Archive for March, 2009

The Boot Camp Update

I just wanted to let everyone know we’re pretty close to announcing our Boot Camp dates for this year. It’s tentatively titled, “Creating Redemptive Community.” We’ll send an announcement out shortly and to everyone who has expressed interest. The Boot Camp is a two day experience on participating and leading a Thrive group. It is for both leaders and participants, and for those interested in what we are doing. You don’t have to be in a group to participate either.

If you would like to be put on the interest list, just send us an email.

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Loneliness

I just had an amazing conversation with a very good friend about the nature of loneliness.  So many people I know have a big family, a lot of friends, a great career, a large house, and so many of the trimmings that come with the American lifestyle.  They have it all.  By most standards of the world, they are rich.

But deep down they are incredibly lonely.

I can see it in their face.  They’ve accumulated for so long they don’t know how to do anything else.  And it doesn’t work.  And they don’t know how to do anything else.

Loneliness is an American dream byproduct.  We are force fed this erroneous idea that to have all the stuff makes us happy.  And it doesn’t.  We’re rich in stuff but poor in relationship.  We’ve learned to accumulate things but have abandoned any sense of ability to invest in meaningful dialogs of the heart.

What if true wealth is the presence of these relationships in our lives?

What if the call to love your neighbor as yourself is really a call about us finding that true wealth?

What if being blessed comes in being a blessing to other people, to let go of our stuff?

Because in the end, when we’re on our death bed, we don’t seek out the presence of our stuff.  We want people around us.  We want to know be with those who have been part of our life.

Because who do we remember?  We remember the people that take the time to invest in us, who took the time to step out of their own journey for a second and engage who is going on in our lives.  In fact, true maturity is the ability to step out of that self-interest.  It’s the ability to transcend our own selfishness.

What I see people truly looking for is people they can trust.  We need people in our lives.  We’re designed for connection and relationship.  It is not good to be alone.  And much of the journey of working out our own restoration is moving past the chaos of relationships and into the space of trust that transcends that chaos. And when we do, we have people by our side that we can call friends.

But to do that we must first become participants in our own restoration.  We must first be willing to be the one to trust.  We must first give what we are seeking.

So will you?

If you are interested in stepping out of loneliness and discovering a deeper wealth, we’d like to invite you to consider following Jesus. Contact us today to get a free digital copy of our leadership manual.

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Jonathan Brink is the Managing Director of Thrive Ministries. He wouldn’t trade the world for the joy that comes from his tribe.

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Excerpt - Listening To Our Story

Behind every person is a story.  And central to the journey is taking the time to listen to each other’s stories.  To do that, groups engage a process of writing and then sharing one’s narrative.  It’s a risky but deeply rewarding process of self discovery and disclosure.

The following is an excerpt from the Q2 workbook, which explores this practice.

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Stories

How many of you have a good story to tell?  A great party or dinner is always more interesting when someone shares an interesting story. It captures our attention as we imagine the drama, the characters, the tension and the resolution.  Everyone loves a great story.

Over the rest of the quarter, we will be listening to each other’s unique narratives, or stories. Each of us is a story.  Moments in our lives become words.  Days become sentences.  Years become chapters stored in complex network of the brain.  There’s a distinct rhythm to each story.  There’s the ups and down, the twists and the turns, and the goods and the bads.  We wake up with the possibility of “conquering” the day.  We encounter difficulties. We engage friends and adversaries.  We fight for what we believe in.  We stumble over things and at the end of the day we turn out the lights, hopefully a better person.  To rest well is a sign that things are okay.  There’s a beginning to our lives, mostly forgotten, remembered only in pictures.  And there’s an ending we have yet to live.  In between is the story, the mystery of our lives.  We can’t erase yesterday and we can’t write tomorrow.  We can only live in today.

Stories are the lifeblood of community.  They are the most common way we communicate with each other to relate what has happened or is happening in our lives.  Historically, before the Internet, the television, the radio, the newspaper and even the printing press, communities related through story.  They created a rich tradition of history in stories.  Parents would tell stories of their ancestors as a way to continue that tradition.

Relationship deepens when we become part of each other’s stories.  They are the most common way of relating with another person.  Someone tells a story about what happened and we think, “I know what that feels like.”  The story may not be exactly the same but we’ve experienced something strangely similar in mood and emotion.  We felt what that person has felt.  Stories create a shared experience with life and let us know that we are not alone in this world.

If you look at your history, you remember life through a collection of experiences, which are encapsulated stories.  Life is shaped by our stories.  They provide meaning to our personality and a context for where we’ve been.  The more we know our history, the more we can understand ourselves. They also provide a connection point between people.  Each experience in life becomes a connection point with another person to say, “I know what that feels like” or “I was part of your story”.  These connection points become the anchors in relationship we share with each other.  The more connectors, the more we can relate to another person.

And as we listen to each other’s stories, we begin to encounter each other.  We learn a little bit of history that makes each of us tick.  We learn the stories that have shaped us into the person that walks into the room.  And by listening carefully we discover how human we all are.  We discover that our similarity radically outweigh our differences.  We are the same humanity.

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