A Rich History Reborn

A Rich History Reborn 

Seaman Community Church was started in 1869 in North Topeka to meet the spiritual needs of the growing North land area as well as to reach out to the community at large.  Many of the members of the first generation of the church were community leaders of great reputation. 

The church was once one of the larger spiritual communities in North Topeka, but like most traditional churches in the community in recent decades, it has struggled to stop the decline in attendance.  As the culture has shifted, the church in America has largely stayed the same.  Congregations unwilling to change their approach and style have often found themselves being faced with the potential of closing the doors, not so much because of lack of funding, but because of lack of attenders.  

Churches today either need to be the best in their region at ministering to various demographics so that they can attract the most believers to their services, or they need to look to the hsitorical example of the early church and make sure that they are providing people the same opportunity to experience Christ's love, grace, and support through spiritual community as the early church did.  I believe that to do the latter will bring about healthy natural growth that is sustainable and not as subject to the ebb and flow of trends and popularity.  

Certainly these are dicey times to be a minister because of the ever changing culture we find ourselves in but God call's us to do what needs done not what is easy.  From what I have seen they are rarely the same.  

IF YOU GAVE UP ON CHURCH YOU ARE NOT ALONE

IF YOU USED TO ATTEND CHURCH AND MAKE ROOM FOR SPIRITUAL THINGS in your life, but now you have all but given up on church, Christianity, and God, you are not alone. In the last eight years the Christian population in America has decreased by 8%. At that rate, Christianity is now the fastest shrinking religion in the U.S. When the church becomes complicated, rigid, and judgmental, it becomes irrelevant; and the simple, life transforming message of Christ- along with the powerful effect of a relationship-based faith- gets lost in the mix. The real loser is the culture that now, more than ever, needs the church to be the family of God to so many in our world who are suffering from all types of broken relationships.

Well, where is the good news?  Over the last few months, God has been up to something at the oldest church in Topeka north of the river. Seaman Community Church (SCC), after seeing decades of decline, is charting a new course. They have decided to look to the historical example of the scripture and make sure they are providing people the same opportunity to experience Christ's love, grace, and support through spiritual community as the early church did.

A REFORMATION IS UNDERWAY. While music and ministry styles are modernizing, the most fundamental changes are coming in their understanding of just what a church is supposed to be from God's perspective. New ministries like a Third Friday night coffee house are providing opportunities for all generations to come together around a desire to live well, laugh often, and love much. The church is striving to become more of a family than an institution. Their desire is to love all generations closer to God with unique ministries to children and youth to start in the fall.

Check out their Core Convictions  and ask yourself if this is something you could really benefit from and would like to get involved with. What have you got to lose? Take the next step forward.  

Does Your Garden Need Tending?

As with every creative work, gardens don’t just happen.  They are started with intentionality and insight as to how they will look when fully grown and well tended.  There is a point where the creator lays out the rows and beds and plantings all with an eye for how they will look next to each other, complimenting each other, causing the splendor of the whole creation to be multiplied by the placement of each individual part.  The garden which I write about today is no different, for it was a creation of a master gardener who took great care to plant species of trees, flowers, shoots, and vines that would work well with the flow of the land, the river that ran through the garden, and the geographical limits of the area itself.  This garden was a marvelous sight to behold, each part working well with its surroundings and a pure delight for all those who ventured by to see.

As with every creation, there is a time when it reaches the pinnacle of its growth.  A time when everything is going so well that the creation itself deems the creator unnecessary.  Before long- and quite subtly- all types of invasive things started to grow, and it went unnoticed by the creation that the master gardener had not been to visit and tend it for quite some time.  Thistle, burr, and thorn alike made their way inside the garden, and even some of the garden’s original plantings outgrew their beds and started to take over parts of the garden where they had not been planted, seeking out the soil and resources of the surrounding beds. The once great garden became no more that a remnant of its former self.

Where there once was a great division between tended and wild, there was now but a blurred and very faint distinction.  As thistles, thorns, and burrs do, they choked out the growth of the plantings by dominating the space and the resources.  There was still beauty in what once had been a marvelous creation, but the wild had snuffed the majesty right out of it.  Until one day when the master gardener came to visit.  He had not been absent but merely watching from afar because, as with every creator, he longed to give his creation some space and freedom to grow.  But at just the right time, before all was lost, he entered the scene.  His heart ached for the pain of the plantings, seeing those which had been lost and those still entangled and entrenched by thorn and burr. He of course had the capacity to correct what had gone wrong.  After all, he was the master gardener.  In fact, he could have prevented all that had happened from taking place but, like a father teaching his child to walk, he had to allow the child to fall or the child would never learn how to get back up.  But now seeing the state of his creation, he reassured each plant and flower and vine that he would intervene if only they would but ask him.  Many did, and he immediately began the tedious job of pruning the garden back toward its original state.  The process wasn’t easy, and it was not without cost and pain to the plantings, for they were torn, punctured, and bleeding, but the gardener continued his work until the wild was removed and the garden was once again marvelous.  The gardener was spending his time not only walking the paths of his garden but also making new paths into the wild, removing all manner of invasive growth from any planting that would ask.  For it was now obvious that there was more than just this garden but a whole network of plantings beds of every type which the master gardener had been tending, each in its own state of disarray, each needing his loving and consistent hand to come in, restore, and connect them to his garden until one day, when all would be covered in the gardener’s creative plantings and marvelous landscapes.    

In my experience, much of the church in western Christianity is like that garden- invaded by all sorts of maladies.  The church has allowed doctrinal divisions, power struggles, suffocating debt, overbearing leadership, stylistic preferences, ungodly divisions between clergy and laity and much more to fracture it in ways that make the majesty of the early church a thing not often seen.  But Jesus, the head of the church, is within earshot, waiting for his creation to call for help so He can do the work of helping it return to its earlier productive splendor.  He’s not looking for us to return to the good old days of thirty of forty years back, but he is looking for us, His church, to stand up and be what we can be:  a true community of Christ-minded people looking to love him deeply and to love others in the same manner we love ourselves.  God has always used reformation to nudge His church back toward the purpose for which it was created, and He is marvelously at work doing the same thing now in a divinely splendid manner and in a variety of ways.  This work comes at a cost, for removing the wild often involves shrinkage, chaos, and short term loss.  But reevaluating priorities and realigning people with God’s plan for His church is well worth the cost.  I hope and pray that 2015 will be a year of returning to the Master Gardener for the western church.   

The Lost Teachings of Jesus

You might think this post is about the discovery of some lost manuscripts from two thousand years ago.  Manuscripts containing teachings of Christ, long lost to antiquity- teachings which, if applied to our modern culture, would transform our world.  Well, if that’s what you thought, then at least part of your assumptions are correct.  The teachings I'm writing about are the ones that could transform our culture and our world, but they were not recently discovered, although I might have thought so, due to the lack of their presence in the hundreds if not thousands of sermons and teachings which I have heard  in my over 40 years of Christian tradition.  The teachings I’m writing about are often overlooked in exchange for teachings on what Christians ought not to do or teachings on how Christians can become more politically active by signing the most recent petition showing the world just what lifestyles and activities we are against.

A hard lesson for all of us is that the message of Christ is not one meant to be digested piecemeal, keeping what you like while leaving out the rest.  It’s a message that, when wholly applied, will bring about revolutionary personal and cultural change- change that, at its core, is not political but relational.

A book I recently read suggested something that I have believed for a long time.  It suggested that Jesus came to show us how to be truly human.  He lived His life the way we would if we were not corrupted by our flesh and the influence of evil in our world.  Our challenge is to live our lives more like He lived His.  His admonitions were not political or religious but personal and relational.  His teachings, like learning to turn the other cheek and going the extra mile, have the capacity to transform our culture by transforming the people who embrace them and the people whom they relate to.  YOU SEE, I BELIEVE THAT WHEN THE SCRIPTURE TELLS US THAT WE ARE TO IMITATE CHRIST, IT’S NOT TALKING ABOUT LIVING A SINLESS LIFE, but living a life not centered on oneself.  Certainly Jesus didn't come to give us the freedom to sin, but he did come to give us the freedom to stop worrying about our negative behaviors so we could adopt some positive ones- behaviors that will positively impact others and inevitably our culture as well.  Behaviors like those described in the following:

“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.  God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this. ... Keep open house; be generous with your lives.  By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven."    Matthew 5

WHAT IF, INSTEAD OF LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE, WE START LOOKING OUT FOR OTHERS WITH THE MOTIVE OF LOVING THEM CLOSER TO GOD?  If we did so, everybody would win.  We would reap what we have sown (love and generosity).  Others would experience God as He is meant to be experienced, through active, non-condemning love.  And God's reputation as the loving creator who wants to live relationally with His people would be restored.  If we would do this, a unique thing would happen in the process.  Our tendency toward "sin" would diminish; when we focus on simply loving others like Jesus loves us rather than focusing on avoiding sin, maybe we’ll notice our struggle with sin lessening.  Just a suggestion at what could happen if we start implementing all the teachings of Christ in our daily lives instead of just the ones that are often emphasized.

Let me challenge us as we begin to wrap up this year to keep our focus on Him and on helping those He brings across our paths to move closer to Him through how we treat them and how we conduct ourselves in our world in general.

Playing It Safe

You may have heard the phrase “err on the side of caution”.  This phrase basically sums up a philosophy which suggests that we should “act in the least risky manner in a situation in which we are uncertain about the result.”  In a nutshell, it means, “Better safe than sorry.”  While there certainly is some safety in embracing this concept, embracing it in every area of life will safely lead to one thing for sure: a boring life.  I read it somewhere once that situational uncertainty goes by another name- ADVENTURE.  I would suggest to everyone reading this that to act in the least risky manner in a situation in which we are uncertain of the outcome requires little to no faith.  In my life, faith seems to be the activator of adventure.  While many will play it safe and hope for God to come through, I tend to rush on in where angels fear to tread.  While I do my best to pray about my decisions and look for the Lord’s direction in my life, I have noted over the years that His direction seems to be more and more vague in many of the decisions that I have to make.  I used to interpret that as a sign that God was wanting me to hold back and play it safe- that is, until my children started to get a bit older and more mature. 

It occurred to me that I would not be a very good parent if I continued to make every decision for my children as they grow older.  When children are little, we tend to dress them in the clothes we want them to wear, plan their schedules, plan their diets, and just generally micromanage their time.  But think about how unhealthy that would be if we treated them the same way when they were twenty-six.  Not only would it be unhealthy, but they would certainly grow to resent our involvement in their lives or, at the very least, be stunted in their development in a way that would paralyze them with inaction when we weren’t around to choose for them.  Enter our relationship with our heavenly father.  As new followers of Christ, it is common for us to run to Jesus with every choice to determine what we should do.  For me, it was pretty awesome to see how God would lead me to the answers to my questions regarding the decisions I had to make, but as time moved on and my relationship with Him deepened, the opportunities for me to choose on my own seemed to keep presenting themselves.  Don’t get me wrong; there are certainly principles of right and wrong that guide our decision making process, there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors, and there certainly are times when the Lord himself intervenes in my decision making process with a red flag or a stop sign, but like the parent of a child who is growing and maturing, I have found that in my life God steps back and waits for me to make the decision on my own.  What should we do in these situations? Well we could allow fear, doubt, and worry to be our guide and just err on the side of caution and play it safe, OR we could err on the side of action, step up to the plate of our lives, and swing for the fences.  I believe that God honors action because action requires faith.  All throughout scripture, we see God honoring people’s faith-filled action.  Why should it be any different for us?  Time and time again I have seen it myself and heard the testimony of others, that when they acted in faith, God acted in response with a blessing that would not have been seen without their action first.  I wonder how much we have missed out on by “playing it safe”.  I wonder how different our world would look if we changed our way of thinking and decided to act in faith.  Test God on this principle and see if what I am saying holds true.  I believe that God loves us so much that he honors our honest attempts even when we miss His plan for a given situation.  That’s when the father catches us with the safety net of his love and grace and sets us back up to try again.  Just like the parent of a toddler helping their child learn to walk, we give our children chances to fall down again and again, right?  No, we give our children not only the chance to learn to walk but the chance to learn to run.  I dare you to run today, and when you do, I bet God smiles.