mission

"Zero concern for mission shows either a woeful ignorance, or an willful disobedience to the heart of God." --Author Unknown

an update

so it is time for us to move again...

actually i'm not sure if it is time or not, but we are moving again. we will be spending the next few months in the pittsburg area living with my parents while we ready ourselves for the next phase of "professional" ministry. audra and i are going to plant a church, the exact whereeabouts of said church plant are still TBD, and timelines are a little fuzzy as well, but we are working with some great people and organizations to put ourselves in the right situation.

God has been moving us in this direction, and opened some doors for us, while closing others and narrowing our focus. i will post more as the details unfold, but we covet your prayers during this time of transition. (mostly during the moving-back-in-with-my-parents portion of the transition

a video of me teaching at Cumberland Community Church on Communion

Untitled from Jeremy Hazelton on Vimeo.

Church Planting

As many of you may or may not know, Audra and I have been thinking about planting a church for a few years now, we have also been praying about taking on a different role in an existing church (more of a lead role). In an effort to flesh out some of these desires more fully we will be attending a week-long assessment next week in Baltimore. This CPAC (Church Planting Assessment Center) will help us define God's call for us as a family, and give us insight into the gifts, bents, and opportunities that God has provided for us. We would greatly appreciate your prayers.

If you feel so inclined as to support our CPAC training financially, you can make a tax-deductible donation to help. Email or comment here for details on doing that, but mostly pray for us and for our children, as we will be away from them during the training.

mDNA

in following up on my previous post from Hirsch's book "The Forgotten Ways", i offer the following take-away above all others:

"It is remarkable that in biological systems each cell carries the full coding of the whole organism."

the point is this, while each cell has specific tasks or identities to fulfill, it "knows" everything about the whole. Hirsch applies this idea to the church and even individual Christians, and rightly so. i agree with his belief that if we are called by Jesus, we have the whole story, and while we may have specific roles to carry out, we know the whole story. if you think of it in terms of DNA, or missional DNA (mDNA) then each Christian has the ability to unlock what Hirsch calls "Apostollic Genius", and be a part of a phenomenal church movement (not unlike in China or in the book of Acts.)


here is my take away specifically: Every member of an organization should know the whole story, regardless of their specific role.

practically this means that the guy who sets up chairs before a gathering understands the "why" of his role, in the greater scheme of things. setting up chairs is my job, but i know that this role enables people to gather together which is part of our DNA. consider that the Holy Spirit is actually capable of what the bible says, that the very Spirit of God can work in and through God's people to accomplish amazing things, even through the most menial tasks, especially when we understand what is at stake, and we know the whole story. it would be easy to become consumed with our particular role to the exclusion of all others, but if we are honest and unlock the mDNA that is in all of us we can embrace our role as part of a movement that is bigger than any individual.

knowing the whole story is critical to success.

the statement at the heart of all of this is the simple confession upon which the church is founded: "Jesus Is Lord"

oh, that this simple statement would be the guiding force behind all of our efforts to "do" church work.

new read

i am excited to finish this book that i have just started... the introduction has me quite intrigued. i will be sure to post more info about the book as i work my way through it, but consider these statements from the early pages.

In a book called "The Rise of Christianity" author Rodney Stark gives the following statistic: in AD 100 there were approx 25,000 Christians, and by AD 310 there were 20,000,000 Christians. So in a little over 200 years the number of Christians exploded, and this is during a time of intense persecution of the church.

Hirsch, asks the pointed question "how did they do it?" this new book promises to question everything we know about the practice of church as we know it and to look closely at the early church, and the church movement in China (where under persecution the church continues to grow at a rate that is unbelievable!)

can you imagine if our churches were growing like that here in the states? what a thought!

theology, system or story?

there is an amazing post on donald miller's blog (you can find it here) about how we confuse the message of the gospel when we make it about a system of rules, and miss the story.

I especially like this synopsis of the story at work in humanity:

"So God sends his son to earth and his son essentially says this:

“You guys have all walked away from God. He can’t have anything to do with you, because he is purely good. But look, I haven’t walked away from him, so if you marry me, and we become one, you’ll be reunited with the Trinity. He’ll look at you and see me. We’ll do this at a wedding in heaven. Until the wedding, though, just have faith. It’s as though it’s already done. But it’s going to kind of suck until then.”

So that’s where we are in our story. We are waiting for the wedding, and until then, we have hope, and we have an explanation for our hope."

Read the rest of the post, and let me know what you think. Don's note at the end of the post is helpful too, this is not intended as an apologetic for creating your entire belief system, in fact if you understood 5 words of that last sentence then you already know what you believe, but rather a new way of understanding the life and work of Jesus, and how it may make sense to those involved in the story.