ChosenRebel's Blog

Weekend Meditations on the Gospel

Jesus put it this way,
“For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? [1]

^[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, Ill.: Standard Bible Society, 2001, S. Mt 5:46-47.

The world needs to see our love for one another, but they need to feel our love for them. Words without action are cheap. And words that only occur in the sacred confines of our buildings and programs are segregated from the lives of the people in our neighborhoods who desperately need the gospel.

What we need to find is a good neighborhood project to do together as band of brothers (and sisters) working together. When the world sees believers, shoulder to shoulder serving together in intensely local projects that benefit the whole community (not the church) they will begin to see the radical difference that Jesus makes. Each neighborhood is different. There is no “one project” fits all. Each neighborhood is a different nut to crack and thus requires a different “nut cracker” (Tool/project).

This is why being intensely local is so hard and so exciting. It is not a cookie cutter. It is not plug and play somebody else’s success story. It is you and I praying through and observing our neighborhoods and asking the Spirit to both reveal and empower us to do what the local situation needs. In Nebraska, it might be getting four Christian families to go out and paint barns for farmers together. In Chicago, south side, it might be three families saying, we are going to provide child care for two mothers who want to get a job and work to provide for their family. It is whatever the local situation requires.

We need a radical new dependence upon the Holy Spirit for wisdom and provision. This is a new wineskin, one less dependent on the structures of the traditional church apparatus and one that will compel us to trust God with each new and changing situation.

But in each case, leadership is needed to not only teach the people of God what could be done, or exhort the people to do something. What is desperately needed is someone to step into these neighborhoods and model for the family of God how it is done in a reproductive and transferable way.

If you want to learn how to do this, to pioneer a new way of doing ministry that overcomes the “not normal” quality of neighborhood life in much of America, move to Mundelein or Vernon Hills, IL and help us plant COMMUNITAS, a cluster of house churches seeking to transform neighborhoods by planting the gospel and loving people.