Tag Archive - Wes Howard

Stretch

August 16, 2010 in Community, Faith, Service with 11 Comments

In the fall of 2009, after reading Richard Stearns’ “The Hole In Our Gospel”, my friends Wes Howard and Ben Turner felt compelled to gather a group of 20/30-somethings together around the idea of being intentionally missional and living out the Gospel by actively serving the needs of others. That group started with 3 people last fall and currently stands at just over 140 who are regular/semi-regular attenders. I’ve skipped a lot of details for the sake of brevity, but suffice it to say something very unique has been happening in what we have affectionately called our “not so small” community group at Cross Point Church here in Nashville.  Essentially, people keep coming and keep getting connected.

The mission statement the group adopted earlier this year is:

“We are imperfect people, living inside our design, building enduring relationships with each other,actively serving the needs of others, and committing to grow deeper in love and faith with Christ.”

Within those 140+ people, there are 8 small groups that are made up of folks in their early-20′s to mid-30′s looking for an opportunity to connect and serve and to experience community in a whole new way. It is nothing short of amazing. This particular model is quite the anomaly as far as “small groups” go and was NOT by design, but very much just “happened” somewhere along the last several months.

For the past 7-8 months, our group has been officially called the “young professionals”, a somewhat nebulous name that wasn’t very clear as to exactly who we are as a group.  Several weeks ago, Wes, Ben and I began talking about the idea of giving the group an actual name that would help to define its actual identity and point to who we were. We landed on the name “Stretch”.  Here’s why…

A few of the definitions of the word ‘stretch’ are:

make great demands on the capacity or resources of
cause to make maximum use of talents or abilities
straighten or extend one’s body or a part of one’s body to it’s full length

The cool thing is, those things are happening within our group in a variety of ways, and it’s incredible to see.

Here’s what Stretch means to us as a group:

It speaks to our age group being very much in the “stretch” between life phases.
It points to the opportunity for your life be stretched and changed through service and community like never before.
It speaks to the growth that happens in the space between moving FROM one thing, TO another.
It says our group is not just the cool Sunday night hang, but something that will deepen your life and put new demands on your capacity for community, faith and service.
It speaks to creating capacity for your life in the “space between”

So last night marked a milestone and the beginning of a new chapter for our “not so small” community group as we officially renamed the group “Stretch”, cast the vision for what it meant, unveiled our new logo and showed this video we put together to communicate the concept even more.

It is such an honor to do life and serve next to Wes and Ben in co-leading this incredible group of people. God has done amazing things through us and every single bit of it has been in spite of us and not because of any of us, but because He has a greater purpose and agenda than any of us could accomplish on our own.  The folks in the group are incredible and are so hungry to build deep community and be the hands and feet of Christ.

In his message yesterday, Pete Wilson talked about how the Gospel challenges us to be not just recipients of grace, but agents of grace, and that the Gospel does not call for reflection, but rather action.  I was so excited to hear him say those things yesterday because they are so essential to the core of our DNA as “Stretch”, and should also be to the core DNA of the heart of everyone who calls themselves a follower of Christ.

I will be talking more about Stretch in the coming weeks and months, but I wanted to take a moment to share this with you all here on my blog. I hope the “Stretch” concept resonates with you and challenges you to consider ways in your own life that you could stretch and create capacity for God to work in new and greater ways in your life. You’ll never be the same.

How does the Stretch concept apply to your life right now?

 

What I Thought I Wanted, What I Got Instead

June 4, 2010 in Faith, Life with 81 Comments

After walking away from my career and spending months trying to figure out what was happening in my life, I finally got hired and started a new job 7 weeks ago.  I’m thankful to have this job, but I applied and interviewed for jobs that made MUCH more sense to me, but I did not get them.  What I have now is NOT the job I hoped for, but it is the job that hired me.  It was NOT what I wanted, but it is what I got instead.

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

The past 7 weeks have been a bit of a blur and a series of one hard lesson after another.  On almost a daily basis I come face to face with the deep-seeded entitlement that has been wedged in my heart for years.

Entitlement… It’s “what I deserve”.

Lately I’ve been trying to dig deeper into why my heart has struggled so much through all this.  The truth is, I know exactly why: deep in my heart I think I’m better, think I deserve better and think I’ve earned the right to not have to work this kind of job at this point in my life. I’ve “been there” and “done that”.  How’s that for honesty?

The idolatry of what we think we deserve is a thief, robbing us of perspective and truth in the moments God uses to deepen our lives.

There have been moments over the past few weeks when I’ve had brief glimpses of revelation and lucidity (bonus points for use of “lucidity”), but for the most part I remain clueless about where my life is headed right now.  Some days I find myself being able to embrace the uncertainty of this season better than others, and some days my heart feels like it is in an absolute free fall. There are days when my heart is full of fear, simply because it is more prone to reach for ANYTHING other than God as an anchor and source of hope and security.

The other day I was hanging out with my friend Wes, who has quickly become a close friend of mine.  I was sharing (er, venting) with him about how I felt about what all is happening right now, and I said (in frustration), “THIS just isn’t where my life is right now!” As if to say, “at THIS point in my life I should have THIS job with THIS income, THIS life…”  Wes’ reply? “But Grant, this IS where your life is right now.”

……….

@#$%@*!

Reality check.

He was right. Regardless of how I feel about where I should or shouldn’t be at this point in my life, and regardless of the expectations I have formed in my own heart about where I feel I’m entitled to be at this point, you know what?  This is exactly where my life is right now, and being frustrated, stubborn and ungrateful isn’t going to change that.

I am learning that my entitlement makes me a slave to the expectations that exist only in my heart.

Sara Groves has a song called “What I Thought I Wanted” that beautifully underscores the heart of Proverbs 19:21.

Sara Groves - What I Thought I Wanted

I love the lyric where she says:

When I get to heaven I’m gonna go find Job
I want to ask a few hard questions, I want to know what he knows
About what it is he wanted and what he got instead
How to be broken and faithful

I am learning A LOT about my heart right now. I am learning things about myself that I don’t know if I would have ever learned had the bottom not fallen out.

I thought I wanted a job… but instead I am getting character
I thought I wanted a check… but instead I am getting change
I thought I wanted my story… but instead I am getting His

I often wonder if I would have had the opportunity to see this deeply into my heart had I gotten what I wanted.  But I didn’t, and here we are. It is painful, but it is purposeful. Though the bleeding persists, I am grateful for the wound.

So, what I thought I wanted, and what I got instead leaves me broken and grateful.

Are you grateful for what you got “instead”?

 

Gutted

May 13, 2010 in Faith, Life, My Story with 19 Comments

Following the horrible flooding in Nashville last week, Cross Point Church organized and mobilized a group of 1,600 volunteers this past Saturday to serve the flood-ravaged neighborhoods of our city and help the families impacted by this disaster.  I was honored to be able to serve with so many amazing folks from my church.  Each team’s goal was to remove EVERYTHING in our respective assigned homes that the flood waters ruined, as quickly as possible, getting each home as construction-ready as we could so contractors could come in and begin the rebuild process.  I actually have several observations from my experience that day to blog about, but the one I want to talk about today is one that I’m the least comfortable with.

Every house in the neighborhood looked the same… empty, with piles and piles lined up on the street in front, consisting of drywall, insulation, tile, hardwood flooring, carpet and carpet pads, furniture, appliances, personal and household items, etc. In a word, every single house was GUTTED.  When we got to the house where part of my group spent most of the day, there was a team already hard at work, pulling out EVERYTHING.  It was not pretty.  It was violent, loud and messy.  It looked like complete chaos, but it was necessary.  The new could not be built on top of the old because the old was toxic and could not support what was coming next. I knew that soon, something beautiful would be rebuilt here, but for now, it was just smash, rip, break, pry, pound, tear and pull.

As I pounded, peeled and pried away at glued-down hard wood floors with a hammer and crow bar, deconstructing this home, watching wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load of debris being carted out, I couldn’t help but wonder to myself… “what now? What will these people do now?”

To us, we were removing debris, but to the homeowners we were removing memories.  I heard stories about an elderly musician who wept as he let go of his decades-old record collection which spoke to who he was, as well as a war veteran who struggled to throw away the memorabilia from his time in the service, which served as a reminder of who he was, but was now ruined. I can’t even begin to imagine the identity battle waged by each and every person as they parted with each ruined item, feeling like they were losing a piece of themselves in every item that was lost… or maybe I can.

Suddenly, I could not escape the analogy happening before my very eyes…

This is exactly how I have felt for the past 4 months of my life…

GUTTED.

something got inside that wasn’t supposed to be there…
the things I’ve pursued, acquired and prized no longer have value…
the things I held so closely that I thought defined me are now toxic…
what previously decorated what I had built is now just “debris“…
pulled out… violently… put into piles on the street…
preparing the way for what will be rebuilt…
smashed, ripped, broken and torn…
knowing something beautiful will soon come from this…
wondering for months, “what now? What will I do now?”

The picture at the top of this post is a perfect depiction of how I feel but have struggled to adequately articulate…

GUTTED.

We heard several people talking about the importance of getting everything that had been exposed to the toxic flood waters out of the house immediately, before mold set in, preparing the way for the rebuild.  My perspective was rocked as I thought about the work we did on that one flood-ravaged home and how it was paralleled by the work God is doing in my life.

With all that on my heart, then reading my friend Wes’ amazing post, I am reminded that no matter where I am or what I see, I can’t allow my present perspective to block my faith view of the story God is writing. I can’t get so stuck on the deconstruction that I fail to allow my heart to understand that deconstruction is actually part of the rebuild, it just doesn’t always look like it.  It may look like violent, loud and messy chaos right now, but the perspective is 1 Peter 5:10…

“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” (NIV)

The New King James Version of this same verse says God will “perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you“.  I love that visual… “…settle you.”

So, whether you are experiencing a deconstruction in your physical home, your career, your marriage, your faith, your finances or your life as as whole, my prayer for you today is that the God of all grace, after you have been GUTTED and suffered a little while, will himself restore, perfect, establish, strengthen and settle you.

Have you ever felt “GUTTED”?