Community at Watermark

I love our church…I feel like everytime I say this I have to qualify it with, not more than Jesus, it’s not because of the building, and it is not because we talk about how imperfect we are.  It is due to how we try and reflect Christ and try to challenge folks to do Matthew 22:37-40, Love God, Serve Others, even if it means doing the function of church differently on Sunday.

A few Sunday’s ago was one of those times.  It was dedicated to showing folks how they can do something to make Jesus better known.  We lined our hallways with booths that had people from our body or people that we have thrown in with that serve in many capacities.  Some opportunities were places to serve right here in our city, some were places to serve around the world and even the soft toss local serving opportunity here in our own body.

The bottom line, there are so many opportunities right in front of us every day and we just need to make a decision to do it!  I posted for your viewing pleasure a great video of a women’s community group that has decided to serve as a group.  Great stuff that is happening for the group and as they tell and show God’s love by doing.  The great line in this video for me was, “We couldn’t do everything and we couldn’t do nothing, but we could to do something.”

Let’s do something!

You’re not alone. Thousands attend Watermark each week. But it can be easy to get lost in the crowd and feel alone.

Be part of a Community Group. This isn’t just another meeting. It’s how you’ll finally start living the life you’ve always wanted—the life God is calling you to experience and enjoy.

Living in community isn’t a new idea. It’s God’s idea. 

And let us take thought of how to spur one another on to love and good works, not abandoning our own meetings, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other and even more so because you see the day drawing near. Hebrews 10:24-25

They were devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Acts 2:42

The world says to keep others at a distance and work through problems in isolation with self-help books and TV shows.  

But in Genesis 2:18, God said it isn’t good for man to be alone. When you examine the Scriptures it’s easy to see why. The benefits of living in community are many, and so are the dangers of living in isolation. 

The Bible provides excellent examples of what living in community could and should look like. God lives in eternal community, Jesus lived in community with his 12 disciples, and the early church lived in community. Now it’s your turn.

As a leader of a community group, we were introduced to the “MoneyWise” process a little over a year ago.  As leaders we committed to taking our group through the 6 week curriculum within one year of the training.  The process asks for two major action items:  be willing to investigate what God’s heart is concerning money and be willing to share your finances with those in your community.  It’s a frightening ask.  It’s scary to be accountable to what God says about money and others who say they love you.   I’m comfortable when it comes to money and sometimes l feel like I’m losing freedom to do what I want to do with my finances.  Second, do I want to open the door to sinfully judge others’ checkbooks and be judged by others?  There have been different levels of anxiety leading up to this process with my own community.  I have realized during the process that this is an amazing way to “be known”.  If Scripture really values being known, transparent, and authentic, then there is no better exercise than to practice those values.  It’s been said before that “what your checkbook values, you value” and “your checkbook is the one area of the spiritual life you can’t fake.”  It has been an amazing process for me, my wife, and our community.  Mainly because it forces you to communicate as couples and with each other about what’s important.  There’s a great budgeting exercise that asks you about ranking line items in your budget as essential and non-essential.  This is where it get’s crazy for couples.  The cable TV that he thinks is necessary she ranks as non-essential.  The facials that she ranks as necessary he sees as unnecessary.  It becomes a great communication exercise for couples that brings about “oneness” (Matthew 19) and also “oneness” for the community group.  As a result of disclosing our financial budget to other couples, they discovered that I was overpaying $700 a year for home insurance.  I love it when willingness to be authentic and faithful to God’s word saves you $700 a year.  That’s money!  I was reading in John Ortergs’s book When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, and came across this chart and quote on essentials.

Below are items rated as necessities by American in 1970 as compared to 2000:

                                                1970                       2000

Second Car                         20%                        59%

Second TV                           3%                          45%

More than one phone   2%                          78%

Car air-conditioning         11%                        65%

Dishwasher                        8%                          44%

In a Gallup poll, the respondents, on average, said that 21 percent of Americans are rich.  But only 0.5 percent said they were rich.  Everybody thinks he needs one thing to make himself rich: more.  We suffer from a phenomenon called “reference anxiety,” more often referred to as “keeping up with the Joneses.” – 194

I just finished up spending 6 weeks working through the book Habitudes with 7 guys who are leading in some capacity and we had a blast!  It’s a great book that works through the issue of self-leadership, namely building into your character, which happens on two fronts:

1)       We must lead and feed ourselves before we can expect to lead others.

2)       We must know who we are. 

Sounds simple right?  Question, do you know your top spiritual gifts?  Or let me take it a step further, can you look around your own community and peg each person’s spiritual gifts?  Try it.  It’s a blast!  Think about the quality that you have seen modeled by people in your group over the last 6 months, it’s most likely their top gift.  Here’s what’s fun:  the transformation that we find in Romans 12:2 is directly tied to Romans 12:3-8 where we find that each person has been gifted by the Spirit in a different way.  God uses the Spirit, His Word, and His people in our transformational process.  If you know me, I desperately need people around me with the gift of mercy, in order that I would be transformed more into the character of the most merciful man, Jesus.  Thank God for my wife and a couple of people in my community.  Here are two awesome exercises:

1)       Take the Spiritual Gifts Assessment and send it to your community, and have them answer based on past actions, not who they think they should be.

2)      Celebrate how each person’s God-given gifts have been used to transform you.

I was visiting with a group this past Saturday night that I’m so fired up about.  One of the men asked me a question around some of the verses I used to communicate about function of community.  I mentioned to him that many of the verses that I run to when I want to define community were just verses that I memorized over the past year and even as recently as the past month.

I wanted to make those verses available to ya’ll, the people, but only if you have an iPhone.  You will need the iflipr app. Download it on your iPhone if you don’t have it.  Go to the “search option” at the bottom of the screen.  There will be two different decks:  One Anothers of Scripture and Community Verses. So, type in each deck in the search menu, download, and enjoy. Hope 2010 is a year where your heart is more and more aligned with God’s Word.  Rob

If you were at the Christmas Eve service at Watermark, you got to experience 20-30 Cardboard Testimonies. It got my wheels turning about how different our group looks this calendar year then the previous year.  The thought that every year that you walk with Jesus your perspective becomes more eternal, you have more of a grasp of your corrupt heart, have experienced life and freedom in obedience to Christ that materialism just can’t satisfy, and the list goes on…right? The message is consistent through out scripture, a Savior saves you from something (The judgement of Sin) and continues to save you out of something (my corrupt self that continually doesn’t bring life when I choose to not submit to God). He has saved us and is saving us out of something today.

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.-John 8:34-36

Here’s an example in my life from 2009.  I’ve been a very judgemental  and critical person.  When you’re like this Mercy, Grace, Kindness, Gentleness, and Pride are out of whack and not honoring to the Lord.  It’s something, I’m not proud of, so I mentioned to my guys January 2009 that I wanted the parable of the Unmerciful Servant (Matt. 18) to become a reality in my life.  Why?  When your heart grasps how much you have been forgiven (a ba-zallion dollars in terms of sin), then it is hard to be critical and judge people who are “less than perfect” in your eyes.  If you are critical and judgmental or you just been around someone who is, you know that there is no freedom there, no life, but bondage and captivity to yourself and your world.  I Feel like Jesus has given me life and freedom like I have never experienced as a result of making my sin worse than anyone else.  Sounds harsh, but it is so freeing.

I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. – John 10:9-10

So here’s the application: Our group is on year 2-3 right now, we have all grown this year, and who knows if it is the Lord’s will that we will all be doing life a year from now (James 4).  I’ve asked everyone in our group to write one page on where Jesus has set you free this year and allowed you to experience life and green pasture.  We have 12 people, so in a month from now we will have a 12 page chapter on the Story that a Transforming God is writing in our lives: 2009  I’m am praying that the Lord allows us to write another chapter together for 2010.

How is your group celebrating, remembering, and recording how the Life Giving God gave you life in 2009?  Will God’s story in your life encourage future generations?

I’ve got several topics that i want to write about over the next few days, but that will happen in the next few days.  Until then here’s several great questions to “chew on” for your group.  If it were the late 80’s, I’d say these are RAD questions.  So, I’m kind of out of the new lingo for the decade, so what’s a 2010 synonym for the word rad?  Let me know in passing.  Check out this link:

http://www.biblicalspirituality.org/newyear.html

As a dad I can identify with the craziness that the holidays bring.

It all starts with great intentions.  The idealistic part of us desires to create memories, give to those in need, sit by the fire with loved ones contemplating our thankfulness and the eternal gift of Jesus our Savior. 

It quickly turns into a commercialized induced spending spree, trying to satisfy and keep peace with all family members and leaves little or no peace on earth.  

What happens?  These less than ideal memories can resemble something more out of Christmas Vacation.

This is where I realize that I need to notch down the idealistic expecatation but know that I can still create great meaning and memories for my family around Christmas.

With some planning and intentionality, a Dad Ready Christmas can truly reflect the spirit of the season and make memories for a life time.

Take a look at this site for a list of things to get your Dad Ready Christmas off to a great start;

http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2009/12/07/16-daddy-christmas-tips/

God, help me to get along with my in-laws this week.  Lord, allow me to give up control of the remote this year.  Lord, if only they would do the smoked ham that I love rather than the sweet, pineapple ham that I hate.

Well, some of these are worthy prayers and I do like a good smoked ham over a sweet, honey ham, but this is not the peace producing prayer that we are talking about here.

In Stories for the Heart, Alice Gray writes the following:

“Matthew Henry is a well known Bible commentator.  One day he was robbed and that evening made the following entry in his diary:  Let me be thanful- first because I was never robbed before; second, because althought they took my wallet they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.”

It is this simple diary entry that helps us to understand the magnitude of how we should pray with a thankful heart to our worthy God who gives abuntantly and gives us opportunities to seek his goodness dispite the circumstances.  “That I was never robbed before”…Praying for the times that God protects us or saves us from harm that we never see. “Becuase it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed”…Praying that outside of grace in my life, that I could be the one taking from others as a means to fullfill my own needs.   And that He would show me that when I do seek to fulfill my own needs that He would quickly bring me to my knees (James 5:16).

What is your honest prayer of thankgiving that can produce peace where you are spending Thanksgiving or any other place that may need it?

At our conference, we announced the roll out of this blog for you, the people, the leader, and the community group.  Now almost three weeks later, we finally have most of the conference material uploaded and ready to open up for the benefit of your community.   We are not techies, so forgive us for the delay, but we are passionate about you and your community finding ultimate satisfaction in Christ in all aspects of life and committing yourself towards living life with others.   I hope the resources on  this site pushes you towards these two Goals ( loving God and loving others).

The further I move down the path with my own community group and now being an official “community guy” at Watermark, I’ve realized that everything in life comes down to commitment.  I am caring less and less about someones maturity (don’t get me wrong, the Lord cares about us being mature in our faith, see 1 Cor. 3), but more and more to one’s commitment.  So, give me a guy that has been in a relationship with Jesus for one day, who is “all in”, and committed verses the guy who Has known Jesus for 20 years, but won’t commit to do the hard things Jesus asks of us or commit to messy people (all of us).  Make sense?  More on Commitment in another blog, but I wanted to post one of the videos from the conference on Commitment.  Brent and Heather Bailey lead this group, which met for the first time at group link.  No one in the group knew each other, but they were committed to each other and doing the spiritual life together.  As a result, I have been blessed by watching crazy Christ honoring fruit (Jn. 15) come out of this group.  What’s funny, is that there are 8 couples in this group and i have suggested a time or two that they should divide or conquer because four couples seems way more manageable than eight, but they won’t have any of it.  I’m glad they have chosen to trust in God’s unlimited capacity, and i chose to trust in a formula.  Hope you enjoy this…