Christ In Me

in my huddle (a group of people committed to learning to live as Jesus lived) thinking about invitation and challenge, areas you are balanced or need to balance out. the question was posed, how is your family perceived.

one lady mentioned that she noticed she wasn't a homeschooling mom and therefore felt a sense of challenge, maybe internally

is that the kind of challenge i'm putting forth?

oh you don't eat healthy? oh you don't homeschool? oh you don't go to Kairos? challenge challenge challenge

let him who boasts boast about this, that he knows and understands Me

Christ in me Christ in me Christ in me the hope of glory You are everything

challenge does not mean, look at me and see where you fall short. invitation does not mean, come to me because i have all your answers and can help you or fix you or i'm perfect and learn from me.

let me be challenging because of Christ in me

that what you are challenged on in your own life has nothing to do with my perceived good works or good choices or healthy habits, but Jesus in me calling out to You. your life being challenged by the existence of a very real God who i have a personal relationship with that is calling out to have a relationship with You. to come into right standing with Him

to measure your life by Him

if you get too close to me i will let you down
just know that

i am sorry if i have ever put needless guilt on you or anyone else

why do i homeschool? because i think that is the only Bible ordained way to raise my children? no, i homeschool because we live a very full life and i value down time with my children and noah. we take mondays off. couldn't do that if the girls were in school. i love to teach the girls. it works for our schedule this year.

why do we eat healthy? ember. we do feel better.

why did we plant Kairos and why are we doing things this way? huddles mcs etc? because we are trying our best and feel God's called us to it. it's not the only right way. it's not the only right church.

there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

few scattered thoughts from this evening's Worship Gathering...

-Tonight was so refreshing and yet I'm sure, uncomfortable for many of us. The word "family" can bring up so many feelings, sometimes positive, sometimes negative.
-I'm grateful for the extended family that we are given in Jesus....experiencing the joy and rest that comes from having a guest worship team, Chris, Alex and Danny from The Edge and our guest sound guy Diego from The Highlands while Brett is recouping. You guys really helped set the atmosphere for vulnerable worship.
-In a family, forgiveness is key....and so is saying "I'm sorry". Is this an area you need to move forward in? I'm praying for you. It's scary, it may be the hardest thing you do, but from personal experience I know it's one of the most liberating and healing things you can do not only for yourself but for your family.
-I am so very, very, very thankful for my Kairos Family. This has been such a unique experience for me, gaining so many close friends in the last three years. Not just from worshipping together on Sunday nights, but really getting to know each other throughout the week in our discipleship groups and serving together in our Neighborhood Churches. This community is truly one of the greatest joys of my life.
-I yearn for each person attending our Worship Gatherings and Neighborhood Churches that is looking for connection and community to find it here with us.
-...But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him....
-And, how He loves us. heart emoticon

to Kairos (Nov 2014): Bites of Brownies & Sacrifice

This weekend I was scheduled to bake for Kairos Quest. Normally I would have grabbed a baked good from the store (being pregnant, 3 little kids and lots of Sunday responsibilities makes weekend baking difficult) but due to our family's ever growing dietary restrictions, baking from scratch is our best bet. As I stood over the stove, shifting my weight from right to left and willing the baking chocolate to melt faster, thoughts of mothers and fathers thousands of years ago began to play in my mind. 

How many pregnant women with full and bustling lives and less amenities to make life happen had spent their time preparing offerings to The Lord from the best their kitchens had to offer? There IS something to the sacrifice. The giving of your time, your money, your skill your best. And even still, God is looking for this heart condition: O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken an contrite heart, o God, you will not despise. 

I have been thinking on this passage for a couple of weeks now. I prayed for myself yesterday to bake with a joyful heart, despite what would not get done around our home. I prayed for each little mouth that would bite into these brownies, that they would hopefully enjoy the taste of gluten free healthiness 😬, but most of all that they'd feel a sense of Gods love and get to encounter Him at our worship gathering. I prayed for our volunteers and our teachers and for future volunteers as well. And I prayed for all of you coming tonight, that the heart condition would be what matters most, for it is what makes the most of any encounter with God, be it prayer, worship, serving, or actively listening to the message. 

❤

Time

We have officially entered the season of Lent and many in our community from young to old are fasting beverages or facebook or sleep or any other number of comforts the Lord has impressed on hearts to sacrifice for more of Him.

Throughout these weakness-revealed 40 days, our Sundays' Worship Gatherings bring a heightened sense of celebration and relief as we break our fast for 24 joyful hours and thankfully acknowledge God and all that He has done for us.

It is in preparation for tonight's celebration that I find myself ruminating on a passage from Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts...

Thank God for the time, and very God enters that time, presence hallowing it. True, this, full attention slows time and I live the full moment, right to outer edges. But there's more. I awake to I AM here. When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. In His embrace, time loses all sense of speed and stress and space and stands so still and ...holy.

 I have been fascinated with this word "present" as I find it quite elusive in my day to day life, yet it is a discipline He has called Noah and by association, myself, to pursue this year. Being present-minded for our children's sake and friends and family's sake has been a good and healthy endeavor, but it is also to encounter God at every turn....and it works. It's practicing the presence of God and it stretches and tames the unruly and running time, like God making the sun to stand still. 

Each time our church family gathers to worship, I pray for focus, for present-mindedness. For time to slow as we lay our burdens down and bow ourselves to our Creator. We will be singing these words of surrender tonight:

Lord as we turn to You, come free us from our sin.

We only have today, so let us now begin.

Lord as we give You more, Your Spirit swells within;

Cause You are Holy, Holy Lord

From dawn to dusk we're waking up...

Tomorrow's freedom is today's surrender;

We come before You, lay our burdens down.

We look to You as our hearts remember: 

You are the only God,

You are our only God.

-From Dawn to Dusk

Come ready to celebrate. Come ready to encounter Jesus. Come ready see time stand still. 

The Train

There is something powerful about taking part in the unity of a crowd...

It's riding the wave with uninhibited concert goers as the music sweeps through and everyone sings the chorus at the top of their lungs. It's the members of a choir, breathing together and phrasing together and enunciating together, locked in to the conductor's swinging arm from the piece's start to it's finish. It's sitting at a desk in a classroom having a light bulb moment, connecting the information to reality, the teacher to the student and the students to each other. It's the poignant experience of the grieving crowd at a funeral who watches a life played out in a slideshow or the crowd in the waiting room as they celebrate the newest addition to the family. It's the room's response to Jesus after the prayer that seems to come from the heart of God Himself, touching each individual heart and the church as a whole.

This kind of captive, empathetic and participating audience always gives me the feeling of being on a train, headed to the same place, everyone sitting in the same car excited about the journey and engaged in the same conversation, viewing the same scenery albeit with different vantage points, and arriving at the same time. For those moments, everyone is present. The experience becomes significant and the unity gives a sense of strength and community. For those moments we are not alone.

This got me thinking of our Sunday Worship Gatherings...

Oh how I yearn for each moment we are together to be authentic encounters with Jesus, not just as isolated strangers but as a whole, as members of a family.

In singing, in giving our offerings of praise and money, in praying and listening and reciting Scripture, in setting up chairs and volunteering in the kids rooms, in advancing the slides and dimming the lights, setting out coffee and emptying trash cans, in greeting and handshaking and hugging and responding- in everything let us be of one mind and one heart. 

Jesus said (in John 17):

20 “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

The unity that Jesus speaks of transcends time and space and stretches to the days and places in between our weekly Sunday meetings. It's a unity of mission and beliefs and relationships with one another but I'm not sure we realize we should continue to pursue unity in our Worship Gatherings too! 

Let us resolve together to be unified in worship, fully present and fully engaged. Let's turn off our phones! Let's take every thought captive! We're singing a new song tonight about zeroing out distractions, focusing on God and letting down our walls.  The lyrics are simple,

"Come on my soul, 

come on my soul

Let down the walls 

and sing my soul

Come on, come on, 

come on, come on

It's time to look up"

Let us be unified so that Christ may be glorified and our brothers and sisters edified by our active participation in worshipping and responding to the Risen Lord.

...Come hop on the train. :)

Psalm 133:1

1 How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!

Kairos Beginnings

Here’s our story in Noah’s own words … 

I grew up in the Antelope Valley. The Antelope Valley is a weird place and hard to understand if you are not from here. We are number 2 in meth production and number 1 in child abuse in the nation. It is a suburb of LA that popped up in a rather ugly area because of the post-war military-industrial complex of the aerospace industry. So we have a good number of engineers and rocket scientists as well as an agricultural population that has been around for a long time. However, beginning in the 60′s we saw a great growth of commuters, moving up here to get more affordable housing while driving an hour or more to work in LA. This hunger for more in terms of materialism is a good reflection of the values of the AV. Most people here would rather have a new car or jet-ski’s than live and work close to their neighbors or have more time with their children. 

Another proclivity about the AV is the growth of gang and urban poverty that we have experienced over the last 20 years. Families from Pacoima and Compton have relocated in mass adding to the social dynamic of a decentralized, scattered place. During the 80s and 90s Palmdale (one of the main cities) was the second fastest growing area in the nation…behind only Las Vegas. This is the placed that shaped me. I grew up in a fairly poor family here. I dropped out of school in the 7th grade and shortly after came to know Christ at a church around the corner from the trailer park I lived in. I had a pretty radical conversion as I encountered a community of friends and leaders that were sharing life together, experiencing the power of the holy spirit and going on mission with each other. I was sold!
Flash forward to adulthood I began to discern “the call” to serve God by entering into “the ministry”. In order to do this I knew returning to school was probably a necessary step. Entering Jr. College with a 7th grade education was challenging to say the least. But at 19 I knew this was a definite step the Lord was directing me to take. I began volunteering heavily at the mega church where I came to faith. Upon completing a bachelor’s degree in history I started working at the church part time as a youth/worship leader and entered Fuller Seminary to earn a MDiv. 

I began seminary in 2005 and the next summer I got married to Jamie, a beautiful, wonderful woman I had been dating for 4 years. After getting married I went through a succession of promotions at my home church while attending seminary – full time – college pastor – jr. high pastor. Then after graduating in 2008 from Fuller I became the Student ministries pastor. I was leading a ministry of about 500 students with a staff of 3 employees and an army of volunteers. I was full on in the swing of attractional, programatic church. I was successfully leading a “successful” youth group…that oddly no longer looked like the youth ministry that I had joined as a teenager and had lost the potency of mission and purpose that hooked me in the first place. 

Through several years of painful, honest conversations with the sr. leadership I had concluded I would rather work as a barista at the local coffee shop and serve Jesus with community of friends than be in full time ministry…if full time ministry simply meant fueling a machine that wasn’t producing much lasting fruit. God had some interesting plans however… 

As I was writing out my letter of resignation I received a call from a small, dying Presbyterian church…they were looking for a youth/associate/turn-around pastor. They hired me and my wife to come to the church with the goal of reaching their changing neighborhood and connecting with younger generations. Well, after an amazing 2 month honeymoon period in which I saw conversions, works of the holy spirit and the bubblings of community in this fledgling church – the senior leadership of the church resigned and the congregation went into a tailspin. 

At the same time, God had opened another amazing door for me to come on staff at our local college as an adjunct professor of American history. We left the Presbyterian church as gracefully as possible and gathered a small group of our good friends together.  I remember telling them: “I love Jesus, I need community, but if we cannot start a church that is free of the shackles of what I have experienced – I don’t think I am going to go any more.”  It may not have been the best way to start a new church…but a church planter once told me…”if you don’t have to start a new church…don’t!” 

Kairos Community was birthed out of a lot of prayer, pain and desire to meet God in the context of community. We met as a core team for several months on Friday nights developing a common vision, language and mission. We visited churches of all denominations and creeds together on Sundays and finally began worshipping in a living room at the end of 2011.  We quickly out grew the living room and moved to a coffee shop and then a small church building that wasn’t being used on Sundays.  It was at this time that I connected with Ecclesia as well. I began meeting with Greg Larson and the equippers down at Kairos-Hollywood. 

With a firm commitment to discipleship and mission as the core of what we are doing, we were very slow to invite others in prematurely or to grow beyond our capacity. The past summer we got the opportunity to meet on the third floor of a downtown Urban Outfitters-ish type store…since then we have had a strong commitment and presence in our city…prayer walking, serving the needy, creating community where ever we can and with consistency. 

This fall, at our one year mark, we launched our pilot Missional Community. We had waited to launch this expression of our church until our leadership was developed and discipleship was at the core of our identity…our DNA. We have seen wonderful fruit in the last year as God has preformed miraculous healings, changed lives from darkness to light and spread hope where there was none. We have seen single mothers, homosexuals, drug addicts, empty materialists, fundamentalists and entire families come to faith…I can’t wait to see what God has in store for the next year! 

Somewhere in between getting married and church planting, Jaimie and I have been blessed with three beautiful girls: Clover (4), Paisley (2) and Ember (4 months). During the last year, Jaimie…in addition to teaching piano and leading worship at Kairos has begun working as a Compassion Entrepreneur for a new non-profit called Trades of Hope…a company aimed at women helping women all over the world start and maintain sustainable business. 

We are excited to be part of the Ecclesia family and thanks to all for welcoming us in.

Photo Credit: Elaine Dieball Photography

*This post was originally published at http://ecclesianet.org/welcome-kairos-antelope-valley-into-ecclesia/ 

Kairos Hymnal {January 2014}

Here is our "digital hymnal": a collection of worship songs our band is currently playing at our Worship Gatherings collected for you in an easy to access Spotify Playlist! (Spotify is free to use! If you already have Spotify, don't forget to follow our Station! Click here: Kairos Digital Hymnal.)

I hope this helps you (Kairos family) connect with the worship songs during the week as well as to help prepare for an even more engaging worship experience on Sunday nights!

1. Manifesto by The City Harmonic
2. Oceans by Hillsong United
3. In Christ Alone by Keith & Kristyn Getty
4. Scandal of Grace by Hillsong United
5. All Things New by Elevation Worship
6. House of God, Forever by Jon Foreman
7. Nothing Without You by Bebo Norman
8. With Every Breath by Leigh Nash
9. Everlasting God by Lincoln Brewster
10. God With Us by Mercy Me
11. All Creatures of Our God and King by David Crowder Band
12. Holy Spirit Living Breath of God by Keith & Kristyn Getty
13. Build Your Kingdom Here by Rend Collective
14. Your Love Is All Around by All Sons & Daughters
15. Something of Worth by Jaimie Stepro