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january 06, 2002 [part 2 of 3... um 4] 
okay, last year [heehee] the small.txt was about discovering what it means for us to follow God, not just doing it the someone else does it. also, the gathering isn’t about being hip and trendy or just being another church service that happens to be louder and darker. why?
imagine taking a church service from pretty much any morning or «traditional» service. if you’ve never been to one live, you’ve definitely seen them in movies or on tv. most of them have a period of singing then listening to a talking person of some sort. if we were to take the same thing and want to change it to being hip and trendy, we would change the sound, the language, the clothing, right? probably. but what about the people’s passions, the people that call that church their home, their community — have they changed, is this new service an expression of who and what they are? maybe. chances are is that it is new paint on an old structure [someone else’s previous structure] and that leads us to the word that we were supposed to think of last week: CONTEMPORARY. it is taken from latin’s «CONTEMPT» meaning having a lack of reverence for something. actually, i made that part up but it is almost true — to make a service in this manner is downright rude and maybe even evil — it is presenting a lie. matt doesn’t get up to sing the songs he does because he is trying to be trendy/current/contemporary — he does it because THAT IS WHO HE IS. if another group someplace else copied matt and that wasn’t who they are actually like, they would be deceptive and inauthentic. it becomes more about presenting an image than presenting themselves as who we really are. [side note: think about how we often change how we speak when we pray — what is up with that? who are we trying to impress by not being ourselves?]
how do you think God feels about a bunch of pretenders?
take that even further — how many birthday parties have you left saying «man, i got nothing out of that» — wouldn’t that be whacked? nobody goes to a celebration for someone expecting to get something out of it — they are there to honor and have fun with and for their friend. the same thing goes for this gat.service — getting uptight because glenn doesn’t give you a golden nugget to chew on or that the music wasn’t great or that it wasn’t in the format of «song song [arrive?] song listen song song listen listen listen announcement leave» or that the talk took too long and instead the gat.service was a night of prayer or people sharing what God is doing in their lives or we spend the entire time making box lunches for people for the week.... this hour+ isn’t about YOU but about GOD — we are here as his people to smile and laugh and blow party horns and to have contagious excitement that we want everyone we come into contact with to experience and know God. it isn’t so much about us or what we get but about us and what we bring. and on top of that, we’ll be changing the gat.service more and more to match who we are, to express who we are as a community more and more. we don’t want to become a «provider of religious services for religious consumers» but we want to be a reflection of who we are, an expression of our very essence and passions for God. that means we ALL need to participate.
and THAT is why not pretending to be someone else or managing our image or living our life the way someone else doesn’t work very well — it isn’t who we are, and we can’t come here for the gat.service or spend time during the week as the gat.community if we are trying to be hip and trendy or contemp[t]orary. let’s find our passions, our desires, our abilities, our life and bring them here to present to God, to make it a time that we aren’t worried about getting anything but saying «here we are God, we are yours, and you rock»
january 14, 2002 [part 3 of 4]
part 3 of 3. no wait make that 3 of 4, no - red! i mean blue! aaaaaiiieeeee!
the last 2 small.txts have been about what we are and aren't about, mainly that we aren't trying to be «contempt»orary but that we are trying to explore and expression OUR passion for God and not someone elses. it may end up looking like someone elses — nobody said it had to be original — but it needs to come from US. also, the gat.service isn't to be about what we can get out of it but what we can present to God.
one way to flip this over to get a different view is to end the gat.service and call it quits. is that it, nothing more? what would happen? how would the gat.community react? ah, the gat.community — who are we and what do we do? what part of the gat exists outside this one hour block? that is a very long and complex question, involving probably all the small.txts to date. for simplicity sake, what would those of us that participate in the gat.service do? we still meet together, eat together, play together, and so much of this is wrapped around our pursuit of Jesus — i'm thinking we would want to still create something for God. maybe not every week, but maybe so. we would still use our talent, our desire, our passions to create something, something that might still be called «a service». what would that look like? THIS is the big question, the «what does our expression of woshipping God look like?»
for those of that are highly churched, our natural reaction is to do what we have already or always doneS but have we explored who we are or are we going on the assumption of how we believe we should be according to church culture? think of it — if we got together and had dinner somewhere, wouldn't it seem natural just to go to a park and have somebody lead us in praying for different things, to spend time sharing our lives as God has worked on us, to sing, to help people out. keep going and somebody might make a video to share, others might have discussions. who knows, maybe we'd even have a talking guy chat for a while. maybe we could even ask questions and interact.
do you see where this is going? «church» isn't a format, it is a bunch of people getting together to throw a party for God, a culmination of the lump sum of their lives. it is a participation thing, and maybe more people would give time during the week, but to sit back and be entertained by nice music and to take notes about a nice talk — ooh, that wouldn't be the expectation. this party isn't one of passive participation but of active celebration of our community, our little section of God's kingdom. THAT would be exciting.
january 20, 2002 [part 4 of 4]
[printable, too], click january 27, 2002
did you catch last week’s talk? and not just about the budget — there was more in there. often times we push any talk about money by an organization into the realm of «they just want my money» and skip over it. did you catch the part about building bridges to our community? in general, it seems that most churches have come to exist to support themselves, but this is a huge change for our church. a lot of people have responded after last week’s talk with «duh, we’ve been saying that for years — let’s get the show on the road — i don’t want to be a country club.» the kicker is that this will be a direction that is part of the very essence of what we do.
so lets start building bridges to our community. if God is as great as we presumably say he is, maybe someone else should see some of him too. we need to be ants streaming out of here every week, creating trails and paths to get us out of the parking lot as well as creating opportunities for everyone else to see God at work in his kingdom. we to be able to go as a group and build bridges to our community with our sweat too, not only our cash [or maybe instead or including our cash — i doubt we are supposed to pony up the dough to have someone else do the job God wants us to do].
it almost sounds fun to say «yeah, let’s get people to come to church» but that doesn’t quite fit. there is still too much country club here. look around you at the gat — we may as well be excited about watching a movie. when is the last time we were excited for the other people next to us, the ones we don’t know, being glad they are here with us? nah, that is too much work. we’ll need to spend some time looking at our hearts, working on turning this from «gat.service, the movie» to «God’s kingdom, dba the gat.community.»