We're Moving

For the past several months, our community has been renting space from a Baptist Church in our West Asheville neighborhood. While it has worked out "okay," it has not been an ideal situation.

In Jan., I caught wind of a downtown congregation that was dissolving and contacted several people to find out what was happening with their building. They are doing good things with it and we wanted to join them in keeping it a multi-use facility and continue the worship of God in their "sanctuary."

After several months of proposals and discussions we have secured use of the building to house our offices and worship space. We are elated at this move as it will allow us to move out of our core group phase and into a public worshipping community. Please continue to pray for us as we are seeking to bring the gospel of the kingdom of God to the people of Asheville.

We will continue to meet as a core group in West Asheville and in July, we will make our move into the new location at the corner of Patton and Haywood St. downtown.

Thanks!

I want to give an extra special thanks to folks that are part of our Missio Dei Church community.

I spent Holy Week taking care of my boys while my wife traveled up to Cincinnati to help her parents as her mom was recovering from Emergency surgery.

Our people pitched in to help so that I could prepare to preach for a group at UNC-Asheville on Tuesday and prep for our Passover Seder for Holy Thursday. I wouldn't have been able to minister without God's people ministering to me. Our people continually checked in on us and prayed for us.

It's great to see that folks who just months ago were total strangers have, in the name of Christ, very quickly gelled into a believing community that behaves like a family. Thank you my brothers and sisters.

Vintage Jesus

One of the fringe benefits of being part of a great network like Acts 29 is the resources. Mark Driscoll, the founder and president of the Acts 29 Network, of which Missio Dei Church is a proud member, has just released his latest book, Vintage Jesus. I received my copy early this week and have been thoroughly enjoying it.

Vintage Jesus offers a fresh, winsome, down-to-earth look at the real Jesus. One doesn't need a Masters degree to unpack the bold truth in the book.

Let me whet your appetite with a quote from chapter two, "How human was Jesus?":

Jesus was a dude. Like my drywaller dad, he was a construction worker who swung a hammer for a living. Because Jesus worked in a day when there were no power tools, he likely had calluses on his hands and muscles on his frame, and did not look like so many of the drag-queen Jesus images that portray him with long, flowing, feathered hair, perfect teeth, and soft skin, draped in a comfortable dress accessorized by matching open-toed sandals and handbag. Jesus did not have Elton John or the Spice Girls on his iPod, The View on his TiVo, or a lemon-yellow Volkswagen Beetle in his garage. No, Jesus was not the kind of person who, if walking by you on the street, would require you to look for an Adam's apple to determine the gender.

Men & Women: Similar, but NOT the Same

I've been hanging on to this resource for some time. I'd like to introduce you to Wendy Alsup. Wendy and her husband Andy were members at the South Carolina congregation that helped to plant Missio Dei Church before moving out to Seattle and becoming a part of Mars Hill Church. Wendy is now a deacon at Mars Hill Church and has a tremendous resource in the form of a blog. Check it out at Reforming the Feminine.

Awakenings

So, it's been a crazy few months since my last post. Things have been unbelievably busy to say the least.

The good news is that Missio Dei is capable of paying me a full time salary (at a reduced rate for the next six months to one year, but full-time nonetheless), and we are looking at moving into our own building in June. Pray that things keep going in a positive direction.

We have published a new community blog for lent season 40 Day Journey.

Peace

New Shoes: I wish it were that easy

If you haven't already heard him, I'd like to introduce you to the Scottish soulful pop singer Paolo Nutini. This will cause you to react in one of at least two ways:
1. You won't be able to help but tap your feet at the catchy rhythm
2. You won't be able to help but tap your feet, but to save face as an indy rocker, you will only listen to it in private.



It would be nice if all it took to remove the kinks out of a painful life was to put on a pair of new shoes. Maybe this song can put a smile on your face.

The Golden Compass Halfway Through

So far, I am really enjoying the read. The thing I find curious about the Golden Compass is that most of the story, thus far, borrows from other, better known stories.

For example, the main character, Lyra resembles Lucy from Clive Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, even to the point of discovering a new world by stumbling into a wardrobe. An ice queen of sorts lures a "gyptian" boy away by inticing him not with Turkish delight, but with chocolatl.

Pullman also borrows heavily from some biblical stories, like an affair and love child by high powered people who attempt to cover it up (David and Bathsheba). He also borrows from the Moses story. Lyra, spent her infancy being nursed by a woman who traveled the waterways and continued to keep an eye on her after she was "adopted" by the Scholars at Jordan College.

The gist of the book, thus far, seems to be leading to human freedom in a libertarian sense, where any and all restrictions are viewed as oppressive and evil. My guess is that the characters are being set up to rescue humanity from "what the religious think they know." We'll see how this plays out...