Following Jesus is a simple yet difficult proposition. He raised the bar in different ways to many of those who wanted to follow Him. Pick up your cross, don’t even say goodbye to your loved ones, sell all you have etc, etc.
How is following Jesus challenging us personally? What is he asking us to put down and follow Him? How are we resisting? How are we trying to keep one foot in the door of comfort, stability, and “normalcy?”
In my mind Blackbird is nothing more than a group of people wanting to follow Jesus, those of us who currently gather may possibly be a little further along in the journey than others we are discipling.
In that context how are we encouraging, discipling, offering community, resource, and support to fellow Jesus followers?
Is our Blackbird group a rest stop on the journey we all go through during the week? Is this a cold glass of water to replenish us as we are involved in the dirty and difficult work of the Great Commission?
How easy is it for each of us to become discouraged, overwhelmed with life, tempted by giving it up to follow the American dream? It is easy for me to want to give up. I need this group for the inspiration that comes each week as I know there are others out there living for Jesus also. When we want to give up we know that we are not alone. We know that the kingdom of darkness is being attacked.
Blackbird whether it is in Valpo or wherever is attacking, it is a movement of people going after that which was lost. We have left the 99 sheep and are going after the 1.
But with this mindset and mentality we are going to be wounded and hurt along the way. There are going to be those with battle scars, and those who abandon the faith
But we press on, not giving up, and not giving in.
We continue to find others who are on the front lines, we continue to develop oasis’ whether these be locally or globally.
We continue to be a place of temporary safety, comfort, and replenishing of mind and spirit. Always with the thought of not staying in this safe place but moving back into our roles in the Kingdom of God.
We don’t create programs, tasks, or roles for us rather we help them listen to the Spirit and allow the Spirit to lead and guide us into the niche the Spirit have for them.
We do all this with a spirit of humility not valuing any of the gifts, talents, or roles given to us by God as greater or less than anyone elses.
February, 2011:
What Blackbird Could look like
Blackbird Name
The top question we get is, “Why do you call it Blackbird Network?” The “Blackbird” part is that we first started getting together at the Blackbird Cafe in downtown Valparaiso, IN. It’s a great place and they’ve always been really friendly to our gatherings. We move chairs; I usually spill something; We take up a lot of their floor space. Every Tuesday at 2 PM, we’re there – some combination of “us.”
That’s the more interesting part – the “us” – the Network.
I was part of a group that formed around a study of the Tangible Kingdom Primer. Once those 8 weeks were behind us, it just didn’t feel right to break it up… so 4 of us decided to keep getting together and continue the discussions about discipleship and mission and equipping others. That was the network initially – just 4 guys talking together in a coffee shop. After the first week, we’d already added a 5th chair around the table. With no effort on our part, the network began to grow. We’d meet people. People would hear of us somehow. People that we knew already came to mind and we felt compelled to connect them to the conversations. I can hardly even remember how the growth happened. It just seemed like every week a new connection was being established and more like-minded people were contributing to the learning, searching, equipping and doing.
At this moment, here are some of the questions we’re asking as we look for ways to be even more intentional about what the Lord may be doing within us:
Tensions- Strategist and the Spiritualist
My mind was blasted this week from so many different conversations dealing with God, church, mission, and discipleship.
Tension is a great thing in dealing with all of these conversations.
A couple of weeks ago I was in a lecture with T.J. Addington and one of the tensions he talked about in the Christian realm was the spiritualist and the strategist. The spiritualist high points are listening to God, patience, disernment, wisdom, and thinking before acting. The strategist high points is acting on what God has said in the Bible, planning on how to incorporate what God has said, and doing it.
I had never heard anything like that said before, and it makes sense as I look at people on the polar extremes of this continuum. The easy answer is there are examples of both in the Bible, and there are those that fall all along the line of the extremes. But how are both ends used together to expand God’s kingdom?
Jericho and Joshua is an example how both of these work together the spiritualists role was the seven priests who carried the rams horns and the obedience and the patience to march around the city seven times. I can only imagine those who were more on the strategic side thinking this isn’t going to work. But Joshua obeyed and when they blew their horns and shouted the walls came down and the Isrealites strategically advanced. It was both working in concert with each other.
It is so easy to think either or in terms of spirituality or strategic thinking. But using Jericho as an example God works through both.
The great commission is generally clear, this is what we are to be doing while we are here on earth, but specifically we get hung up on it because we don’t know specifically what our role is in that. The spiritual would advise pray and wait until God says specifically what you need to do. The strategics answer would be God has told you what to do lets go break down some walls. Neither of those answers are sufficient in themselves. it is easy to not do anything for some and it is very easy for the others to be busy for the sake of being busy but how do we work through both sides to find a more complete answer?
I am in awe of the concept of the body of Christ. It is so comforting to know that we are to work together in building the kingdom of God both in our context and through out the world.
The hard part for us as humans is valuing those gifts and personalities that are unlike us. The strategist needs the spiritualist and vice versa. We can see this throughout scripture and the answer isn’t to change the other to be like my personal preference but rather how do we all work together? How do we become unified on what Jesus commanded us to be? How do we use the example of Jericho and send the worshippers and prayer first, but not end there? How do we hold back those looking to destroy everything in their path and wait for the worshippers and prayer?