Courage Day 2011

Happy Courage Day!

Three years ago today my family and I said goodbye to CA and headed east to follow a crazy calling to plant a church. We celebrate the day every year now as a family holiday - Courage Day. Though this year our big celebration will be on Saturday (Kimi is planning something secret, anyone know what it going on?), today is that day and I didn't want it to pass without calling attention to it.

The church that now exists is the greatest church on the planet. I'm so proud to be part of this community of people and I'm blown away every day that I get to be part of it. Thank you STORYCHURCH for having the courage to follow Jesus wherever He leads us.

This thing is just getting started!

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Clean Water

Scott Harrison is changing the world. His organization Charity:Water provides clean, safe drinking water to some of the most unreached people groups in the world. Great ideas like this one don't just happen. Someone has a wild dream, then decides to do something about it. Most people never get to the second half of that - the doing part. Too many of us stop short because of the cost, the criticism, or the difficulty. I bet the people of this village are glad that Scott was willing to pursue the vision he had to change the world. I bet they are glad that he didn't listen to the naysayers, to the people who said it couldn't be done. I bet they are glad he didn't give up.

We promised we'd be back. from charity: water on Vimeo.

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My dream for STORYCHURCH

This Sunday at STORYCHURCH we talked together about Ezekiel - a sort of unsure prophet who God uses to speak life into a bunch of dry bones. By the time Ezekiel is done speaking to them, they are standing in front of him - not as a bunch of dry bones, but as a vast army with tendons and flesh and the breath of life in their lungs.

Imagine the scene! Ezekiel is speaking and the bones start rattling. A leg bone flys across the valley and attaches itself to a hip. A spine stands up and ribs attach themselves. Soon tendons start forming and flesh appears. And then the breath of life enters their lungs and a huge gasp is heard.

I believe God wants to use STORYCHURCH to be a voice in a valley of dry bones. I believe he has positioned us to speak hope and life, to dream dreams for people that have lost the ability to dream those dreams themselves. One of our primary roles is to remind people that God isn't done with them, and that hope still remains - that we serve a God who resurrects the dead!

What if every time we gathered in homes, in coffee shops, or in our Sunday services - there were dry bones coming back to life? What if our worship was constantly accompanied by the rattling sound of bones being joined together? I believe we can be that kind of community. I believe God is ready to do amazing things in and through us - and many of you have already experienced it. Many of you were nothing but dry bones, and now you have life like you never had it before.

I'm asking you to beg God with me that we would see this happen on a regular basis. That lives would be put back together, hope would be restored, marriages renewed, families rebuilt. Finally, I'm asking you to be bold. Become an Ezekiel in your neighborhood, in your work place, and in your families. Speak life into places of dryness, speak hope into the darkness, and dream dreams for people that they can't dream!

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