Jordan Rippy

I just finished An Unstoppable Force by Erwin McManus. Probably the most influential book on church leadership and Christian living that I have ever read. I highly recommend it. Allow me to overwhelm you with quotes:

• “Whenever the church is seem through the template of an organization, we begin creating an institution. When we relate to the church as an organism, we begin to awaken an apostolic ethos, which unleashes the movement of God.”
• “The church can only thrive in the context of healthy relationships.”
• Change must not be seen as a necessary evil, but as a God-given tool.
• “The more one focuses on one;s own living, the less one is concerned about giving life to others.”
• “If churches wait to long to die to themselves, then they ensure that they will die by themselves.”
• “One survival has become our supreme goal, we have lost our way.”
• “All too many times we kept our traditions and lost our children.”
• “It is one thing to have a preference; it is another to demand that one’s preferences be honored above the needs of those without Christ.”
• “All the change in the world, minus the heart of God, equal zero movement.”
• “Today the call to cross-culture ministry doesn’t even require going; it just requires staying with a purpose.”
• “We have superficially attributed to generational trends what are in fact worldview shifts.”
• “We are to pitch tents, not build cathedrals.”
• Don’t build monuments, create movements.
• “God calls us to take memories with us, but leave the memorabilia behind.”
• “Many times, we would rather have Godless security than spirit-lead change.”
• “God is continually inviting us to believe that his future is better than any past we have experienced with him.”
• “The reality of change is the promise of miracle.”
• “We must leave the past, engage the present, and create the future.”
• “Values are transferred through relational environments.”
• “it is far more important to shape the values of a community than to set the rules.”
• “The church’s brithright is to be the fountainhead of creativity and human potential.”
• “The danger is going beyond an order of worship to a worship of order!”
• “It’s hard to believe that a movement born of visionaries and dreamers would become dominantly known for its traditions and rituals.”
• “In an organization, leaders must be brought in from the outside. In a movement, leaders emerge from within.”
• “Could we consider that even our death would be an act of faith if the direction of our bodies pointed to the way of God’s future?”
• “What took faith yesterday is sight today.”
• “Faith, love, and hope are not foundations or pillars; they are wellsprings.”
• “Jesus doesn;t call us to love God and tolerate our neighbor.”
• “Serving others with others is the surest path to having your own needs met.”
• “We tend to love the altar so much that we refuse to set it on fire. Yet God comes in the flames.”
• “The incarnation of Jesus Christ is God’s undeniable evidence that relevance to culture is not optional.”
• “After you expound on the purpose, then you expose the problems.”
• “Spiritual leadership in the change process is not so much about being the primary advocate of change but being the primary example of change.”
• “The Ten Commandments are the lowest possible standard of humane living.”
• “Grace has been seen as the liberty to live beneath the law rather than the capacity to soar beyond the law.”
• “When evangelism is not reserved for the elite, kingdom relationships become everyone’s responsibility.”
• “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.”
  - Basho

I just finished Emerging Worship by Dan Kimball. Really enjoyed it. I was required to read it a couple of years ago for school, but I didn’t finish it. Anyway, this post is not about the emerging church, it’s about a great book on worship. I really like Kimball’s focus on holistic ministry and multi-sensory worship. I love books that challenge me to think more creatively about worship and leadership. Kimball also has a lot of great things to say about intergenerational relationships and consumer Christianity.

• “Church is the people of God on a mission. (1 Corinthians 12:27; Acts 1:8)”
• “It is dangerous to elevate the [worship] gatherings over true spiritual formation.”
• “We only dishonor the people in a local church and risk creating backlash when we blindly use someone else’s model’.”
• “Biblically, it is important to cultivate intergenerational relationships among believers (Psalm 145:4).”
• “Never mistake motion for action.” - Ernest Hemingway
• “A core value of Vintage Faith church is that we can’t explain what happens with the church by the methodology we use. It can be explained only by the Holy Spirit’s involvement.”
• “Being organic is not being unorganized and chaotic. Anything organic and living is the opposite of random.”
• “Emerging worship expresses love and adoration for God through creativity mixed with theology and artistic expression.”
• “The desire is to avoid developing a dependency upon a person in the worship gathering (or a dependency on a certain personality or style of teaching).”
• “We need time to allow the Spirit to convict or encourage our hearts after the message-rather than rush out the door. We need times where we can intercede for others or get on our knees to confess our sins.”
• “May we never allow the creative design of worship gatherings to push Jesus to the sidelines.”
• “We have lost intergenerational relationships in church by keeping everyone in segmented into programmatic departments.”
• “A sign of unity in a church isn’t if they know the senior pastor, but if they have the same DNA. It isn’t about a person; it is about Jesus Christ.”
• “We have a holy responsibility to decide how money is spent as an act of worship.”

We had a fantastic Easter weekend at church. We had a our regular service on Saturday night and then we had a Sunrise Service on the beach to celebrate Resurrection Sunday. We had about 200 people at the Sunrise service. There were a bunch of people from church bit we also had a lot of people who just wandered up from the beach. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune covered the event and ended up putting it on the font page of today’s paper. They also did a photo expose on their web site. Gotta love that free advertisement!

I recently finished reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. The book is Bell’s attempt at articulating what a Christian worldview should look like. I really liked it. I appreciate his historical approach to the life of Jesus, as well as his emphasis on life here on earth, rather than just eternity. Here are some take-aways from the book:

• “For a Christian, Jesus’ teachings aren’t to be followed because they are a nice way to live a moral life. They are to be followed because they are the best possible insight into how the world really works.”
• “Christian = Noun. A person. A person who follows Jesus. A person living in tune with ultimate reality, God. A way of life centered around a person who lives.”
• “A church is a community of people who are learning how to be certain kinds of people wherever they find themselves, so they can do whatever it is they do “in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
• “Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there.”
• “Shalom is the presence of the goodness of God. It’s the presence of wholeness, completeness.”
• “Your job is relentless pursuit of who God made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it.”
• “Sabbath is taking a day a week to remind myself that I did not make the world and that it will continue to exist without my efforts.”
• “We cannot earn what we always had. What we can do is trust that what God keeps insisting is true about us is actually true.”
• “For Jesus, this new kind of life in him is not about escaping this world but about making it a better place, here and now.”
• “The goal isn’t escaping this world but making this world the kind of place God can come to.”
• “We cannot live independently of the world God has placed us in.”

Read it. It’ll be good for you. If you’ve already read it I’d love to hear what you thought.

Because Kristin and I are leaving (way too early) for El Salvador. I may not be blogging for the next week or so, but you can keep us in your prayers. We’ll be ministering in San Salvador and in a small village about two hours outside the city. Here are a few things I’d love for you to remember in prayer:

• Travel
• Favor in the schools
• Good response to evening meetings
• Ministry worker’s conference
• Health
• Team unity

con·sist·ent - /kənˈsɪstənt/ Pronunciation Key[kuhn-sis-tuhnt] –adjective - constantly adhering to the same principles, course, form, etc.

Lately, I have followed a Bible reading plan as part of my daily devotion. I really like it. I used to hate the idea of any kind of layout that would “restrict” my devotions. There was a part of me that thought it was neccessary to be unplanned and spontaneous in order to “get anything” out of time spent with God. That is not the case, nor is itimportant. It’s not about what I can get in the first place. My main fear was that my Bible reading would become yet another item on my daily checklist and that I would read for the sake of completing the task. However, I believe that God honors faithfulness. Consistence. If you make a commitment to read through a certain book, portion of the Bible, or period of time, God honors that faithfulness. It may seem elementary, but it is something that we all think about. Should my time with God be more spontaneous? Should I be a little less planned? Should I spend more time? Less? All of these are valid questions. I am not saying to abandone spontanaity. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Be spontaneous, but be consistent. Commit to do something and do it. As I thought about this post I realized that spontanaity is romantic. Romance is not love. They are not the same. I am sure there have been many a romantic one night stands. Often when we don’t have a plan for daily devotions, we become inconsistent. We have an occasional “one night stand” with God. True love is built on consistency. Relationships don’t last because of spontanaity. Relationships last because of consistency. “Love never fails”.

Have you ever heard someone share a story that caused you to step back and even wonder if you are a real Christian?  Lately, I have been so challenged by people who are doing radical things for the Kingdom of God.  So if there existed a checklist of things you had to do to be considered a follower of Christ, what would be on it?  I have no idea.  Okay, so I have an idea.  I know where it would begin.  I am sure that it would begin with experiencing Christ in some way.  That experience would trigger a response and that response would be accepting Jesus as Savior.  Beyond that, where do we go?  Is it really enough to accept Christ and then follow a certain code of morality, attend church, and tithe?

I think it is necessary that we experience God to the fullest extent.  In his book entitled, “The Signature of Jesus” Brennan Manning states that, “We do not need to theorize about Jesus; we need to make Him present in our time, our culture, and our circumstance.”  Manning teaches that the only way we can be sure of our beliefs is to experience God.  He says that, “When we encounter the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ, we must revise all our previous thinking about God.”  This statement is paralleled with the call of Abraham to abandon the comfort of his home in Haran to an unknown destination.  When Abraham was called God was asking Abraham to forsake his polytheistic views about God.  Therefore, the experience with God changed Abraham’s preconceived notions concerning God.

I just know that there is a lot more to faith in God than we generally understand.  Following Christ is not a system of beliefs or a code of morality.  The Kingdom of God is a way of living.  It is an ever present presence of God.  Manning says this about the divide between belief and faith: “For contemporary Christians, there is an essential difference between belief and faith.  Our religious beliefs are the visible expression of our faith, our personal commitment to the person of Jesus.  However, if the Christian beliefs inherited from our family and passed on to us by our church tradition are not grounded in a shattering, life-changing experience of Jesus as the Christ, then the chasm between our creedal statements and our faith-experience widens and our witness is worthless.”  We have to take the journey of faith between knowledge and experience.  For Abraham, it was from Haran to Canaan.  For us the physical journey may not be so drastic.  The Spiritual journey, however, will be just as life changing.