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Until We All Have Faces Again

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By Jason Comerford

Hey, fellow Elimites. How’s your fellowship with one another going? If you’re like me, it’s been a struggle.

I’ve grown weary of mainly seeing other humans through my computer screen. Zoom meetings are a handy tool, but they’re a poor substitute for seeing one another in person. And let’s not even get started on Facebook. Chatting with my folks from a thousand miles away can’t replace a good hug.

I think at this point, no one would disagree much about the value of seeing each other in person. It’s incredibly important, and we’re hurting from not having it. But as we move our church services from the parking lot back into the building and tackle the practical challenges of being indoors again, I worry about some of the habits we’ve developed in our extended isolation. I’d like to talk about some of the spiritual challenges in, once again, seeing each face to face.

Seeing Humanity

The first challenge is, I think, the more obvious of the two. We’ve lost sight of our brothers and sisters’ God-imaging humanity. That might sound a bit extreme, but I think that’s what interacting largely through social media and computer screens has been training us to do. As C. S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory:

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

We’ve forgotten what it means to work with, play with, and live with beings made in the wonderful image of our creator God. These are the people we argue with, hurt, and dismiss so brazenly online. When we’re in community and facing one another regularly, it’s much harder to dehumanize the human who’s right in front of you. As we step back into community, we’re going to have to embrace the challenge of seeing and treating one another as image bearers of God and not merely as whatever category social media has trained us to see each other as.

Vulnerability

The second challenge is slightly more insidious—and for me, at least, probably the harder of the two. We’re going to have to let others see us again.

Now, that might sound very obvious and, honestly, pretty easy. Just show up, right? But the natural effect of us dehumanizing and judging one another is that we’ve learned to hide ourselves away to avoid that very same dehumanization and judgment. As we treat others, so we expect to be treated. Other people can’t hurt you if you don’t show up, don’t enter into relationship, and don’t embrace the vulnerability required to live in community. There’s risk in being known, and certainly some hurt. But I think, in this season, one clear act of taking up our cross and following after Christ is going to be in our earnest pursuit of relationship. No hiding ourselves away. We’re going to have to look at one another face to face.

Even as the world has tried to train us to view one another through a combative lens, we must  adhere to the teachings of Jesus when he says:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? (Matthew 5:44-46)

Fellow Elimites, we are not enemies. However, we do ourselves a disservice if we don’t recognize our drift towards viewing one another that way. It is easy to congregate and gather with those we agree with, but there’s nothing Christ-like about that. True Christlike love will gravitate towards and humbly, kindly serve those who would, according to the world, be our enemies. Even within the family of God, we must find a way to apply this teaching. It might even be harder here, but do it we must.

Think and pray about this. Even if you’re not ready to come to an in-person service, consider how you can creatively (and safely) enter back into relationship with your fellow Christians. Our courage in this season isn’t mainly about how we respond to the virus—it’s about how we respond to each other. Will we give grace and wait on it from our brothers and sisters? Or will we come ready to fight?

P.S.—Shout out to all you who are rightly appalled at the blatant theft of my title from C. S. Lewis’s brilliant book Till We Have Faces.

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Desire Family

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By Isaac McKenzie

“And He said to them, ‘I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.’”
(Luke 22:15 ESV)

We want many things. We should first know that it’s important to divide want and need. Just as important, we must define for ourselves the role that want plays in our lives. The want I refer to is this desire Jesus speaks of in this passage of Luke. In the Greek, it’s epithumia: “desire, passionate longing, lust.” In the verse, Christ earnestly desires to eat with His closest counterparts. He conveys a genuine and passionate tone. He is eager. His is more than merely sincere. He communicates a desire to experience His friends’ presence in a limited window of time. Can we relate to such a desire?

Do we desire such things as Christ did?

Our Christ desired a genuine relationship with those He loved, with those that loved Him. Jesus didn’t take for granted the small moments that are meals and the presence of good friends. He experienced life as He lived it. All the while Jesus maintained His mission.

Christ was to suffer. He was acutely aware that His time with the loved ones who followed Him was drawing to a close. He wasn’t motivated by legacy as we might be. His motivation was much greater. He was savoring moments such as the Passover meal.

We so often forget that we have such a great influence on the moments that we are given the opportunity to live. We have a chance to make moments to be something meaningful. We can see our fellow believers as our family, just as Christ did. Matthew says about Jesus, “Pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother’” (Matthew 12:49-50).

I imagine Christ looking around the rooms He would enter with a great deal of intention, absorbing the view of people and ambient conversation and taking to heart every meaningful word exchanged. He knew what was to come and He genuinely loved them just as He loves us and wants us to love others as He does. I’d like to be like Christ in this way in particular. It’s my number one priority when being with others. Christ would walk into rooms and be present, as I would like to do. Do I desire to be present?

We only have such a short time. But the experiences on our bucket list of life, those desires—are they worthwhile? Am we intentional in having conversation? Are we engaging others? Do we find ourselves desiring to be present with our brothers and sisters, as he has made all of us to be? Do you desire for those you see at Elim to be family?

I would like to eat with you. I would love to do life with all of you, as Christ would want us to as well. Life has so many hurts and sufferings. We have such little time. We must strive to see each other as family. We must believe that this concept is possible—to find belonging, acceptance, trust, and family in others who follow the will of God. Your Father supports you in this goal. He remains with us, so we remain in Him as well as with each other (John 15:15). After all, don’t they say, “To never have loved others like Christ, is to have never loved at all” (or something like that)?

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Pgo

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By Dan Amos

I had an idea to write about Pgo and Pwin. I even spent pretty much a whole sermon thinking it all through, writing it out in my head. It’s not that my mind was wandering, but it was engaged in a different direction … but when it came time to put the words into Notepad, it just didn’t flow.

Pgo and Pwin are terms I’ve learned to use in my job in business development to quantify the probability of an opportunity happening, and of winning it. For the purpose of this note, the opportunity is what we’re all about as children of God.

We exist to be in relationship with God. That is the opportunity. In this existence, we must choose whether we live in relationship with Him or in opposition to Him. We are already eternal beings, and we’ll take the results of this relationship with us into eternity. Either we will be in eternal relationship with Him or we will be eternally separated from Him.

With Him, we will be surrounded by His perfect love, enveloped by His glory. Our hearts will burst out in songs of praise, and I will finally be able to clap AND sing simultaneously. (For now, it’s one or the other, not both.) We will have purpose and fulfillment, but sorrow will be gone forever.

Without Him, our eternal existence will be unending misery. We will have a void that can never be filled. The torment and pain will be like nothing ever known, and it will not end. Eternity is real, and it is for everyone. How we spend it is the most important choice we make in this life.

These two options for eternity are the 10th point of our Statement of Faith. For those keeping track, this would be the Opportunity. Within the first eight points of the statement are the basics of who God is and what He has done for us. Understanding who He is is all part of Pgo. Because He did all the work (Point 5), our response to “God’s grace through faith alone in Christ alone” (Point 7) is our Pwin. And, just to complete the analogy, Point 9, on Christ’s return, is part of the award process.

The point is, we must know who it is we serve and know what it is He wants of us. If we have that wrong, we are chasing a false opportunity, and we risk losing everything. We already have eternal life; it’s where we spend it that’s the opportunity. A win is spending it with Him. A loss is complete isolated desolation without Him. Make sure you understand the Pgo and go all in for Pwin and make your Paward 100%.

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Community Groups at Elim: A “Church Within a Church Within a Church”

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By Larry Short, Community Ministry Director

This is the final installment in a seven-part series on principles guiding community life at Elim. To read all seven principles in one document, click here.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Inception, this concept may sound familiar. In the movie, there are sleuths (Leonardo DiCaprio plays the lead sleuth here) who are experts at entering people’s dream states to try to extract important information from them. It gets more than a little twisted when they have to take it down two or more levels, creating a dream state within a dream state, within a dream state. Which gives rise to all kinds of adventuresome challenges for returning to the “real world” . . . if there is such a thing!

(How’s that for a one-paragraph movie review? I dare you to try sleeping through this movie.)

At any rate, to some extent community groups and the way they function within the Body of Christ remind me of the premise of this movie. First, we all know that a Body of Believers such as the one you find here at Elim is merely a “church within a Church.” Ultimately, everyone who calls Christ Lord is a member of the same Body, the Body of Christ. Elim is only one local manifestation, a church within a Church.

I’ve found that the most effective community groups function as little “churches” within a church (such as Elim), within the Church (the Body of Christ). That is, many of the things that we are blessed by and bless others with, as a result of being members of the Body of Christ, happen well within the context of community groups.

I was reflecting on this last night while sitting around the fire pit in Bob Walsh’s backyard with a group of Elim men at one of our Men’s Conversations. We ate great food together. We worshipped together. We prayed together. Then Isaac McKenzie led us in a discussion that quickly got down to the nitty-gritty of how we live lives as men devoted to Christ together, in the context of relationships with other men (Pauls, Timothies, Barnabases—more on that here). There was honest discussion, and we encouraged one another onward in our journeys as fathers, husbands, men, and followers of Jesus.

I was encouraged to hear how the lives of so many men were being impacted by what was happening in small groups they were a part of at Elim, formal or informal!

During this weekend’s sermon, we will be looking at James 1:22-27, which begins with the simple and very direct admonition: “Be doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” God is implanting His Word in us. Often, we will receive it and say “Amen,” but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of daily life, we then “forget” to implement what we have learned and proclaimed. James tells us that professed faith is not authentic faith unless it is lived out in lives of God-directed action.

And community groups are an ideal place where we can safely “stir up one another to love and good works,” as Hebrews 10:24 exhorts us.

In this seventh and final principle in this series for life in community groups, I see the following three ways community groups help fulfill this “church within a church within the Church” mandate:

  • Small groups are often the place where a believer’s spiritual giftsfirst float to the surface. In the community ministry, we will work with group leaders to hone a process for helping their group members discover and use their spiritual gifts effectively to minister to others. Use your small group to exercise the “one anothers” of Scripture with your brothers and sisters in Christ!
  • Groups play an incredibly important part of the prayer life of the Church.This ministry will exhort, support, and encourage a vital prayer life within small groups.
  • Small groups are the place where the best care and shepherding In a traditional church model, the “professional” pastors are responsible to visit the sick and bereaved. But when tragedy strikes someone who is involved in a small group, many times the best care comes directly from other group members who are in community with that person. We will work with group leaders to help them develop as wise and caring shepherds of the little flocks God has entrusted to them.

Our prayer for you as we close out this series is that if you are not yet involved in a community group here at Elim, you won’t hesitate to jump in! Many new groups traditionally get rolling in September as school begins, so watch for an announcement of groups that are meeting, and don’t hesitate to contact a group leader to ask questions and express interest. (If you need help getting started, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line at LarryShort@gmail.com!)

Also, if you are already involved in a community group at Elim as a leader, an apprentice leader, or as a member in any other leadership role, know that we are praying for you and desire to come alongside you in this challenging task. You are a “little pastor” to whom God has given responsibility to shepherd and care for a portion of His flock. We exhort you to spend daily time on your knees before Him, seeking a godly vision for your group and asking for His help in making a real difference in the lives of the people He has entrusted to you.

Thank you for reading this series, and I pray you all will have a blessed and renewing summer as you grow in your walk with Jesus!

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Community Groups at Elim: The Hands and Feet of Jesus

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By Larry Short, Community Ministry Director

This is part six in a seven-part series on principles guiding community life at Elim. To read all seven principles in one document, click here.

Fr. Nicolae Tanase of Valea Popului, Romania
Fr. Nicolae Tanase of Valea Popului, Romania.

I experienced something of an epiphany 20 years ago, when I traveled to Romania with a group of nine other World Vision staff on what was essentially a staff vision trip. There, high in the mountains above Bucharest, we spent the day in a community called Valea Plopului. This was no ordinary community. It was centered around the life and work of an Orthodox priest named Father Nicolae Tanase.

Fr. Tanase became a priest at a time when it was very difficult and unpopular to do so. Back in the 1970s and ‘80s, Communists, under the iron fist of a brutal dictator named Nicolae Ceauşescu, were in charge. They believed there was no God in Heaven and human children were nothing other than a commodity to be exploited for the purposes of the State. They encouraged people to have lots of children and made any kind of birth control illegal, and when parents could not afford to raise their children, the kids became wards of the state, where they were to be indoctrinated in Communist ways.

That was the vision, at any rate. The reality was that children were half-starved, and many were diseased and disabled. They were treated like cattle and often left to die, caged like animals in “cribs” with steel bars.

Because of this reality, abortion was rampant. This young, brave priest named Father Tanase, convinced that God was alive and wanted him to show compassion to suffering children, announced that unwanted children could instead be brought to his village in the mountains, where they would be adopted by loving parents and raised with the dignity of human beings created in the image of God.

This announcement didn’t sit kindly with the Communists. They attempted secretly to kill Fr. Tanase, but only succeeded in maiming him. (His huge, black beard covers most of the grisly scars of this event some 30 years ago.)

After Ceauşescu was deposed in 1990 and the Communists fell from power, Fr. Tanase accelerated his efforts. When we visited in 1997, dozens of children had been adopted by community members. They tended sheep and gardens, running hither and yon with joy through the hills. They were well-fed, healthy, and happy. And they knew Jesus loved them! The image that remained with me from that day is best characterized by the somewhat odd title: “Peter Pan goes to Sunday School.”

What does this have to do with community groups? As I reflected on what Father Tanase had done in Valea Plopului, it occurred to me that he hadn’t done it alone. He had a group of vibrant believers around him who were willing to sacrifice enormously to show the compassion of Christ to a hurting world. What an incredible testimony!

Elim has gotten small toeholds on this principle, through amazing efforts such as Freezing Nights, feeding the hungry at the Puyallup Armory, and more recently, our wonderful involvement in foster care ministry. But I believe God has far more in store for us.

And if compassionate outreach to the community and world around us is going to be effective and sustainable, I believe it will find itself envisioned and resourced from within the center of our community groups. Hence, principle six of our seven principles:

  1. The Community Ministry will seek to strategically equip and encourage groups not simply to be places of community and fellowship, but also to be the point of the spear for our church reaching out into the community and world around us. This will look very different for different groups at different times, but we will challenge each group leader to be interacting with his or her members with outward-reaching ministry in mind. We will ask them, “What is God placing upon your heart(s) to do to impact the world around us for Jesus?” We will encourage them to listen to God and work toward whatever vision He plants in their hearts. Perhaps not every group will be reaching out, but it should be an important value to do so and to support those groups that do.

I would like to encourage everyone in a Community Group to pray about a vision that God would implant for becoming His hands and feet to the community and world around us. This won’t look the same for every group. Some may focus on supporting foreign missionaries, and others may focus on feeding the hungry right here in our community. Some will have a heart for strategic evangelism initiatives, and others may have heart for supporting efforts to help children in our community and beyond. Who knows what God will do?

But I do know He wants us to do something. I look at Father Tanase and praise God for the way James 1:27 is being worked out in his small corner of the world:

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

What will God accomplish through you and your group? Start praying NOW, and only time will tell!

P.S.: Where is Father Tanase’s ministry, 20 years later? The video below will blow your mind. I mentioned that when we were there, dozens of children were being cared for. Now that number is in the hundreds!

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Effective Community Groups “Live Life in Proximity”

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By Larry Short, Community Ministry Director

This is the fourth in a series of seven posts on guiding principles for Community Groups at Elim. To read all seven principles together, please click here.

This one is difficult . . . but inescapable. Our fourth principle is:

In the most effective groups, people “live life in proximity.” That means they spend a lot of time together. They get to know each other beneath the surface. An effective group is a lot like a village. They don’t simply come together for “yet another meeting” one, two, or four times a month; rather, they truly live their lives together, in many contexts beyond simply a regularly scheduled group meeting. They stay connected. That’s what creates community. We will encourage this among Elim groups.

For the past 15 years, Darlene and I have poured ourselves into Elim’s young adults group, known as “Pulse.” At times Pulse has had three events each week, so the bar is set quite high. In addition to our formal get-togethers, we’ve found many of our group members do things together with other group members outside of the normal group meetings. They have game nights and various adventures together. They go hiking. They simply hang out. And what we’ve discovered is that the more time we spend together, the better we are able to effectively enfold group members into the life of the church.

Our model for this is Christ’s interaction with His disciples. If you think about it, there are a lot of different ways He could have related to the disciples. He could have organized them into a loose association, a group that met together monthly (or perhaps even weekly) to discuss discipleship stuff.

But no! He chose to live life WITH His disciples—in proximity. Where he went, they went. They left their jobs behind. Their families went with them, or perhaps in some cases they even left homes and families behind. The three years they spent with the Messiah was an all-or-nothing commitment. In Luke 9:62, Jesus said: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Now, that’s a pretty hard saying! But it was very important to Jesus for His disciples to be ALL IN. After all, ultimately, they would be asked to lay down their lives! Better get used to the idea of your life not being your own.

Frankly, the bar is often set way too low in many small groups. They may meet monthly or every other week. They may dismiss for the summer. Nothing is wrong with these things, inherently, but we intend to challenge groups at Elim to aspire to something higher. There is a certain power in being WITH other believers, in living life in proximity, and in experiencing life together

Please join us in prayer for Elim’s group leaders, as we meet this Sunday after worship to fellowship and share both joys and challenges. For more information, please email me at LarryShort at Gmail dot com.

Next in this series: The most effective Community Groups seek to be both intergenerational as well as focusing on life-stage affinity.

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