So we had an election, and opinions on just what happened are strong and vary greatly.  Now this isn’t strange.  I have participated in elections for a while now and the day after euphoria and depression is predictable and regular.  But this cycle, this election, was an exaggerated version of what has happened before.  They have never been pleasant things, but they also haven’t been like this one.

For the first time in surveys dating to 1992, majorities in both parties express not just unfavorable but very unfavorable views of the other party. And today, sizable shares of both Democrats and Republicans say the other party stirs feelings of not just frustration, but fear and anger.

More than half of Democrats (55%) say the Republican Party makes them “afraid,” while 49% of Republicans say the same about the Democratic Party. Among those highly engaged in politics – those who say they vote regularly and either volunteer for or donate to campaigns – fully 70% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans say they are afraid of the other party.

~Pew Research Center

We are extremely divided as a country and are seemingly growing more so.

Several times a week, our staff team gets together to pray and this morning was one of those times.  As we were talking about the election and what is the role of our church today, one of our new staff, Curtis reminded us of some powerful words by Jesus in John 13.  34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” 

The love that Jesus was talking about is the rugged and powerful kind.  Keep in mind the context of his words were immediately following Judas leaving the group to sell Jesus out to the Pharisees, and Jesus knew what he was doing.  This kind of love isn’t based on what is best for us, or what is easiest either.

For those of us who follow Jesus, we have this thing that we know.  We know, not just are technically aware of, but KNOW that the Spirit of God is in us and with us.  That God the Father is lovingly aware of us and will give us the strength that we need to walk through this life in all its highs and lows.  We know this.

That knowledge releases us to be the kind of people that truly get after the task of loving those around us.  We love our brothers and sisters in Christ who just handled their vote in a way that we could never imagine handling ours.  We love our brothers and sisters in Christ who think things and support things that we are against, that we believe God is against.   We love our brothers and sisters in Christ who say things that we would never say; we love them.

But we don’t just love them.

Jesus was just as clear that we are to love everyone we are around as we love ourselves.  So, not just our brothers and sisters in Christ, but everyone.  We love everyone.

Out of our foundation of God’s love and power that is at work in us, we extend ourselves towards others.  Regardless of how they voted, what they support, and even regardless of whether they love or tolerate us back.  This is who we are.

It doesn’t mean that we agree with everyone, it doesn’t mean that we don’t believe some ideas are simply wrong.  It doesn’t mean we don’t talk about the things we disagree with and it doesn’t even mean that we don’t work in opposition to those things. It simply means that we look at everyone our eyes meet as someone made in the image and through the love of God, whether they have responded to that love or not.  It means that we turn away from the cultural narrative that the last several generations have been writing (ours included) that tells us that what people think, what jobs they have, what they look like, who they voted for, or what they can do for us determines their value.

We turn away from that.  It is off the table.

The value of people comes from the one in who’s image they are made.  We simply cannot say we love God and not get very serious about the task of loving those He made; 1 John chapter four makes that very clear.

So here is what I suggest love should look like over the next few days and weeks…

To those who voted for Donald Trump (or wanted to)

You are allowed to be excited for your candidate to have won.  But please consider the ways your words come across to those who didn’t vote the way you did.  I have already heard a couple of people say, “I can say whatever I want because you know that if Clinton had won, they would.”  But is that the point?  We follow a messiah who didn’t do what was fair, who didn’t respond based on what we deserved.  Do we welcome that kind of grace and not return it to those we are around?

 

To those who voted for Hillary Clinton (or wanted to)

You are allowed to be sad, even angry.  But also, please consider your words and actions.  Anger isn’t a wrong thing to feel, but the scriptures make it clear that it can cause us to do things that don’t honor God and that can lead us away from Him.  We aren’t told to never get angry, but James tells us to get there more slowly than we usually do.  Anger can lead us to despair, violence, and fear.

 

To those who feel afraid based on the election results

As the church we should be on the lookout for those whose way may be more difficult as a result of this election.  We may not agree on any number of things, but the church is called to be a voice and a refuge for those who don’t feel like they have either.  The church needs to stand against violence towards any group of people and those aren’t just words, if we see it we will step to your aid.  We will not laugh when we see someone is being mocked, we will engage.  We will not pass by if we see someone is being harassed, we will engage.  We will seek to live out of our foundational awareness of God’s love and presence with us to be a support to who need it.  You are people.  You are just as valuable as anyone; you are not less than anyone.  Even when we disagree, your value to God and to us remains unchanged.  We won’t do it perfectly, but we will do it.

Peace,

Jim

Here is another shift that is very exciting for us!

We are adjusting how we disciple our male leaders, apprentices and those who want to lead one day in NLCF.  We are just doing this for the dudes this year, and this may be the only year we do it this way.

Why you may ask?  You also might be wondering, why just the guys?  Both are really good questions.

The first reason is that the church, across the board, is seeing a drop in guys – both numerically and in the level of their commitment to the church.  Up until the past couple of years this hasn’t been our experience at NLCF but over the last few it has been.  We love the guys that are with us and committed to following Christ with us, but we believe that we can reach more.  By reach we mean see more guys come into God’s family and be adopted by him and see more guys demonstrate a deeper level of passion and commitment to the calling Christ has given all of us.

It felt like the Spirit was calling us to do things a bit differently, so that is what we are going to do.

It is so new we don’t even have a name for it yet! : )  So, if you want to shout one out to us, please feel free. I can tell you that Robbie Poff and I have come up with some awful ones.  We haven’t spent much time on what it will be called, but we have spent A LOT of time on what it will do…  So, here goes.

It will meet every third Sunday evening as a whole group.  Robbie Poff and I will co-lead those times where we will worship, pray, and be guided together into a deeper understanding and life of passionate pursuit of the Lord.  This isn’t going to be like some men’s groups that tend to revolve around bro-speak and getting away from porn, dating and sports.

I imagine all those things will come up, but this will get into how we develop an understanding of what God’s vision is for our lives, how we hear from him more clearly, and how our life of faith can look more like the way that Jesus lived.

Jesus was asked by the Pharisees, “What is the greatest commandment?”  They intended this to be a trap question that would get Jesus in trouble.  In his answer, not only does Jesus side-step that trap, but he gives us one of the strongest creedal statements for our lives.  Jesus answer was simple, and also so profound we cannot ever fully dive to the bottom of what it means.  I will give The Messages transliteration of Matthew’s account from Matthew 22.

34 When the Pharisees heard how he had bested the Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. 35 One of their religion scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up: 36 “Teacher, which command in God’s Law is the most important?” 37 Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ 38 This is the most important, the first on any list. 39 But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ 40 These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”

 

Again, super simple but very profound.  Love God in as focused a way as you can and love those around you like you love yourself.

 

This group is open to anyone who has been in a huddle last year or who was asked to be in one this year.  If you are new or don’t understand what a huddle is, it is the way that we disciple people in our church.  Each huddle has a leader and three to eight members.

There are a couple of distinctives about this men’s group.  It would be considered a high invitation and high challenge type of group.  Essentially that means that if you are in the group, the leaders will be highly dedicated to you and walking through life with you.  There is a strong invitation to share life with us.  The challenge is that we would want you to feel the same commitment.  That means you are willing to speak into our lives if you notice things that don’t glorify God.  In our church, we don’t believe that just because someone might be a pastor or on staff that they have everything together.  I, as one of the pastors/elders need you to care about my life as I care for yours.  Another way the challenge plays out is that the group times we meet are critically important.  We want you to prioritize all of them.  Over the course of the year, something might come up, those things happen.  But those that are in this group would commit to working so that almost never does.  Additionally the participants would be in a huddle made up of guys in the group.

Together we will talk about the deeper issues in being men who walk closely with God, closely with others, and are dedicated to playing our part in God’s kingdom.  Then we will have weekly “challenges,” think of them like Crossfit WOD’s or as weekly focuses.  They will start pretty simply.  Having a 10 – 15 minute time with God at least four days a week.  If you haven’t been doing that consistently, you start there.  From there the weekly challenges will become, well more challenging.  Each week we will all publicly commit to the challenge that is next for us and the next time publicly talk about how it went.  We will celebrate the successes and we will celebrate those that weren’t.  What we find in the gym, with an instrument, with learning a language, in almost anything is that first you find your edge, then you push against that edge.

And then the edge moves.

I am extremely excited to walk together through this new, as-yet-unnamed adventure!

Cannot wait to see everyone who is coming back and meeting everyone that is new.

Jim
#loveGodloveHokies

One of the things that I do each summer, with many of our staff and leaders, is to reflect on what God has done and ask him what he wants to do.  This almost always results in some adjustments or shifts as we just try to be like Israel during the Exodus, following the trail the Lord leads us in.  There is a lot of time spent in prayer, seeking the Lord, talking to people, getting input, more prayer, seeking, talking, “inputting” …  You get the idea.

And over that process, things start to take shape.  As they do we look at them from every angle, pray, seek, talk…  This is a difficult but exciting process, at least for me.  Once something is solidified and dedicated to God, we look at how to share it.  I am very excited to get to share some key things with you now.

The first, and probably biggest shift for this next year (and possibly only this year) is that we are merging the 11am and the 7.07pm gatherings together.  They will both now meet at 11am in Colonial Hall.  It may seem odd to many that have been going to the 7.07 that we would do this.  This past year was one of the strongest the 7.07 has had.  Great and growing community (both in depth of relationships and numerically), powerful worship, life-changing/profound/powerful/let’s just say life-changing again teaching : ).  It wasn’t shrinking, it wasn’t dying.

So why not have it this year?

At NLCF, we have been committed to trying to never burn out leaders.  To not ask so much of them in ministry that their walk with God apart from their leadership dries up.  So that plays a big role in all of this.

Over the past several years, our worship teams have graduated and sent more people out than new people have come in.  It seems like over the past few years fewer people feel willing or able to play a part in this vital role in NLCF.  Now I get part of that.  It is tough to get in front of hundreds of people, and it is especially tough to truly worship God and not just perform when you are up there.  I have always said it is a weird balance of focusing on the worship of God, but also being aware that you aren’t worshipping God solo, that you are helping others to worship him as well.

Fewer people seem to either believe they can do it, or want to over the past couple of years.

This has meant that our worship teams have been a bit more stretched than we would like them to be.  And with graduating a big group this past Spring, it would have meant more stretching.  Now we could do that, we have enough to do that.  But two things would have likely happened.

• It would have likely led to burn-out in the worship team members we have.
• It would make it so that Robbie and Kristal Poff (who oversee our worship teams overall) really wouldn’t have any time to recruit, encourage and develop/disciple present team members and new ones as well. To put it more simply… They wouldn’t have time to solve the problem.

So, possibly for only a year, we are bringing the two gatherings together, we will celebrate the Lord together, we will worship together, and we will continue to grow together.  After this year we will do what we do: reflect, seek, pray, talk, get input about whether we bring the 7.07 back the following year.  Personally I hope that is the way the Lord leads.

In the meantime, let us know if this shift raises any other questions for you (most people who would be most directly impacted have been spoken to already), come ready to celebrate and seek the Lord together on Sundays at 11, and let’s see what God has in store for us all!

Jim

#loveGodloveHokies