Pax Communities - Latest Comments

Re: PAX in 2013

Christian Miller — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 02:08:23 -0000

Nice Message. I really hope to feel God in new and deep ways too, as it has been a LONG time since I have experienced either of those.

Re: Mark 2:1-3:6

chadharvey — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:43:45 -0000

Thanks for the constructive criticism... My main goal in teaching is not the length, but the content. Occasionally it will go longer and sometimes shorter, my hope is that the Spirit is able to encourage, convict, and motivate along the way. Some people prefer a long detailed teaching, others would like it short and sweet. Honestly, I just want it to be true to the text and relevant to our calling in our context.

Re: Mark 2:1-3:6

Christian Miller — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 10:55:28 -0000

Good job Chad on keeping the teaching SHORT. Just kidding, but I think you did a good job on making me feel engaged with your podcast. Usually when I think of podcast I think of someone talking at me, but it felt more like you were actually talking with me. One thing I would suggest is that the message was a little long and my attention started to waiver about 35 minutes in. There was just so much information to take in, it was hard to take the whole thing in.

Re: Forced to Free: Intentionally Connecting with Your Network and Neighborhood (Pt. 2)

Adsyamo — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 13:07:27 -0000

Love this! So many times we try to make the story about us. Thanks for reminding us that the story is about Jesus, not us, and therefore we can be free to live without any expectation other than that God's spirit is already at work, regardless of us. We can choose to participate or not.

Re: Forced to Free: Rhythms

RANDY MOONEY — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 01:51:23 -0000

This is so good ... It comes back to doing our normal every day things ... With the purpose of making God famous.

Re: Psalm 107

RANDY MOONEY — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 00:16:28 -0000

Good words about a good God.

Re: Forced to Free: God’s Word and Prayer pt. 2

Michele — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 21:18:00 -0000

ok so barring weirdness of doing this online, i love Kesha's idea to pray together. that's pretty much what I want to do as well. with a little combination of listening together on what is happening in our lives, and what God may be up to in that. we might not be able to get down to the nitty gritty of what God is up to in our lives till after we get a sense for one another's stories... but it will happen eventually. :) thanks for letting me share Michele

Re: Forced to Free: God’s Word and Prayer pt. 1

Randy Mooney — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:39:06 -0000

I know for me, I have this perfectionist attitude that comes into play. I went through this phase of journaling when reading, but then I never read because I didn't have the write journal (or sometimes didn't have the right pen). The when the when world of electronics came along, I tried hard to read and journal on the computer ... But the it was hard.

Basically I put more effort into the form, rather than the purpose. It was some wasted time in my life of not connecting with what God has said in the past. I made it too difficult. I think for personalities like mine, I need to make it simple (simple plans for simple minds right?)

Re: Forced to Free: Creating Space for Community

Adsyamo — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 18:58:22 -0000

This new-found freedom is addicting :)

Re: Forced to Free: New Blog Series Coming Monday, August 27th

chadharvey — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 18:50:09 -0000

First, I really like your profile pic on here. I can't believe how little Emma is!

I agree with what you're saying and we will hopefully touch on this in a few different posts.

Re: Forced to Free: Creating Space for Community

Jeremy Postal — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 16:39:42 -0000

Great article! Thanks also for sharing and linking to 8 Effective Ways to Reduce Missional Impact... :)

Re: Forced to Free: New Blog Series Coming Monday, August 27th

Jess — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:16:50 -0000

I completely agree with Adrian. I think that a lot of our focus has been on others but it's important to not only understand our spiritual gifts but also to understand what it means to take care of ourselves spiritually so that we can give to others. So Chad, go ahead and re-word whatever it is that I'm trying to say (you are good at that) and then add that to your list :)

Re: Forced to Free: New Blog Series Coming Monday, August 27th

chadharvey — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 00:53:29 -0000

For sure. Having at least a basic understanding of your spiritual gifting is really important. We'll definitely take a brief look at that. I may even encourage you all to take a pretty sweet spiritual gift assessment that I came across a year or so ago. Its way better than any you may have taken before. Seriously, good stuff.

Re: Forced to Free: New Blog Series Coming Monday, August 27th

Adsyamo — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 21:01:27 -0000

I would like to see some discussion about exploring our own personal spiritual gifts, identifying our strengths (and weaknesses) and how our gifts inform our mission in our community and the role they play in our larger body of Pax.

Re: Live Together

Jeff — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 07:48:28 -0000

I for got more where for is.... Sorry... Not one word I guess

Re: Live Together

Jeff — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 07:45:44 -0000

I will try to say something I put for thought into but I enjoyed this pod cast.

Re: Intermission Holistic Discipleship

michele — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:45:42 -0000

Hi Randy,

The questions and comments above I am sure are things you and Chad must have discussed and acknowledged, I attempted to use them to create better listening to what our mission is. I think the frustration is a sign of disillusionment. Disillusionment is a time God uses to shed our plans for His if we listen carefully. In spite of our complete submission to God we can't necessarily tell the difference, unless we were really humming in Body unity, between what we think we are going to accomplish for God and what God wants to accomplish. One of the things I respect about PAX leadership is the apostolic Spirit to start things right and the attention to detail in that arena. Now what I see is the significance of other giftings entering in to help you achieve that end to the fullest. In my case I care about listening to the will of God. I see the sign of others' frustration at the thought of facilitating more discussion as opposed to just living it out for ourselves, as on target, except for a little fine tuning. I need to hear about how the Kingdom of God is working in the lives of everyone in PAX, and I also need a chance to talk about what may be potential activity of the KofG in my life and have others listen. I think that we will be able to hear things in one anothers' stories that sound familiar. Those familiar elements will reveal the answer on how God is working and what He wants to do. And then we will have a practical idea of how we can all share in achieving that mission together. Much as even I want to, I can't get mission from a MC program; we must enter into a place of discipleship as a family. It excites me to have access to one another's stories as a way to obey the mission of God. Thank you, both, for being vulnerable last Tuesday and above, to admit where you are struggling to press through. It helped me to hear what the Spirit was saying, and allowed me to serve by making these comments. :)

Re: Intermission Holistic Discipleship

RANDY MOONEY — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 03:00:23 -0000

Argh ... My long reply back got frozen and cut ....

I'll summarize.

There will be a struggle for us to be complacent/comfortable in ow we live our life. Having a sense of urgency can be good to propel us beyond complacency. Tension canbe good if it compels us to truly think through what it is we are doing.

God can totally step in and destroy what we do. Or he could take our honest feeble attempts at glorifying him and demonstrate his power within our weaknesss.

I am hoping above all that I step out if the way of the Spirit's work in our lives.

Re: Intermission Holistic Discipleship

RANDY MOONEY — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 02:54:08 -0000

Thanks for writing Michelle, I apologize for not seeing this until now.

I am not sure I can interact with everything you said, but let me try to hit the core and see if I understood right.

Are you saying that we need to live/work this out together? But in doing so, not hold so tightly to a formailty as God may have need for us to be flexible (what ifs?).

Assuming this is the essence, then ... I would agree.

Living in community will by nature require sacrifice of self. Like a family, we all do not follow just one person, but we instead should think of all involved.

The frustration from the other night comes at a tension point of confirming what God is calling us to do ... But not having the ability to articulate as a group what that is. Chad and I were talking earlier about this and recognizing that we may be holding to much to rigidity out of comfort (or possibly god given strengths/gifting?)

Re: Intermission Holistic Discipleship

michele — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 19:30:44 -0000

Here is a question I am now required to ask myself: Is it preferable to work as an individual? What does scripture say about that?

Well I think I see the answer also here in Phillipians. Paul's conflict was being apart from the community of God's people.

Phil. 1:8 "For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ."

I wasn't able to start a fellowship around evangelism while I was in the traditional church, though perhaps it's because of the quality/quantity of investment I had made toward that end, who knows. The point is that it set me on a journey which led me to PAX and I am already much happier. But like Paul I wasn't completely alone. I went to church and heard sermons and I strategized with my mentors. I had Christian friends pop in and out of my days (and still do) as much as they also were strategizing on how to focus on the life of God in their own sphere. This focused me as much as them. Mostly, I just listened to them think through what God was saying to them, and what they were going to do about that. I didn't have to "instruct" at all. It was the mere presence of someone else who was taking a sense of responsibility for reaching sojourners that seemed to rub off on us mutually. It was what we needed - seriousness. Passion.

Ready for some "what-ifs"?

What if... God uses PAX in a way we aren't predicting. Such as, we labor the next twenty years to develop a cultural interest in community which seems to be so severely lacking in the Pacific NW scene as opposed to other parts of the country.... And it is our children who actually reap a harvest of many people coming along as one people on mission for God?? Think the first several dry decades of missionary work in China.

What if... God plans to separate us from one another in ways I can't even imagine like Paul's circumstances? What if, like the Roman empire, the mere ability to articulate "Paul says a man who was God named Christ died for sins and rose again" is all God wants to spread through our fellowship?

What if God causes one of us to move for employment to another state where very few people care about God and they have to start a movement for Him all by themselves for several years before people come around to the gospel?

What if... the missional community movement is still in its early days of theology and formulation and there's actually flaws in the ways it's being conceived that will be worked out in another 20 years of the church?

Do we REALLY have eyes to see what God is doing?

The MC movement can be a crutch at any time. We can use it like a program just as much as we did the traditional church we left behind to tell us what to expect about God moving through His people. I am ready to hold loosely to the missional movement if it should stop me from being honest about how the Kingdom of God REALLY is advancing in our midst.

God wants us to pursue our expectation of the Kingdom through scripture. God wants us to pursue our expectation of the Kingdom through looking into the lives of people who already are trying to live it out. That's where our focus for learning should be. Not books so much. I am concerned that we don't have eyes enough to even look at each other's lives because we're so focused about how MCs work.

Can I up the ante? Put down the latte for a second ;)

"Screw the document."
How about "Screw missional community"?
My mentors warned me about this for the last year of my three year apprenticeship with them. No design for church life is going to carry me into the reality of the Kingdom of God.

...I think this might help us discover clarity on God's mission that Randy rightly is seeking.

Re: Intermission Holistic Discipleship

michele — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:49:02 -0000

I like Chad's comment last night to "screw the document" just for this reason. However Randy is also right that as far as we are attempting to do a missional movement, we have to have clarity on who are mission is, because everything we do is driven by making disciples of a certain group of people.

It's very interesting the subtle and as of this week not so subtle suggestion that "disciples who make disciples" either cannot, or should not, work as individuals. For instance my individual history of making disciples without a community of Christians witnessing together to a watching world - well what Spiritually was going on? "Was that real or was it Memorex?" I want to hear more about this.

I would like offer Paul as a suggestion from scripture. For two years during his first imprisonment in Rome, Paul was largely isolated. If missional communities are the only authentic way to create disciples who make disciples, I would expect to find that Paul was also unable to attain mission while in prison. Here is what I did find.

Philemon 1:10 "I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten while in my chains...".

Philippians 4:21-22 " Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, but especially those who are of Caesar’s household."

The saints in Caesar's household are apparently a different church than the one to whom the book of Romans was written, since that was written before he had ever reached Rome. Philippians 1 explains the witness he was creating for the gospel while in prison.

Phil. 1:12-14 "But I want you to know, brethren, that the things which happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel, so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard, and to all the rest, that my chains are in Christ; and most of the brethren in the Lord, having become confident by my chains, are much more bold to speak the word without fear."

Paul wanted the Philippians to know that his isolation from their Body was advancing, not hindering, the Kingdom of God from advancing. The word "furtherance" suggests a pioneer beating or cutting a path through a densely forested area. The palace guard were several thousand men. Every day, one of those guards was literally chained to Paul - what an earful it must have been for them! But it even went into Caesar's house itself. These Christians must have heard from Paul's guards about the lives of the Christians in the other churches - because once they believed, they looked to their proximity to Paul to send a greeting to the Christians in Phillipi.

How many men visited Paul when he was working the gospel as an individual? Though he had visitors come and go, only a handful of men stayed with him for a period of time. Paul calls the men who are actually not ashamed to dwell a significant amount of time in his cell, his "fellow prisoners." They most likely had not been in jail themselves but they accepted the reproach of his imprisonment for the sake of gaining the Kingdom. I haven't counted them, but Paul only calls a few of his visitors by this honorable position.

Paul's passion for Christ has led him to an understanding of discipleship in which the disciple takes up a cross to follow his Lord. Discipleship, therefore, means to participate in the sufferings of Christ (3:10-11), to be ready to be poured out as a drink offering in ministry for the sake of others (2:17). Paul's imprisonment belongs to those trials for which "we were destined" (1 Thess 3:3) and thus come as no surprise. Indeed seems to be the model we should expect to be imitating!

Philippians 1:29-30 "For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, having the same conflict which you saw in me and now hear is in me."

The only Jewish Christians who comforted Paul by giving their presence were three: the Apostle Mark, Jesus called Justus and Aristarchus. Of the Gentile believers, these are the men who ever came to visit him for any length of time: Timothy, Tychius, Onesimus, Epaphras, Luke, Demas and Epaphroditus. What do you think? Is this a picture of a missional community? Let's say Paul had permission in his cell to regularly gather all these men together whenever any of them were in town. That's potentially ten men, max. No families. No sojourners. No overt mission trips or drawing in Romans from the city to hear and experience the community of God together. At least, that is my honest guess.

And even if the sojourners who were coming to know Christ by means of Paul's imprisonment got together with the likes of, say, Timothy somewhere else in town on a regular basis, how does Paul credit those he has "begotten" in the Lord? Are they the work of a community or his own ministry? Paul says that he has begotten Onesimus and that it is because of Paul that the whole palace guard has heard (and some believed) the gospel. He doesn't credit his closest comforters as being on mission equally with him in this region, at least - though back home in the churches he does think this way about his visitors and how he is sending them to minister to the churches.

It is possible to make disciples who make disciples if there is only one Christian, working in isolation. Onesimus was not only born again, but like a "son" - mature in the ways he imitated Paul. He got it.

Re: Intermission Holistic Discipleship

Mike — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 16:34:42 -0000

I'm reading..... keep posting

Re: Holistic Discipleship: Taking Ownership of Your Own Maturity

RANDY MOONEY — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 20:41:29 -0000

This is definitely an area I tend to lack in. Mostly with the idea of growing spiritually myself and it just to help someone else out. I.e. I will read this book of the Bible because then I can teach it to others. Instead, I should rad it to find out more about God and ... "Hey, guess what I discovered?" conversations happen as a by-product of our growing relationship with God, and not as a way to impress.

Re: Happy Easter!

Landofmanyoaks — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:59:34 -0000

I know I am a bit behind, but love your Good Friday and Easter posts.

Re: I’m a Failure (Pt. 2)

Kathie — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:31:13 -0000

So, I thought the image would go as my picture...I guess I thought wrong. :)

Pax Communities - Latest Comments

Re: PAX in 2013

Re: Mark 2:1-3:6

Re: Mark 2:1-3:6

Re: Forced to Free: Intentionally Connecting with Your Network and Neighborhood (Pt. 2)

Re: Forced to Free: Rhythms

Re: Psalm 107

Re: Forced to Free: God’s Word and Prayer pt. 2

Re: Forced to Free: God’s Word and Prayer pt. 1

Re: Forced to Free: Creating Space for Community

Re: Forced to Free: New Blog Series Coming Monday, August 27th

Re: Forced to Free: Creating Space for Community

Re: Forced to Free: New Blog Series Coming Monday, August 27th

Re: Forced to Free: New Blog Series Coming Monday, August 27th

Re: Forced to Free: New Blog Series Coming Monday, August 27th

Re: Live Together

Re: Live Together

Re: *Intermission* Holistic Discipleship

Re: *Intermission* Holistic Discipleship

Re: *Intermission* Holistic Discipleship

Re: *Intermission* Holistic Discipleship

Re: *Intermission* Holistic Discipleship

Re: *Intermission* Holistic Discipleship

Re: Holistic Discipleship: Taking Ownership of Your Own Maturity

Re: Happy Easter!

Re: I’m a Failure (Pt. 2)

Re: Intermission Holistic Discipleship

Re: Intermission Holistic Discipleship

Re: Intermission Holistic Discipleship

Re: Intermission Holistic Discipleship

Re: Intermission Holistic Discipleship

Re: Intermission Holistic Discipleship