2 Workbook, pg 12.

For a free digital copy of our Leadership Manual, send us an email.

——————————————

The problem with seeing is that it often requires us to see the darker side of life.  We don’t get a pair of glasses at birth that allows us to see only what is good.  We read or hear about the injustice in the world or right around the corner and it often weighs on us like a plague.  Our hearts cry out, “When will the pain end.”

Being alive means dealing with the world until we can no longer deal with it.  “For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.”  Have you ever felt like this?

What Jesus is saying is that it is possible to reach a point in life that we can no longer see.  Our eyes close and you just shut down the intake valve. Our heart becomes calloused because someone wounded us in such a way that made us say, “I can’t let this happen again.”  And this person wasn’t a neighbor.  It was a friend, or a parent.  It was the people who were supposed to take care of us.  And the only way we can deal with it is to close the world off and become numb.

So often we meet people who are angry or confused or don’t want to see the truth and we walk away with the impression, “They’ve got a closed mind.”  But what Jesus is saying is that it’s not the mind that’s closed.  It’s the heart.  Something in life has broken them and the only way they can protect themselves is to shut down.  New information just means potential pain and that’s not going to happen.  And sometimes that person is us.

I get calls all the time from people who are discontented with consumer church.  They’ve tried everything that doesn’t work but don’t want to give up.  They know Jesus is real, and true, and came for something more.  But they don’t understand why it’s just not clicking.

Believe me when I say, “I get that.”

But my answer is pretty much the same.  Try a different operating system.

The current model of church is designed to create a passive consumer of information.  People show up and passively consume what the pastor teaches them.  They feel fed when they leave and don’t really have to do much in the way of engaging God’s mission.  It’s done for them.  They can participate in small groups but these quickly center around social environments and the right answer.  This is essentially an operating system.  Underlying what we do is a set of assumptions that create a way of doing church.  It’s the way we’ve been operating as a church for a long, long time.  And the system is designed to produce the same thing every time.

Thrive is essentially an entirely different operating system.  To continue the metaphor, we’re the Mac version of the operating system.  We’re so different that it’s kind of hard sometimes to get what we do.  And the only way to really get it, is to experience it.

Fundamentally we’re designed to practice what it means to engage God’s mission of restoration and reconciliation.  We’re asking what it means to follow Jesus.  And this different operating system is designed to create participants who know what it means to love and trust, to bring reconciliation and renewal to the world around them.  Using a new operating system takes time to get used to.  It meand relearning some of the steps that we’re used to, and taking on a different way of being.  It not easy, but it’s good.

If your looking for a different way of operating, we can help.  Contact us today to get a free digital copy of our leadership manual.

The Thrive group that I’m part of just finished our second quarter. We had a mini-retreat last weekend and we’ll be starting our third quarter next week.  I’ve been reflecting on our past two quarters, especially the changes that I’m seeing in all of us.  

One part of the Thrive materials that we’re using calls for allowing for a time of ‘clearing’ during every meeting, if it’s needed. Clearing is “…an opportunity to provide clarity to an issue, resolve any misunderstandings, or provide a format for conflict resolution leading to reconciliation” (taken from Thrive Ministries Leadership Manual, page 37). The manual goes on to say: “When a clearing is announced it can create a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety in the room” (page 36).

Our group definitely felt fear when the topic of clearings was first explored. We were all pretty tense during the first few months of walking through the time of clearings. There are four levels of clearings, and each of them seemed to carry their own level of fear within our group:

• Clarity
• Misunderstandings
• Unintentional Harm
• Deep Clearing

We have clearings nearly every week. Now, however, there is very little fear present when it’s time for this part of our gathering. Instead, they are actually looked forward to. I think the reason why is because this is the time when real relationships and trust are being formed. They bring out the real in each of us. It’s so easy to hide behind what we know to be true. But clearings bring out in each of us how much we are unable to walk in the truths we hold so dear. They show us the limits of our love, the limits of our trust. When this is done in the context of upholding each person’s dignity and being willing to fight for the person and not against him or her, each of us is strengthened in our walk of truth, love, kindness and mercy. Because there is only a desire for reconciliation, our hearts are knitted closer together, not torn apart during clearings. This, to me, is part of what authentic relationships look like.

If you’ve never been part of a group where you were able to bring up a problem you have with someone and have it talked through and resolved with love and integrity, you’ll be so encouraged as you begin to make your way through a clearing session. They teach us what real love and real relationships are made of, and that’s something most of us have not found in many groups we’ve been part of. Nothing is swept under the rug and it is so refreshing each and every time.

If you’re ready to step into the real, consider starting a Thrive group. I had no idea how much it would change our lives, but watching the transformation happen a little bit at at time has made me so grateful that we embarked on this journey.

The following is an excerpt from Thrive Year 1 Quarter 2 Workbook.  The ethics are a way of operating in the group as a community.  Groups review the list of ethics each quarter as a way of participating.

For a free digital copy of our Leadership Manual, send us an email.

——————————————

Be a beginner. Move with a sense of discovery and humility as though you have something to learn, even in areas that you are familiar or even an expert.

Engage the process as a participant. A participant is someone who is actively engaging in God’s mission of restoration.  This does not require activity at all times.  It means a willingness to listen and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit into the areas needing restoration.

Take a prudent risk. Prudence is cautious action forward.  Learn to step outside of your comfort zone for the sake of your own restoration.

Own your own actions. Use “I” statements.  Don’t speak “You do this,” or “We do this,” statements.  Don’t generalize them as absolutes for everyone.

Earn the right to be heard. Earn the trust of those around you by making offers of help with discretion. Do not assume you know the answer to someone’s problem.

Protect the dignity of those around you. You validate your own dignity by recognizing and protecting the dignity of others.

Work patiently towards each other’s wholeness. Wholeness is the intended goal of the group.  You must find the delicate balance between allowing someone the freedom to sit quietly and following the leading of the Holy Spirit to push someone at the appropriate moment.

You have the freedom to say no. Throughout the journey you will encounter moments that you need time to process what is happening as opposed to just moving forward.  Grant that freedom to others as well.

Practice trust with each other. Each person in your group has taken a risk to be part of the journey.  Grant each other trust even through the process of reconciliation.

Be real. Bring honesty to the group.  Don’t hide what is real.

Laugh with each other not at each other. Laughter is often the best medicine for what ails us but it can be a bitter pill when it is directed at someone.  NEVER laugh at someone’s expense.

Lead with grace and mercy, and whenever necessary, forgive. People will make mistakes, including leaders.

Practice integrity. Lead by example and do what you say you are going to do.

I had a conversation with a friend last night about the word missional and what it means to live missional and to live out the Missio Dei.  These words are just beginning to enter our lexicon.  We’re struggling to really understand what it means to enter mission as a way of life.  How do we live missionally in today’s world?

The very simple answer is, “Follow Jesus.”

Jesus didn’t just live a life.  He modeled a way of living.  And it included how we live in mission.  What is interesting is that Jesus spent three years working intimately with twelve disciples. He went inward as much as he went outward.  Much of his ministry was going out to the world and healing people.  He brought love and looked for trust.  And during the down times he took time to really work it out with this little group.

And this model for spiritual formation is important.  It’s very easy to think that living missionally means always going out.  But much of the spiritual formation process happens within community that we are familiar with.  We need a space to work out our own salvation and what it means to be loved so we can love.  We are just as likely to be Jesus to people in love to those we know, if not more, as those we don’t know. And just as important, people we know are likely to be Jesus to us much more than those we don’t know. Living missionally will likely happen more in our tribe than outside the world.

This is one of the deepest values of having a Tribe, a group of people we are working out what it means to follow Jesus.  We need that group of people who we trust to push us when we need it but know when to let us sit and ponder.  We need those people who can speak truth into our lives in a way that won’t shame us because we know they love us.

Taking part in a Tribe takes trust.  It means stepping into a place of fear and saying, “The restoration of my soul is worth the risk.”  It means working on our own hearts for the sake of our own healing.  It means stepping into God’s story of love and trust in a way that redeems and heals.  It means letting go of the lies that ruin our lives and keep us locked in isolation.

Living missionally begins with our Tribe.  This is what Jesus modeled.  And the brilliance of Jesus’ model of spiritual formation was that at some point our own restoration and healing meant going out into the world and leading others towards their own restoration.  It’s alway going out, replicating and growing.  It was never stagnant.

If your church is wrestling with living missionally, we can help.  Contact us today to get a free digital copy of our leadership manual.

One of the things that makes Thrive groups unique is the work round.  It’s a specific period of time during the night where someone can work on a specific issue in a safe space amidst a trusted community.  We need these spaces in our lives.  We need a space to engage the work of the heart.

The work round allows each participant the time to process the stuff that is just not quite right.  This could include a fear, a lie, a sense of confusion, what it means to trust in a specific area, what it means to listen to God’s voice.  Most of these issues have to do with relationships.  The list of possibilities is endless.  But the goal is the same, to engage healing in our lives.

At first the work round can seem daunting, or even intimidating.  What would it really mean to be honest with our junk?  What would it mean to admit we don’t have it all together?  What would it mean to really follow in the footsteps of Jesus and practice love, to engage forgiveness, to reconcile the deep wounds of our lives?  What would it mean to leave shame and guilt behind? And what would it mean to let go of the

The simple fact is Jesus came to restore our lives.  He came to reveal the new humanity and the life we were designed to live.  To step into that takes work.  It means practicing restoration in ways that we are not used to.  It means tearing down the obstacles that hinder our growth. It means facing our own ego that keeps us locked in an arrested state of development.

But when we do, when we really step into the space of work, we become like the blind man who can see.  We get to be the ones that experience the restoration.  We see the power of the lies that have created terrible obstacles in our lives crumble.  The weeds gets pulled and the garden begins to grow.