Tag Archive - Stretch

A Year And Some Change

February 28, 2011 in Blogging, Encouragement, My Story with 16 Comments

Today is my birthday. Well, not MY birthday, but my blog’s birthday, rather. Today, An Idol Heart is one year old!

I started this blog one year ago today. When I decided to start An Idol Heart it was because my world had turned upside down and I wanted to start telling the story, even while it was unresolved.

This time a year ago, I had just walked away from my career of 8 years, I was unemployed, I was two months in to being at a new church and was a little over a month in to diving head first into a community group I had joined. I was struggling with how to let go of the things I had allowed my life to be defined by and I was falling apart.

On why I decided to name this blog An Idol Heart, I had recently come to understand that my heart was indeed “an idol factory that mass produces idols.”  That was, at once, a very sobering yet dizzying realization, and one that still reverberates with me today.  A couple months earlier I had finished reading Timothy Keller’s “Counterfeit Gods”, a book that, to put it simply, completely undid me.

Going back now to read what I wrote as my first post a year ago was a pretty emotional experience. At that time, I was so afraid. The false bottom I had built in my heart was falling out and I felt like I had nothing to work with… but words.  I had no idea what the next day, let alone the next year would look like.

One year later, my story looks very different. I am now working in ministry on staff at Cross Point Church in Nashville, the church I had just come to when all this unraveling began to happen. The ministry I’ve received at Cross Point over the past year has done so much to heal my heart and teach me who I am.  Now, I lead ministry teams there and get to help others. The community group I had just come to in hopes of finding new friends when my world was turning upside down has been immeasurably instrumental in how God has reshaped my life this past year. I now co-lead that group of around 150 people and get to regularly share my story of how God rescued me from the pursuit of myself, challenging others to embrace uncertainly, get out of their comfort zones and be intentional about how they invest in this “stretch between” season of their life.

More than anything though, I am learning more each day how my identity does not rest in where my check comes from, but rather where my help comes from and the finished work of Christ on the cross.

I still don’t know what tomorrow will look like and I’m learning to live by faith daily, but looking back over the past year, I know what it was about. God was after my heart. He wanted to rewire it and “make it again into another vessel”.

This past Friday night, Timothy Keller, whose ministry has been such a key part of my story, was in Nashville on a tour for his new book, “King’s Cross”.  I went to hear him speak and also had the opportunity to personally thank him for his ministry and how God has used it to wreck and rebuild me.

He made a statement that I haven’t been able to shake since I heard it. Singularly giving perspective to much of the last year of my life, He said,

“Sometimes, the delays of Jesus are because of details and information that we don’t yet have access to. Ultimately, God gives you what you would have prayed for if you knew everything He knew.”

And there it is.

Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. (Proverbs 19:21)

One year ago, my prayers were very different. I’m so thankful that God heard my prayers but still gave me what I would have asked for, had I only known. Not getting what I thought I wanted is the best thing that could have happened to me.

What life perspective have you seen while looking back over the things you have been through?

 

Collision: ART & ACTION

February 24, 2011 in Community, Film, Service with 3 Comments

One of my favorite things to do is create environments where people can connect with God, with each other and with something bigger than themselves.  The opportunity to help engineer an experience that is a collision of all those things is so exciting to me!

This past Sunday night, Stretch, the young adult community I co-lead at Cross Point, hosted the first in what will be a series of ART & ACTION events. The vision of the ART & ACTION concept is to design experiences that engage a variety of artistic expressions to create awareness and action around a particular cause. I had been wanting the group to do something like this for awhile, but it just didn’t pan out until now.

For our first ART & ACTION event, we partnered with Atlanta-based Unthinkable, hosting a screening of their documentary, “My Concrete Mattress”, which captures and portrays the lives of four homeless people: John, Dwight, Deborah and Anthron. The goal of the film is to move beyond the stereotypes of homelessness to display the true stories of four people, and educate viewers of lives affected by poverty.  We were joined by Unthinkable’s Johnathan Goode and Wes Peters, who created the film. Jonathan shared the vision and heart behind “My Concrete Mattress” and challenged us all to both see and serve the homeless and oppressed through the limitless love of God, not just our own compassion.

Check out the “My Concrete Mattress” trailer:

We were also joined by guests from four local organizations who serve Nashville’s homeless community in a number of unique ways. Representatives from Safe Haven Family Shelter, The Bridge Ministry, Room In The Inn and Nashville Rescue Mission were all on hand to speak after the documentary, sharing the heart and vision of their respective organizations, as well as presenting practical volunteer opportunities for people to immediately get involved in. To move hearts is one thing, to move feet is another.

Between the impactful documentary, the challenging words of Jonathan Goode and hearing the hearts of all our guests, it was indeed a powerful night. It was amazing to see God at work in the room, moving in people’s hearts as they took in all that was presented.

As Stretch is still relatively new, we’re still experimenting with lots of ideas, experiencing lots of firsts and constantly dreaming of unique ways to engage this group and consistently be moving outside our comfort zones together. As such, I was honestly unsure how many people would even show up for something like this.  However, I was absolutely overwhelmed at the response of our group, and we had a new record attendance of 141 people on Sunday night.  I was blown away, not only by the number of people who came, but by the level at which they engaged and responded.  That night was like a spiritual Red Bull that fueled the vision of what we do at Stretch so much more!   I believe we successfully executed a beautiful collision of ART & ACTION that is immediately impacting how and why people serve and do outreach. We’re already talking through details for our next ART & ACTION event in May!

It is such an honor to be able to serve, do life and pursue Christ with this amazing community of people we call Stretch.

Below are some pictures from the ART & ACTION event.

Jonathan and Wes are currently on The Unthinkable 2011 American Tour, screening My Concrete Mattress all across the country. For more information about My Concrete Mattress and hosting The Unthinkable Tour and a screening of “My Concrete Mattress” in your city, visit www.beunthinkable.org.

What is a unique way that you are engaging the community around you?

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Tools Of Engagement

January 12, 2011 in Blogging, Community, Faith, Social Media with 13 Comments

It’s pretty amazing to see what has happened since Alece launched #OneWord2011.

It started with Alece wanting to share about her desire to simplify and bring focus a year of her life around a singular idea.  It caught on and as of this writing, 232 bloggers have blogged about their “One Word”, and countless non-bloggers have caught One Word Fever and shared via Twitter and facebook.

In addition to the One Word Community, the #OneWord2011 hashtag has invaded Twitter, a #OneWord2011 Daily Edition paper.li was started (linking together all the current One Word posts), a One Word facebook like page was started (connecting One Word-ing fb’ers) and I started a #OneWord2011 Twitter list (creating an environment for One Word-ers to stay connected).

It has been remarkably encouraging to see the number of people jumping on board and not only sharing their One Word, but also engaging with many others taking part, encouraging and learning from each other.  I don’t know what exactly classifies something as a “movement”, but this may be the closest thing to one that I’ve been involved in!

If you read my last post, you know that my #OneWord2011 is “Engage”.  I tend to think I am a pretty natural connector, so much of how I have “engaged” in the past has been by nature, and not always necessarily with as much focus and intentionality to it as I’d like to believe.  With me picking “engage” as my One Word, I want to change that this year and really be more intentional about how I engage and therefore invest into my various environments, opportunities and relationships.

One such environment is the STRETCH Young Adult Community Group that I co-lead, along with Ben Turner, at Cross Point Church. For those who don’t know about Stretch, here’s the short version: The core heart and vision of the group is service and the group is regularly invested in a wide range of service projects from child care to homeless ministry and more. The group started in the Fall of ’09 with 2 people, grew to 15 people by early January ’10, exploded to 60 on January 17 2010 and has since grown to close to 200 people with as many people now on the leadership team who were in the entire group a year ago. It is nothing short of amazing to see what God is doing in that group of people.

Several Stretch bloggers have already jump onboard and last week I got the crazy idea to take #OneWord2011 offline and introduce it to Stretch in a community group setting. So when we met this past Sunday night for the first time since before Christmas, I did just that.

My goal is to actively engage that environment and create a year-long dialogue around everyone’s One Word in their small groups, fostering accountability, support and encouragement, and deepening their relationships as they all work toward seeing their One Word shape their beliefs, thoughts and actions throughout the year.

I FREAKING LOVE IT!

We had over 60 people turn in One Word cards Sunday night and this week we’ll have more. I love seeing how people are already embracing the concept and connecting with others in new ways through it. I can’t wait to see how it takes shape through the group throughout the year!

If you are involved in any kind of small or community group setting, I encourage you to consider taking the concept offline as well and let it be a catalyst for deepening your relationships and challenging those around you to experience growth in new ways.

 

I Refuse

October 18, 2010 in Faith, Service with 2 Comments

I read a Rick Warren quote a couple weeks ago that I haven’t been able to escape ever since.

The last thing many believers need to go to is another Bible study. They already know far more than they’re putting into practice.

Dang.

Reading that really challenged me. Its often easy for me to think that learning more about what Jesus said gets me off the hook for having to actually walk out and do what Jesus said do and be who Jesus said to be.  Personally, I grew up in a church environment that knew all about “church” and all kinds of doctrine and could quote you half the Bible, but never really did anything with it but try hard to be “holy” and come back to church.

I’m currently reading John Ortberg‘s book The Me I Want To Be and he made a statement in it that really challenged me.

Often, people in the Gospels who got in the most trouble with Jesus were the ones thought they were working hardest on their spiritual life. They were trying so hard to be good that they could not stop thinking about how hard they were trying, and that got in the way of their loving other people.

That Jesus just spent time with the oppressed, dejected and broken isn’t what set Him apart. It was that He LOVED them. To be honest, anyone can serve a meal to a homeless person. You don’t have to believe in Jesus to serve the oppressed. But as followers of Christ, what should make us different than everyone else doing what we’re doing is who we are and how that filters how and why we do what we do.

Last night at Stretch, we talked about how as much as we love how the group has grown and we’ve been able to mobilize a lot of people to service and action, ultimately we’re doing a disservice if we only get people to serve a meal to a homeless person but don’t challenge them to LOVE that homeless person, look them in the eye, remember their name and dignify their humanity the way Jesus would have.

We’re about to dig into David Platt’s book “Radical” together and challenge each other to go deeper into community and service, and allow ourselves to be uncomfortable to a degree that we begin to understand what it means to live like Jesus tells us to.

Josh Wilson has a great new song called “I Refuse”. In this video, he talks about how he was praying for the people affected by the Nashville flood earlier this year, and praying for people to step up and come help. But then he wondered if it was possible for him to be hiding behind his prayer and using it as a defense and a cop-out to actually doing something himself.  I was really moved by that and thought it was a perfect compliment to how all this fits together. We showed the video at Stretch last night and begin to challenge people with the awareness of the great needs that exist all around them and ask the hard question…

Will you refuse to do nothing?

 

My Story: The Next Chapter

September 9, 2010 in Faith, My Story with 52 Comments

I’ve been waiting to be able to share this news on the latest development in my life, and I’m so excited that I’m now able to!

I have accepted a position on staff at Cross Point Church here in Nashville and will be joining the Cross Point Family Ministries team in the role of FX Director.

FX is a Family Experience created to help connect kids and their parents with God’s Big Ideas together. Between our Live Experience once a month and our weekly Home Experience Tools, our passion is to provide the environments we all need to discover the Word of God as a family, together.

There are incredible teams of singers, musicians, actors, dancers, leaders, techs and more who work tirelessly throughout each month to make the FX Live Family Experience happen 5 times on 4 Cross Point campuses all in one morning once a month. That’s like, amazing!  I can’t wait to start digging in, dreaming and creating with these folks.  My first day on the job is this Sunday, September 12, which is also this month’s FX Live day! It’s going to be a great day!

I’m excited about this for many reasons. I’m excited to serve the families of Cross Point and be a conduit for God’s heart for strengthening and building the family. In my role as FX Director, I’ll be plugging in across the board, working closely with the Family Ministries leadership team and the FX teams at all 4 Cross Point campuses on production, content, leadership, programming, organizational, media, creative and other levels. So on one hand, it also feels amazing to once again have the opportunity to dive into something that engages so many different areas of my passions, experience and skill sets, many of which I thought I may have had to pack away and never tap into again. I also love that I’m going to get to do this and still co-lead and invest into the amazing STRETCH community group that is such a big part of my life and significant part of my story (more on that soon).

But perhaps the main reason I’m so excited and humbled by this opportunity may have less to do with the actual job than with what it actually represents for me, and that is not just resolution, but redemption.  If you’ve been reading my blog for long, you’re probably familiar with my story. This has been a year of gutting and rebuilding unlike anything I’ve ever experienced and there were a lot of painful times that I didn’t understand.  To be honest, I still don’t understand it all, but I’ll tell you what I do know: I am not the same person I was a year ago.

The more I have resigned my right to control, abandoned my entitled pursuit of the answers and chosen to surrender to the story God was writing with my life, my heart has changed.

I am grateful for every single broken moment over these past several months when I have felt like a failure… every single frustrated moment that I struggled to make sense of… every single breathless, uncertain moment when I had run out of words to say.

Those moments taught me what was in my heart.
Those moments taught me how to pry my fingers from around what I thought I deserved.
Those moments taught me how to live open handed.
Those moments taught me the value of living with the questions.
Those moments taught me that God was engaged in a passionate pursuit of my heart.

In every single one of those moments, I had a choice: to believe that my current situation was my destination or to believe that the real value of each moment was more about who I was becoming than where I was going.  It wasn’t ever without a struggle, but the more I chose the latter, the more my heart was able to exhale, release its grip on what I thought I had to have and who I thought I had to be, and the more perspective I had on what I was walking through.

God has used Cross Point and the community I’ve found there to heal my heart in so many ways.  In the relatively short time I’ve been at Cross Point I’ve had the opportunity to plug in and engage in what God is doing there on several levels and it has changed my life. Those of you who have walked closely with me over the last several months may understand this better than others, but after many months of waiting, hoping and wondering what was next, for THIS to be what was waiting for me, and to have the opportunity to invest with the Cross Point team in this way, is an incredibly redemptive chapter in my ever-evolving story in more ways than I can explain right now.

I have much more to write and share about all this, but for now I just want to say…

God is faithful…

and Let’s do this!

 
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