Heading Home

I write this as I fly home from LA… from Origins. I think it is going to take several posts over several days to debrief myself.

What did I learn? How did I grow? Who did I meet? How am I different?

I think that last one is probably the most important. How am I different? Maybe there are still more questions to ask, but as I travel home and contemplate why I left - what purpose was Origins supposed to serve in my life - the thing that needs addressing is how am I different?

I think an advantage I have is that I literally went to Origins with no expectations. I have only read one of Erwin’s books. I knew very little about Mosaic. I knew less about Origins. What I knew, though, was that Origins was about values not models. If there is anything I knew before I got to LA, it was that models don’t work.

OK… I admit it… models do work. We can take a model, apply it to our context, and build ourselves a church. Of course sometimes the churches planted out of those models fall flat, but the church planting groups don’t want to talk about those. And sometimes the job it was meant to do. It perfectly replicates the "success" of another church. But it also replicates the pitfalls and failures.

Of course, I have rabbit trailed down some of the same old same old of my personality and my failings. The question was… how am I different?

I think my vision has changed. I think I am allowing myself to dream bigger dreams. So often my big dreams have been in the context of how big I am, but the dreams I am beginning to dream, the dreams I want to be dreaming, are dreams of just how big God is.

We limit God to what we can handle. The reality is, there is no way I can handle God. I love the picture of Moses, seeing the trail of the Glory of God. And his face glowed for the rest of his life and he had to wear a veil to keep from scaring people. That’s the reality. God is so much bigger than what we can handle, that seeing the back of God will cause us to glow (like the after affects of a nuclear holocaust). And yet somehow we think we can put Him in some box.

I want to dream big dreams, not for me, but for the Kingdom. Honestly, I hope that God includes me in some big way. I don’t want to just be some guy on the sidelines. I want to be involved. But I want to dream big things for His Kingdom.

How am I different? I am beginning to realize how much we have missed the point. Correction… how much I have missed the point. The Church is not for Christians. We (Christians) are the Church, and we’re here to serve the world.

So much of what they talked about stems from that phrase (which I badly misquoted in my exhaustion). The church is not for me (or anyone else who calls themselves a follower of Jesus). If I am genuinely a follower of Jesus, than I am the Church. And as a follower of Jesus, I should have the heart of Jesus. My heart should be where Jesus’ heart would be.

There is so much more I want to process. Over the next few days I want to break down kind of the schedule of my few days in LA. I want to share the fun things I did, the places I ate, the people I met, and the things that I learned. God is continuing to shape my heart. I hope He never stops.

Tags: mosaic, origins, missional, erwin mcmanus