I think part of spiritual sensitivity is paying attention to the subtle undertones or undercurrents in one's spirit. What is God saying to me? What am I sensing in my spirit? What am I praying for? What am I believing for?
Here is what God has been doing in my heart in recent weeks. I think two things have happened that have been catalysts for what God is doing in my heart.
One of them was a tour of the Capitol with David Barton on April 20th. I've always loved history--especially counterfactual theory. But I don't know that I've really learned to appreciate the history of the city I serve. This is my parish. And the more history I know the more of a sense of destiny I'll feel.
In recent weeks I've read and re-read books on the history of this city. And I'm not sure there is a city with a greater spiritual legacy. And I feel like I was ignorant of it for so long! I can't even put into words the way those books have inspired me, but I think I have a heightened appreciate for the spiritual history and destiny of Washington, DC. I feel like I have a better sense of where I fit and where we fit as a church. We stand on the shoulders of spiritual giants. I think one danger all of us face is the pride of thinking that we're doing something that no one has ever done. In a sense that is true. No one can walk where we walk. But we're part of a legacy of churches that have impacted this city in profound ways.
I think the second catalyst was a time of prayer by the Awakening statue the last day of April. There has been a resurgence of prayer in my life. When I pray I dream bigger dreams.
I think the greatest challenge in prayer is knowing what to pray for. You almost have to pray to know what to pray.
Here is what I've been praying in recent weeks. I've been praying, "Thy kingdom come they will be done." I have a greater passion to see the Kingdom of God established in this city.
I've been praying a prayer that I believe God put into my spirit. I've been praying that I would see Acts 2:41 once in my lifetime. We're having an impact, but not an Acts-like impact. I'm praying that once in my lifetime I'd see 3,000 people put their faith in Christ and get baptized. I don't know how it will happen or when it will happen, but I believe it will happen. I feel like it is one of those life-long prayers that I'll keep praying until the dream becomes reality.
I've been praying the Scriptures inscribed over Union Station. One of them has sunk so deep into my spirit. It is from Isaiah and it says, "The desert will rejoice and bloom like a rose." I've been praying that there would be a spiritual resurgence in seemingly barren places.
I have a deepening sense of destiny.

Every church, just like every individual, never stops changing, morphing, and evolving. We are works-in-progress. We have a unique history. We have a unique destiny. And we have a unique DNA. Our "double helixes" are different. And that's not just a good thing. That is a God thing.
We need lots of different kinds of churches because there are lots of different kinds of people. One of our core values is: everyone is invaluable and irreplaceable. That isn't just true of individuals. It is true of churches. A kingdom-mindset recognizes that churches play different roles, but we're all on the same team!
I often think of church in "developmental terms." NCC is eight years-old and it is amazing the way it mirrors the developmental stages of my eight year-old son. Thinking in those terms keeps me grounded. At this stage in the game we can read a little, write a little, and do a little arithmetic. We're growing by leaps and bounds. But along with that comes growing pains. And we're not as coordinated as we could be--we fall down quite a bit.
Just like an eight-year-old child, its tough to tell what NCC will look like and be like when we hit our teens or twenties. But there are certain genetic traits written into our DNA that make us who we are. It helps explain why we do what we do.
Church in a Theater
It's not coincidental that I put my faith in Christ after watching a movie (The Hiding Place) and I now pastor theaterchurch.com. Whether we like it or not, geography shapes spirituality. We have met in a movie theater so long that it is part of our identity. I actually feel more comfortable preaching in a theater than a church at this point.
It is more than a marketing motto--now meeting at a theater near you. It is part of our intentional effort to reach the unchurched. Movie Theaters are neutral turf. People who might feel uncomfortable or hesitate walking into a church building feel right at home in a theater. Our location removes an obstacle that keeps people away from some churches. We have a "safe place" to share a "dangerous message." Are there disadvantages? Absolutely. I don't think I have a pair of shoes with gum stuck to the bottom! But there are unbelievable advantages. For example, the movie screen is our "stained glass" in an image-driven culture.
Our macro-vision is dot the DC map by meeting in movie theaters @ metro stops throughout the DC area. And we aren't just doing this in a vacuum. We're influencing the next generation of church planters. We have influenced dozens of churches to plant or relocate in movie theaters. Some churches have even sold their church buildings and started over in a movie theater.
Part of our calling is to consult and equip pastors and church planters who want to meet in a movie theater. If they can learn from some of the lessons we've learned then we kill two birds with one stone.
We're not "anti church buildings." But Bill Easum makes a great point in his book Unfreezing Moves. “The twenty- first century congregation is becoming mobile again. Property is looked upon the same way the Israelites looked upon the Ark of the Covenant— it is something to be picked up and moved to wherever God is leading you.” Easum talks about “the edifice complex.” He says, “During the twentieth century, property and place were of extreme importance.” But Easum talks about a new breed of churches emerging in the new millennium.
He says, “In this time of traumatic transition, we see institutional Christianity being left behind because it is tethered to its physical moorings and can’t join Jesus on the way. In its place we see the rise of House Churches, Storefront Churches, Cell Churches, Cyber Churches, Café Churches, Bar Churches, Multiple-site churches, and Biker Churches.” I’d add Theater Churches to the mix!
NCC is the difference between the temple and the tabernacle. The temple was a stationary building where the people went to worship. The tabernacle was mobile. It was packed up every time the cloud moved and set up when the cloud stopped.
NCC is part of a rich tradition of mobile churches in DC. Few Americans know that the Capitol itself doubled as a church building on weekends. Congress approved its use for church services on December 4, 1800. Several Presidents attended services at the Capitol including Thomas Jefferson (the supposed proponent of the seperation of church and state). Thomas Jefferson even invited the Marine Corp band to come play for worship because he thought the music was somewhat lackluster.
The First Presbyterian Church was formed in the 1790s by a group of Scottish stonemasons who were involved in the construction of the White House. The inaugural services were held in a carpenter’s shed on the White House lawn. The Church of the Covenant formed in 1883 and met in the home of Supreme Court Justice William Strong. And one of my personal heroes, Peter Marshall, pastored New York Avenue Presbyterian which got its start as a prayer meeting in the Treasury Building.
Church for the Unchurched
NCC is a church for the unchurched. I've always dreamed of pastoring a church where people felt comfortable and confident inviting their unchurched friends to church. That dream has become reality. Almost 90% of NCCers actively invite friends to church via "word of mouth" and "word of mouse." We often talk about church being a tag-team sport. When people walk into church with their unchurched friends they tag me and say, "Go for it." When people walk out I tag them and say, "Go for it."
The Middle of the Marketplace
God is in the business of strategically positioning us in the right place at the right time. We have had so many divine appointments in such a short lifespan that it is tough not to have an unshakable sense of destiny. As I look back over our church history I see the favor of God at every turning point.
In 1996 we were kicked out of the DC public school where we met because the school was in violation of fire codes. It was a scary time--we were on the verge of becoming a "homeless church."
We looked into twenty-five options for meeting space and one of them was the movie theaters at Union Station. I remember praying for favor before I met with management. I had no idea, but the week I met with the management, AMC theaters had initiated a nationwide promotional program promoting the use of its theaters during non-movie hours. As far as I know, we were the first organization to respond to that promotion and we didn’t even know about it. But it was like God rolled out the red carpet and opened this incredible door of opportunity.
On the way out I picked up a book on the history of Union Station. What I read jumped off the page and into my spirit. Here’s what I found. The original bill of congress, signed by Theodore Roosevelt on February 28th, 1903 said, “A bill of congress to create a Union Station, and for other purposes.” God knew that a century later this building would be serving his purposes through the ministry of National Community Church!
One more story. A few months ago our team did a workshop on creativity. One of the participants caught me afterwards. He said that he visited DC back in 1976 with a group of square dancers. He said they came to the visitor center that used to be in Union Station before the station went through it’s redevelopment in the 1980’s. And he told me that their group prayed that a church would be planted in Union Station someday. I think he was shocked when he came to our workshop and heard us talking about how we’ve been meeting in Union Station for seven years. I thanked him for praying for us more than twenty years ago!
Jesus said, “Go into the highways and byways.” I’m not sure there is a place in DC that fits that description between than Union Station. This is where all of our transportation systems converge. The Station is known as “the gateway to the Nation’s Capital.” The city gates in the ancient world were a strategic place where you met everyone coming in and going out. That is what this place is.
Approximately 75,000 people pass through Union Station everyday. There are 125 retail shops and restaurants. We have our own metro system, bus stop, and railroad. They all drop off at our front door. God has strategically positioned us in the middle of the marketplace.
Occasionally, pastors will ask me when we’re going to get a building, as if we aren’t really a church until we have our own building. And I’m thinking, “Have you seen our food court or foyer?” There’s not a nicer church building in the World. We have our own metro and bus system. We’ve even got our own railroad. Why in the world would we want a building when we’ve got this?
George McLeod captures our heartbeat as a church. "I simply say, the cross must be raised againt at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am claiming that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap, at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. At the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble, because that is where He died and that is what He died about and that is where churchmen ought to be and what churchmen ought should be about."
NCC is a church in the middle of the marketplace. We feel called to compete in the marketplace of ideas. Whether we like it or not, many Americans get their theology from Hollywood producers. Americans are mediavores. We consume unbelievable amounts of media and that media shapes us. The church can bury its head in the sand and ignore what's happening. We can lament what is happening. We can boycott. Or we can compete.
NCC has made a conscientious decision to compete because we believe that God will win any head-to-head competition. Our annual God @ the Box Office series is an example of competing for our culture. We're trying to follow Paul's teaching in I Corinthians 9--"I become all things to all people"--and Paul's example on Mars Hill in Acts 17--redeeming cultural metaphors. One of our core values is: irrelevance is irreverence. Ironically, the people who will probably take issue with the way we do church is people from a church background because we don't do church the way it has always been done.
We love to redeem music and movies. We also love to redeem places like night clubs and movie theaters. We feel called to the middle of the marketplace. That's why we intentionally target malls and metro stops and movie theaters for new locations. That's why we're building a first-class, fully-operational coffeehouse on Capitol Hill--it is a place where the church and commmunity will cross paths.
NCC is Non-Conformist
It's not coincidental that I am a denominational mutt. I experienced six different church "brands" growing up--Covenant, Bible, Baptist, Evangelical Free, Non-Denominational, and Assemblies of God. I think it prepared me to pastor a very inter-denominational church. About one-fourth of NCCers come from a mainline church background. Another fourth come from more evangelical backgrounds. One-fourth come from a charasmatic or pentecostal background. And another quarter have no church background. NCC is an incredible ecclectic place. One of our core values celebrates the diversity with a healthy reminder: maturity doesn't equal conformity.
I think our unique contribution to the Kingdom of God is trying new things. One of our core values is everything is an experiment. Isaiah 43:18-19 is one of the Scriptures that has been seared into my spirit. "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."
I think it's dangerous to be different for difference sake! But NCC is called to do church differently. Part of our contribution to the larger kingdom of God is "research and development." We feel called to experiment with innovative and creative ideas.
I've always loved Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice. "Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." We want to leave a trail for the next generation of church planters. And we don't want to just leave a trail. We want to resource church planters financially and creatively.
I think a large part of following Christ is unlearning what we've learned. Half of Jesus' teaching is deprogramming. "You have heard that it was said...but I tell you." Linda Thaler and Robin Koval talk about "big bangs" in the marketing sense. "One requirement of a Big Bang is to forget every rule you've ever learned. You need to consider everything except the traditional approach. The best thing you can say about rules is that they make it easy to repeat what others have done before you. But if all you do is trace somebody else's steps, most of your ideas are half-baked at best. By definition, rules are backward-looking. Rules anticipate that history will repeat itself. In today's business climate, however, if you keep repeating yourself, your company is history." That goes for churches too!
Oswald Chambers said, “To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth.” Or to put it in NCC terms: expect the unexpected.
God Fills Vacuums
We believe that God fills vacuums. God has called us to be a multi-site church--constantly multiplying and expanding our sphere of influence. It is not just practical--best practices and economy-of-scale. It is theological. Ephesians 1:23 says that God fills everything in every way. We have seen God do amazing things when step out in faith. He turns "one small step" into "one giant leap."
I'll never forget the Sunday we went to multiple theaters at Union Station. We launched a third service in a second theater. The week before we hit a low point--numerically and emotionally. I second-guessed our decision. I remember thinking, “Why are we doing this?” But I knew that it was the next step that God was calling us to. We jumped from an attendance of less than 400 to 550 in one week! I’ll be perfectly honest. When the 9:30 and 10:30 services were packed, I panicked. I thought we’d have 20 people in the 11:00 service. But it was packed too.
I think some churches never walk on water because they won't get out of the boat. One of our core values is the greatest risk is taking no risks. It is risky not taking risks!
One of our defining moments as a church happened at 5th and F Streets, NE. I was walking home from Union Station and I felt like God gave me a vision--I could see NCC dot the metro map of DC. That dream became reality on 09.21.03 as we lauched our second location at Ballston Common Mall.
When I first envisioned churches meeting in movie theaters @ metro stops throughout the DC area I wasn't aware of any "multi-site churches." But God is doing a "new thing." In the the mid-nineties there were less than a dozen multi-site churches. As of 2003, there are an estimated 1200 multi-site churches across America!
Creativity
One of my deepest convictions is that the church out to Be the Most Creative Place on the Planet. 98% of how to do church is left totally undefined. That used to frustrate me. I wanted God to just tell me how to do what needs to be done. But that would take creativity out of the equation. There are only two ordinances--Baptism and Communion. But even those need to be done creatively so they don't become empty rituals. That's why we work so hard to make every communion experience unique. That's why we do Baptisms by the Bay and Bonfire Baptisms in the ocean.
The danger all of us face is learning how and forgetting why. The moment you cross the line you're "going through the motions." Most of our creative efforts are simply geared toward communicating "the old, old story" in fresh ways that help people think in new ways. The two letter prefix "Re" captures the essence of what we're trying to do: re-discovering, re-inventing, re-newing.
Pray Like It Depends on God and Work Like it Depends on You
Job 11:6 is one of my fall-back positions--"True wisdom has two sides." I think wise people learn to live with tension. They are both/and thinkers. One of our core values captures the essence of both/and thinking: pray like it depends on God and work like it depends on you.
We honor people who go the extra mile. It is part of our culture. We work hard. Sometimes the best way to glorify God is good, old-fashioned hard work!
There are a couple of mantras that get repeated repeatedly. One of them is do it right and do it big. We don't do things halfway. I wish that motto had biblical roots, but it actually comes from Christmas Vacation. Clark Griswold tells Rusty they're going to put up 15,000 Italian twinkling lights!
Another mantra is failure isn't an option. If we put a man on the moon we can do this! I think we can answer many, if not most, of the prayers we pray if we simply worked like it depended on us. But there is another side to the equation.
I’ll never forget August 12, 2001. The Washington Post didn’t just do an article on NCC. It made the front page of a Sunday edition. I went back and looked at my journal from 2001. Here’s what I wrote. “Sunday was one of the biggest shocks I’ve ever had. I knew an article about NCC might be coming out, but I looked through the entire paper and couldn’t find the religion section. I was tempted not to buy the paper because I didn’t think they did the article after all, but I flipped the paper over and it was on the front page!” I remember talking to the reporter who wrote the article afterwards and even she was shocked it made the front page. She thought it’d be buried in the religion section.
Here’s the bottom line: either it was a very slow news day or it was the favor of God. And I believe it was the latter. Hundreds of people visited NCC as a result of that article. The article was reprinted in dozens of papers across the country. I was contacted by dozens of church planters who were inspired by the story. It put us on the map so to speak.
We even had a CBS affiliate in Denmark do a prime time story on NCC that was broadcast in Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Here’s what I wrote in my journal. “A CBS affiliate from Denmark called and they want to do a prime time story on the evening news which would be broadcast in Danish to Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. How crazy is that? Who knows who might be watching? Who would have ever thought that we would touch someone’s life in Denmark? But when we do the best we can with what we have where we are God multiples our efforts. He uses them in ways we’d never dream of.” And it all comes back to the favor of God. Only God could have landed us on the front page of the Washington Post!
Acts 17:26 says, “Form one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth: and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.” In other words, we live where we live and we live when we live by divine design. Our chronology and geography are ordained by God.
May God help us fulfill our unique destiny as a church.

What was Saint Patrick's ministry strategy? It was pretty simple: he walked among them.
In his book, The Celtic Way of Evangelism, George Hunger III says, "The Faith is about three-quarters caught and one-fourth taught." The Celts caught Christianity from St. Patrick.
Aristotle defined rhetoric as "an ability in each particular case to see the available means of persuasion." Patrick redeemed celtic signs, symbols, and traditions. He spoke in their language. He understood their ethos. On at least one occasion he blessed a river and prayed for the people to catch more fish. Unorthodox yet orthodox!
There are several keys creating ethos with an audience: dynamism, good will, identification.
One factor is dynamism. Hunter says, "They have to receive energy from the communicator to maintain their interest." This may be the most important intangible in communication. There has to be an authentic intensity. There has to be an energy and enthusiam that is supernatural in origin. The word "enthusiasm" comes from two Greek words en and theos. It means "in God." The more you get into God the more enthusiastic you become. That enthusiasm expresses inself in many ways--courage, confidence, intensity, charisma.
Peter and John passed the litmus test in Acts 2:13. "When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled ordinary men, they were astonished and took note that these men had been with Jesus."
Another factor in creating ethos is the "good will" test. Listeners inately ask the question: is this communicator for me? Some communicators seem to be against everyone and everything.
Another factor is the "identification" test: is this communicator with us? This is why the pronoun "we" is so much more powerful than "you." You aren't preaching "at" people. You are talking "with" them.
If a communicator doesn't pass these two tests the message will fall flat. But if a communicator establishes rapport via shared images and shared experiences then the speaker and listerner experience "consubstantiality".
St. Patrick experienced all of the above with his listeners just by virtue of his courageous return to the place of his slavery. He had a natural rapport because he risked his life to come back. He passed the "good will" and "identification" tests with flying colors.
Soren Kierkegarrd made a great distinction between "direct" and "indirect" communication. Often a direct approach makes people defensive because it is seen as a frontal attack. Kierkegaard recommended "indirect" communication that engaged the imagination via narrative. Kierkegaard said "indirect" communication helped people "discover the truth for themselves" and would "wound from behind."
Read St. Patrick's prayers and sermons and his mastery of "indirect" communication is evident. The Celts were incredibly imaginative to begin with. St. Patrick practiced what I would call "right-brain Christianity." Hunter says, "The Irish were predominantly right-brained and, in reaching them, Christianity adapted remarkably from its earlier Roman reliance upon words, propositions, concepts, and theological abstractions." That is precisely the shift we need in postmodern America. Hunter says, "Celtic Christian Communicators spoke from their imagination to the imaginations of their hearers." America needs more imaginative preachers to reach postmodern generations.
George Hunter observes, "Storytelling and other appeals to the imagination are effective with many pre-Christian and post-Christian populations, and a sole reliance on propositional speaking is seldom as effective as it should be anywhere."
Kierkegaard made five recommendations: 1) engage and speak as though personally to individuals rather than to an audience en masse. 2) Speak concretely--poetically and imaginatively--not in abstractions. 3) Speak to yourself as well as your audience. 4) Stress possibility--what a person can become. 5. Reject all temptation to pressure people to decide now.
Thomas De Quincey likened speech to a ship. You need a rudder (understanding) and sail (passion) to move the ship. Without passion you aren't going anywhere! Without understanding you're going everywhere!
Hunter says, "You cannot engage people without engaging their motivational and emotional agenda." Them's the facts. That may sound human-centric, but people get out of a message what they want to hear. It always passes through the filter of where they are in life--their needs, desires, hurts, goals, problems.
We can answer questions that people aren't asking, but no one will hear us.
Scottish Rhetorician, George Campbell had four goals: 1) to enlighten the understanding, 2) to move the passions, 3) to influence the will, and 4) to please the imagination.
Hunter argues that Jesus comes to every people to fulfill, not destroy, their religious tradition. That is how St. Patrick operated. He "Christianized" some of their holy days, festivals, and ceremonies and "grafted" the new into the old. He infused them with Christian meaning. His approach was "religion-friendly" and "culture-friendly." So Christian priests dressed much like their pagan predecessors. Of course, the question is: how far is too far?
How much should a speaker reflect an audience? How much should the church reflect the culture? Hunter argues that, in some respects, the personality of the church ought to reflect the personality of the culture.
John Smith, founder of the Jesus movement in Australia, observed, "The Irish know how to celebrate--with minimum resources and with minimum reasons." He said, "the Church should feel something like an Irish pub--festive, music, participatory--with everyone welcome."

At the age of 16, Saint Patrick was captured by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland where he became a slave to the chieftain of Ulster. But six years of slavery didn't break his spirit.
Then one night, Saint Patrick heard a voice, "Behold, thy ship is ready." He traveled two hundred miles on foot to a place he'd never been and where he knew no one. He wrote in his autobiographical account,
"After this I took flight, and left the man with whom I had been six years; and I came in the strength of the Lord, who directed my way for good; and I feared nothing till I arrived at the ship. And on that same day on which I arrived, the ship moved out of its place."
Patrick made his way back to Britain, found his family, and could have lived out the rest of his life in relative comfort and safety in the land of freedom. But in 432 AD he had another God Encounter.
In a vision, he saw a man coming to him from Ireland carrying innumerable letters. "And I read the beginning of the letter containing "The voice of the Irish." And while I was reading aloud the beginning of the letters, I myself thought indeed in my mind that I heard the voice of those who were near the wood of Foclut, which is close by the Western Sea. And they cried out thus as if with one voice, "We entreat thee, holy youth, that thou come, and henceforth walk among us." And I was deeply moved in my heart, and could read no further; and so I woke."
A God Encounter got him out of Ireland. A God Encounter sent him back as a missionary. No outside religion had penetrated Ireland in a thousand years. But during his ministry in Ireland, Saint Patrick founded more than 300 churches and baptized more than 120,000 people. His ministry was so successful that he came to be known as the one who "found Ireland all heathen and left is all Christian."
A God Encounter changed the course of his life, and his life changed the course of history!

On May 24, 1738, John Wesley was at a meetinghouse on Aldersgate Street in London. Wesley was listening to Martin Luther’s Preface to Romans when, in his journal he would write, that his heart was “strangely warmed.” That God Encounter changed the course of John Wesley’s life. One historian has said, “What happened in that little room was of more importance to England than all the victories of Pitt by land or sea.” Other historians say that John Wesley single-handedly saved England from moral and social collapse.
Wesley traveled more than 250,000 miles on horseback, preached more than 40,000 sermons and wrote hundreds of books and pamphlets. When asked about the key to his preaching, John Wesley used to say, “I set myself on fire, and people come watch me burn.”
One God Encounter changed his life, and his changed life changed the course of history. He saved England.

In his book, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, & Fairy Tale, Fredrick Buechner gives one of my favorite descriptions of the preacher's task. "The preacher is called in his turn to stand up in his pulpit as fabulist extraordinary, to tell the truth of the Gospel in its highest and wildest and holiest sense."
I think the greatest mistake a preacher can make is to dumb down or water down the truth. If it's not unbelievable it's not believable. As Buechner says, the gospel is "too good to be true."
The challenge the preacher faces is sitting down to put together a sermon and "the sound of the bills to be paid, the children to educate, the storm windows to put up, the sounds of his own blunders and triumphs, of his lusts and memories and dreams and doubts, any one of which when you come right down to it is apt to seem more real and immediate and clamarous to him than the sound of truth as high and wild and holy. So homiletics becomes apologetics. The preacher exchanges the fairy-tale truth that is too good to be true for a truth that instead of drowing out all the other truths the world is loud with is in some kind of harmony with them. He secularizes them and makes them rational. he adapts and makes them relevant. He demythologizes and make credible."
Buechner believed, "No matter how forgotten and neglected, there is a child in all of us who is not just willing to believe in the possibility that maybe fairy tales are true after all but who is to some degree in touch with that truth."
I love Buechner's defintion of a preacher. A preacher is "a steward of the wildest mysteries of them all."

A.W. Tozer said, “What comes to mind when you think of God is the most important thing about you.”
All of us have a God-image—an internal picture of what God is like. And that picture depends on lots of different things—your family, your culture, your faith-tradition, you time in history.
If you were born in Athens in the 1st century AD, you’d probably believe in lots of gods. Why? Because that was their culture. Athens was at an ancient intersection between east and west. There were travelers and traders passing through all the time. And they imported foreign gods. Petronius, a first-century writer said, “It was easier to find a god in Athens than it was to find a man.”
Acts 17:21 says, “All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.” Paul has mixed emotions. On the one hand he is distressed. “He was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.” They had an incomplete picture of who God is. Paul wanted to take them beyond their gods—small g—and introduce them to God—capital G. He said, “What you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.”
A hundred years ago, most Americans didn’t know any Buddhists or Muslims and didn’t know anything about those faith traditions. But America today is a lot like Athens—lots of different people worship lots of different gods. Globalism has resulted in pluralism.
So Paul was distressed. But he also pays them a compliment. “Men of Athens. I see that in every way you are very religious.” We tend to attack people who have a different conception of God. But all that does is cut off dialogue. Walls go up. End of discussion! Paul compliments them—in every way you are very religious. Athenians believed in a multitude of gods. In a sense, they couldn’t get enough of god. They wanted as many gods as they could get.
Then Paul says, “For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown, I am going to proclaim to you.”
In the sixth century BC, Athens was hit with a terrible plague that killed many of its citizens. Despite sacrificing to the gods of the city, the plague continued to spread. One of the religious leaders in the city believed that the city was under a curse for the sins of King Megacles. Megacles had broken a promise and executed some enemies to whom he had granted amnesty. The religious leader concluded that an unknown god was still offended by Megacles’ atrocities. The leaders of the city decided to send an envoy to the island of Crete to summon one of the ancient world’s most respected philosophers, Epimenides.
When Epimenides arrived in the city he was astounded by all of the idols. And it was his task to identify the one god who had not yet been appeased by the sacrifices of the Athenians. Epimenides made his way to Mars Hill and said to the leaders of the city, “Learned elders of Athens, there is no need to thank me. Tomorrow at sunrise bring a flock of sheep, a band of stone masons, and a large supply of stones and mortar to the grassy slope at the foot of the of this sacred rock. The sheep must all be healthy, and of different colors—some white, some black. And you must prevent them from grazing after their night’s rest. They must be hungry sheep! I will now rest from my journey. Call me at dawn.” The next morning, the hungry sheep, the stone masons, and hundreds of onlookers gathered at the base of Mars Hill. Epimenides said he was going to offer sacrifices based on three assumptions: 1) There is still a god whose name is unknown and is not represented by any of the idols in the city; 2) This god is great enough and good enough to do something about the plague; and 3) Any god great enough and good enough to stop this plague is also great enough and good enough to smile upon people in their ignorance—if they acknowledge their ignorance and call upon him.
Epimenides then ordered that the sheep, both the black and white sheep, be released to graze. He then prayed aloud to the unknown god, acknowledging their ignorance, and asked that the unknown god make either the white sheep or black sheep lay down, and those sheep would be sacrificed to him.
It seemed like a foolhardy prayer—hungry sheep don’t lay down. They continue to graze until their hunger is satisfied. Much to the amazement of the onlookers, one-by-one the white sheep buckled their knees and lay down. On the spot where each sheep lay down, the stonemasons built altars. Epimenides ordered that no name be assigned to this god. As an admission of ignorance, the stonemasons inscribed the words agnosto theo, “to an unknown god.”
The Athenians sacrificed the sheep on the altars and by dawn the next day the plague ceased to spread.
Over the centuries that followed, some of the altars deteriorated. But even second and third century writers, Pausanias and Philostratus, mention the existence of altars to unknown gods in Athens. We know this for sure, Paul found one when he visited Athens in 45 AD.
The question is: Did Paul know about Epimenides or was simply a convenient starting point? Paul goes on to say, “‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring’.” The poet Paul quoted was none other than Epimenides.
A quatrain from one of Epimenides poems reads,
They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one—The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!But thou art not dead; thou livest and abidest forever;For in him we live and move and have our being.
Paul established a point of connection.
In his book Retrofuture, Gerard Kelly tells about a missionary named Michael Shirres who worked for twenty years among the Maori people of New Zealand. His life work was to find “points of connection” between the Maori culture, traditions, and spirituality on the one hand and the Christian gospel on the other. He called the process inculturation:
“Inculturation is a theological term which embraces two rich and seminal ideas, enculturation and incarnation. Enculturation involves growing into a culture which is a process which is continuous. Incarnation is a theological term that expresses God’s becoming a human being…Inculturation is a made-up word, which signifies the process where Jesus, as a human, took on the culture of a particular people. Just as he became a Jew so he becomes a member of other communities, taking on their particular culture. As the Word is made flesh becoming a Jew, so “the word is made flesh,” becoming a member of each human family.”
That’s exactly what Paul does. He established a point of connection. He quotes Epimenides. He cites their history. He tells them about their god—the Unknown God.

In his bestselling book, Timeline, Michael Crichton says, "If you were to say to a physicist in 1899 that in 1999, a hundred years later, moving images would be transmitted into homes all over the world from satellites in the sky; that bombs of unimaginable power would threaten the species; that antibiotics would abolish infectious disease but that disease would fight back; that women would have the vote, and pills to control reproduction; that millions of people would take to the air every hour in aircraft capable of taking off and landing without human touch; that you could cross the Atlantic at two thousand miles an hour; that humankind would travel to the moon, and then lose interest; that microscopes would be able to see individual atoms; that people carry telephones weighing a few ounces, and speak anywhere in the world without wires; or that most of these miracles depended on devices the size of a postage stamp, which utilized a new theory called quantum mechanics—if you said all this, the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad."
The 20th century can be summarized in two words—quantum change! The qualitative and quantitative changes during the last century are unparalleled in the history of humankind. The fundamental changes in the social, spiritual, and scientific arenas have changed the rules of the game!
My generation (Gen-X) can hardly imagine what life was for our grandparents, and we can hardly imagine what it’ll be like for our children.
In 1969, the year I was born, Alvin and Heidi Toffler coined the phrase “future shock.” It eventually became the title of their best-selling book the next year. Future shock is the disorientation one feels when they are subjected to too much change in too short a time.
Change is happening so fast that it seems like we’re overdriving our headlights. Successful businesses can’t rest on their laurels because the rules of the game could change at any moment leaving them on the endangered species list. The same is true of churches.
A new generation appears every three years. In 1900, there were only 8,000 cars in the United States. A hundred years later there are 200 million cars. In 1900, there was no such thing as “rush hour” traffic. A hundred years later, 1,086,180 cars make their way into New York City on a daily basis. In 1900, New York City didn’t have to worry about the environmental impact of car pollution. They did, however, have to remove four million pounds of horse manure on a daily basis. Horses were the primary mode of transportation—the speed of transportation literally depended on “horse power”, not “horsepower.” Even if you did own a car, the speed limit on New York City streets was 8 mph.
In 1900, aeronautics wasn’t a science. It was science fiction. At the dawn of the 21st century, there are 10,000 airplanes crisscrossing the United States at any given time. The Concorde can fly from New York to Paris, gate to gate, in a supersonic three-hours and forty-five minutes!
In 1900, the word “computer” wasn’t even in the dictionary. The first general-purpose computer, ENAIC, was built in 1946 and used 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed thirty tons. Popular Mechanics boldly predicted that some extraordinary day in the future, a computer with “only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weighing one and a half tons” would be constructed. That original thirty-ton computer had less computing power than today’s pocket calculator.
Prior to the 20th century, information traveled at the speed of horses, ships, and trains. Traveling seventy-five miles a day on horseback, it took Pony Express riders ten days to make the 2,000-mile trip from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. When George Washington died on December 14th, 1799, it took a week for word to travel from Virginia to New York. International news traveled even slower. Premodern newspapers used to send reporters to the docks to gather news from passengers debarking from ocean liners. News traveled as fast as a ship on the high seas. It’s no wonder that on July 4th, 1776, King George wrote in his diary, “Nothing much happened today.” It took weeks for him to discover that America had declared independence. Sometimes the slowness at which news traveled was tragic. In 1815, two thousand people were killed in the Battle of New Orleans two weeks after the relevant peace treaty had been signed in London. If only they could have faxed the treaty from London to New Orleans!
Then on March 12, 1876, a conversation between Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson changed the course history. It wasn’t the content of the conversation. All Bell said was “Mr. Watson--come here—I want to see you.” It was the fact that Watson was in another room. He had received the first “telephone call” in history.
But even in 1915, the fourth decade of commercial telephone service, the American transcontinental system only had the capacity to handle three simultaneous voice calls.
At the dawn of the 21st century, we don’t hear about news days or weeks after-the-fact. Whether it’s a scud missile attack or police cruisers chasing a white Ford Bronco, we can watch history unfold before our eyes via live “look-ins.” News travels as fast as the turn of a dial, touch of a button or click of the mouse. Hundreds of television stations, thousands of radio stations, and million of web sites network the world in real-time.
Everything has changed.
Think about the words added to the dictionary in the last century—hyperlink, quantum, bandwidth, real-time, online, microwave, airplane, email, television, dot.com, fax.
The advent of the Internet makes Johann Gutenberg’s printing press seem like a minor historical footnote by comparison. The rules of the game have changed. Online banking, online shopping, and online education are just the beginning. Businesses that don’t have a dot.com are either extinct or on the endangered species list. And email n of the printing seem insignificant by comparison. Email may prove to be the “death of distance.”
At the start of the 21st century, information doubles every eighteen months. The world future society predicts that by the year 2020, human knowledge will double every seventy-three days!
In 1900, the average life expectancy was 47.3. In 1999, that is mid-life. Children born in the 21st century have a good shot at seeing the 22nd century. In 1900, there was only a 7% chance that a 60-year-old would have a living parent according to Peter Uhlenberg of the University of North Carolina. In 2000, there is a 44% chance. On December 31, 1900, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the day at 70.71. On January 1, 2000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened at 11,497.12.
If you multiply the quantity of change during the last century by the current rate of change, who knows what life will be like at the end of this next century. Prognosticators can only guesstimate based on current scientific and technological knowledge.
It is very possible that sometime in the next century, real-time language translation will obliterate language barriers. Fire-fighting robots will replace human counterparts. We will have digital mirrors. Electronic wallpaper will automatically adjust to your mood or help change your mood with a change of scenery. Virtual windows will revolutionize staring out the window. People living in rural areas will be able to look out their virtual window and see a cityscape with towering skyscrapers. People living in the urban ghetto will look out their virtual window and see a landscape with sprawling hills and valleys. Noise neutralizers will even cancel out honking horns or chirping grasshoppers. Microchip technology already exists that can compute the pattern of offending sound waves, and duplicate the exact opposite pattern, thus canceling out 50 to 95 percent of the irritating noise. Automated cars will navigate smart highways—Look, Mom, no hands! Smart houses will redefine convenience. Nanodevices will roam blood vessels monitoring health.
“In five hundred years we’ve moved from a world where everything was certain and nothing changed,” says Michael Gelb, “to a world where nothing seems certain and everything changes.”

It's amazing what a difference a package makes. Does anybody really like altoids? But those tins sure are cool. I love stuff that comes in cool packages. I like my metal bible because it's different. It feels different. It looks different.
Fast Company recently devoted an issue to design. A.G. Lafley, the CEO of Procter & Gamble, was part of the team in 1984 that designed the "all-in-one" cap. It measured, pretreated, and had that little self-draining device so it wasn't messy. Customers loved it. Lafley is right, "Good design is serious business."
I think incarnation is about re-packaging truth into containers that make sense to people. Jesus used agricultural metaphors because it made sense in an agrarian society. We use technological metaphors at NCC for the same reasons. We think in technological categories.
I think this is where so many churches drop the ball. We have the most attractive message, but our packaging lacks creativity and ingenuity. Frank Nuovo, Chief Designer and Vice President of Nokia, believed that cell phones were "fashion technology" and "personal accessories." "My mission was to change this little black blob with mini buttons into a colorful object of desire." And a market was created.
Design is the great differentiator. "Today's customer first experiences a product through its design." That's why things like bulletins are important--they are first impressions.
Clip art doesn't cut it.

This blog is really an ongoing philosophy of ministry. Here are a few reflective thoughts.
NCC has always hesistated to adopt or do what anybody else has done--sometimes to a fault. I think we've reinvented a few wheels unnecessarily. But I think it has to do with that fact that we aren't called to be part of a movement as much as we are called to begin a movement.
I think part of our calling as a church is inspiring and encouraging a new generation of church planters who are willing to take calculated risks for the sake of relevance.
Isaiah 43 is one of my fall-back verses. "Forget the former things. Behold I am doing a new thing." I think part of our DNA is trying new things--call it innovation or creativity or entreprenurial spirit. I think we're trying to find new ways to do church, to do discipleship, to do spiritual formation. I think that is a small part of our small contribution to the kingdom of God.
If we're still doing church the way we did it five years ago something is wrong--we're living off old manna. We need to reinvent new songs, new wineskins, new experiences, new structures, new expressions.
Leadership is the ability to put things in context. I think the only way to effectively do ministry in the present-tense is to have a sense of history (past-tense) and a sense of destiny (future-tense). Another way of saying it is this: hindsight and foresight give us insight.
In his book, Making Sense of Church, Spencer Burke talks about the leadership shift from tour guide to fellow traveler. It is a slight, but significant shift. I think the way we talk about it is that everyone, especially the pastor, is "a work in progress." I don't use the word "you" very often from the pulpit. I use the word "we" because we're in this thing together.
I love one of the "rules of thumb" in Making Sense. "Alot of times people are so quick to judge a person's past, they fail to look at the fruit that he/she is displaying now. My philosophy has always been that current fruit should take higher priority than the past."

I just read Liquid Church by Pete Ward and it is so descriptive of NCC--both who we are and who we aspire to be.
I love the reformers motto "Ecclesia semper reformanda est"--the church is continually in need of renewal. I think "Re" is one of my favorite words. I'd like to do a message series on that word someday. We always need to be reinventing, rediscovering, repenting, reimagining, and renewing.
Pete Ward shares some insightful thoughts. "Keeping the run of an event short is an essential part of making it special." I think our generation has a short attention span so we do shorter series. And we try to constantly reintroduce new events so that people don't start "going through the motions." I'm a big believer in Isaiah 43:18-19. "Forget the former things: do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!"
I think one of the greatest mistakes of the modern church is thinking of church as a noun--someplace you go. Church is a verb--it is something we are and something we do. We desperately need a postmodern ecclesiology that appreciates and celebrates the organic and chaordic nature of the church.
I think alot of churches suffer from cultural inflation. The culture changes, but the church doesn't change it's methodology so it becomes irrelevant at the rate of change. To stand still is to fall behind.
A liquid church is not "anti-structure." But it s a recognition that structure isn't what makes it what it is--it is the substance inside the container. We need to be liquid, but without a structural container liquid spills all over the place. I know that from personal experience!
The church isn't a centralized meeting. The church is an decentralized network of relational connections. If you were to map NCC it wouldn't be limited to two movie theaters @ two metro stops (Ballston and Union Station). Rather it is the relational networks of the 750 NCCers who consider NCC their church home.
I think one of the profound insights in Liquid Church is a study of religion done by Grace Davie. "Most people appear to express their religious preferences by staying away from church rather than attending." What a sad commentary on the culture and the church.
A few cultural phenomenons are described in the book that give some insight into how the church should respond. The first phenomenon is a shift from a "spirituality of dwelling" to a "spirtuality of seeking."
Another shift is from a need-orientation to a desire-orientation. It is assumed that everyone has spiritual desire and the church should be designed around those desires. Pete Ward says, "People want a real and profound experience of God. Solid church has made the mistake of underestimating the desire for authentic spiritual expression. In an attempt to connect with people and be relevant it has played down some of the more challenging and extreme aspects of the Christian life. Liquid church would try to reverse this process." I've often said that we are "seeker-targeted" but that doesn't mean we dumb-down or water-down the gospel. We need to provide a high-octane experience where people can encounter God.
I also like the shift from health to fitness. "Health is located in solid modernity and is based on conforming to basic norms, rules, and standardized expectations. Fitness in contrast is an openness to the unexpected--a readiness for what life may throw at you." I like the concept of fitness because it fits our core values--expect the unexpected.