Jeffrey Davis

Ok…so I’m relatively new to the whole reading thing. I know, I know…sounds wierd. Up until recently I have HATED–and no, I’m not being melo-dramatic–I mean really HATED reading. Perhaps it is because few books can hold a candle to my incredibly overactive and vivid imagination or maybe just because I read incredibly slowly, but nevertheless, there has been a strong distaste, in my life thus far, for these things we call books.

And then something happened…I married the most noble and beautiful woman alive, who happens also to be a lover of a good book. She introduced me to good ole’ Aslan and the crew of the Chronicles of Narnia. For the first time in my life, I experienced the feeling of not being able to put a book down. As I read on in the adventures of Pevensie children, I felt as though I were there at Cair Paravel, the Stone table, and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver’s home by the river. I thought to myself, “I can’t put the book down!! Peter, Susan, Edmond, Lucy–they NEED me!! I cannot abandon them now!” Ha ha ha…it was truly a delight.

Well now as I begin to read more and more (still very slowly, but getting better), I find myself in a foreign anxiety. Last night, for example, as I neared the final pages of Adventures in Missing the Point, I found myself wanting to stop on the page before last. Such a strange feeling to nearly abhor and fear the end of a book. Why could this be? I don’t know, but at least it inspires me to start another one!

Wow–cool times at our weekly conversation last night! As we work our way through the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit continues to weave us closer and closer together as a community of faith. Are we trying to recreate the Acts 2 church? Certainly not-we’re not recent Christian converts from Judaism living in the 1st century. What we ARE is a community of believers in Jesus who live in and around Mt. Juliet, TN in a post-Christian 21st century–so what we ARE trying to do is let God shape us into whatever He thinks that should look like. So as we engage in conversation about the early church in Acts, we strive to learn from them, not become them.

As we set out to discuss specifically Acts 2:42-47, the “official” flow of conversation (at least how it looked on my notes) was quickly deviated from. This is what I always hope to happen, seeing as how my notes/thoughts/questions are prepared just in case it doesn’t! lol. We quickly became involved in discussion about how we could serve (and find) the allusive, emerging generations who mostly flee to Nashville or Lebanon on the weekends fearing complete and utter boredom if remaining in Mt. Juliet. Brittany, inspired by the Holy Spirit, provided a wonderful idea for Saturday, June 18th…a garage sale–in which everything is free! So, if you’d like to donate any items to give away email me. On this same day we’ll be handing out ice cold bottles of water at the garage sale and at some other places around town where folks tend to get awfully thirsty.

As the conversation continued, Greg posed the question, “how could we answer someone when they ask something like, ‘what is your church like?’” What a wonderful question! And on many levels–I have no freakin’ idea how to respond! The vision God has given us as a community of faith can’t be judged by any of the current measuring sticks (“buildings, budgets, and bodies”). Since that question carries with it MANY presuppositions, we decided that the best probable response would be a question(s) that encourage conversation where we can learn what the individual’s needs are, what they already think about church, religion, God, and Jesus, and etc. We thought these conversation inspiring questions would be better than talking for 10 minutes about the “vision” or “values” or whatever–all that can come later, but it’s not most important…

So as you can see, great conversation last week–I guess the overall theme (again) seemed to have been how can we be church, not just do church. Hmm…I’m starting to get the hint God.

Ok…Shameless plug to the blog: Happy 1000 visitors to us! I know I know…that’s a lame excuse for a post, but it’s exciting–at least to me!

Well, here it is–Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Spencer Burke, Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball, Andrew Jones, Chris Seay have collectively drafted a response to recent criticisms of the Emergent Conversation. They respond to such issues as truth, relativism, being “evangelical”, and much more. They present a wonderfully articulate response that is seasoned with salt and full of grace in an amazingly short (3.5 pages) document. Read it at the Emergent-US blog, or view the PDF file.

Do you ever sit back and think, “Wow, what are we doing???” I’ve been doing that lately. I struggle with the thoughts that we as a faith community aren’t “doing” enough. But I also think about the differences between being and doing and I wonder if sometimes God could actually accomplish more for His Kingdom and His glory if we would just “be”–be still, be silent, be patient, be listening, be real, be open, be loving, be ready, be _____.

Now I’d like to think that I’m not caught up in this stream of thought only to subconsciously justify what could, in fact, be inadvertent complacency, but who knows. In this moment, right here, right now, as I think of Jesus and His embodied ministry on this planet, I really do think that His “being” was the motivation of His “doing.” So what does that mean for a new community of faith in Mt. Juliet, TN? I don’t know, but I know that as a faith community, I’d rather be at Jesus’ feet–waiting on words of encouragement, instruction, or correction–rather than running around doing so much that we miss the the point all together.

But I don’t know…any thoughts?