Tag: community

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Relationships

The Need for Community in the midst of COVID and the Loss of a Job

Well, it’s been almost a year-and-a-half since I have posted on my website. For the first three years of my site (2014-16), I was faithful to post multiple times each week. Then my postings became less consistent during the next two years. And in 2019 I took a break from posting on this site, as our church began a Bible reading plan together. During that time, I chose to shift from posting here to posting to our Church Bible reading Facebook group. I planned to get back to posting here in January 2020 after we completed our Bible reading, but then I took on a new job with LifeWay in late 2019. I went through training, “hit the road” with the new work in January, and felt I was just about ready to resume posting, as I felt that I had gotten into a routine.
But then COVID hit.
And routine went out the window.

Fast-forward several weeks… into the “shelter-at-home” work routine, as we have all been struggling to figure out. And just about the time I thought I had a handle on it… on April 29th, our LifeWay Church Partner team was told that our department was being eliminated due to the economic downturn. Ummm…. wait, what?

Wow… talk about an announcement that turns your world upside-down! But of course, this just puts me in a situation like many other people. I can certainly now relate to that feeling you get when you are “let go” from a job.one person in an empty parking lot - pointing out our need for community

So I spent the past week-and-a-half getting my resume together, answering phone calls and emails about the loss of the job (and having such amazing support from everyone!), and praying about what God’s next assignment will be for us. And now that I am through with the 2019 Churchwide Bible reading plan, my late 2019 training for LifeWay, my early 2020 new work routine, my recent job loss announcement, and this last week of resume preparation… What should I do with my time? Well, I think it is time to use some time to get back into posting on the website.

So here goes…
Let me start with something I recently shared with my team that I read from Andrew Peterson’s book, Adorning The Dark, about the need for community with others. Peterson is a song-writer, and these excerpts from his book are about his own “loss of a job” when he got the call that his contract was not being renewed by his recording label.

…I got the fated phone call that I was being dropped.

Oh, how I wished Rich Mullins were still alive, just to have someone to talk to. I didn’t want to be worried about money. I wanted to be a barefoot vagabond musician who laughed his way through trouble and sang about Jesus to whomever would listen. But when you have a wife and three babies, you can’t just not think about money. I needed to pay the mortgage. I needed to pay for diapers, formula, shoes, electricity. And at the same time there was this calling, this vocation, which as far as I could tell hadn’t changed.

…in the moment I was devastated. …I can still remember the brick-in-the-gut feeling I had when the call was over, the eerie, foreboding sense that something significant had just happened which would alter the shape of my life. …I hung up the phone, took a deep breath, wiped a tear from my eye, and walked back into the studio. The guys were probably laughing at something and didn’t notice at first that my face was pale.

“I just got dropped from my label,” I told them. They stopped laughing and offered their condolences. Then after a few moments of silence someone said, “So about this guitar part. Do you want it to come in at the top of the chorus?”
And we were off and running.

…there was no time to wallow in self-pity, but I was surrounded by friends, by community, by people who told me implicitly by their involvement in my life and work that this was still worth doing, label or no label. It felt so good to walk back into that basement, roll up my sleeves, and try to craft an album about Jesus.

That’s community. They look you in the eye and remind you who you are in Christ. They reiterate your calling when you forget what it is. They step into the garden and help you weed it, help you to grow something beautiful.

…[We chose to] stay the course and keep writing the kinds of songs we believed in…. And the only way we could see [this] option working was to lock arms with one another in community. …Suddenly, label or no label, radio or no radio, we belonged to something, and that something was each other. We were no longer alone. Perhaps most important, it meant that whenever I was discouraged, I had friends who gave me courage. If I wanted to quit, someone was there to look me in the eye and tell me my songs mattered….

We all need community. I have it with the team members who are on the same journey with me now that our team has been eliminated. I have it with a group of pastors who have been my co-laborers and friends. I have it with a church family that has grown me over the past 10.5 years and has been so supportive of me now that I have lost this recent job. Who do you have community with? (If you don’t feel connected to community like Peterson talks about, I would me encourage you to connect with a local church family who will hold out both love and truth to you at the same time. They are who have provided me the most consistent community throughout my life.)

Paige and I are so very grateful for so many of you who God has placed in our lives to “lock arms” with and travel this journey called life together. Thank you for reminding us who we are in Christ, for giving us courage and support when we are discouraged, and for looking us in the eyes to remind us that our calling from the Lord matters.

Thank you for being a part of my community during this time!
Much love my friends,
Brian

Categories
Relationships

Designed for Community, pt. 2

As I mentioned previously, you were designed for community.

You were designed to have both an intimate relationship with God and intimate relationships with others. Without both, you will never find complete satisfaction in life. Here’s another great quote on community from “Creature of the Word”

…The reason most community is shallow in our world is because it’s built on temporary foundations. The reason most relationships don’t last is because they’re built on commonalities that change over time.
When the common bond changes, the relationship changes. If you’re married, you see this happen immediately when you have kids. You once had friends you would hang out with late at night, but now you can’t do that. Even if you get a babysitter, you’re not staying up till 1:00 in the morning, because your kids are waking up at 6:50 and you’ll be exhausted.

If you play sports with a group of guys, and if nothing deeper than your love of basketball binds you together, that community will weaken and likely disappear if you blow out a knee and can’t play anymore. If relationships aren’t built on something deeper than finding good restaurants, working at the same company, or having kids in the same activities, they will change whenever the common bond is no longer there. Community is only as strong as what it’s built upon. And nothing is as strong as the gospel.

The gospel is the deepest foundation for community. What connects believers is the reality that we were all very messed-up people, broken before a holy God, yet rescued and given new life in Christ. What unites believers is deeper than anything that can divide.

A unity that is deeper than anything that can divide.

That’s what I want.
That’s what I long for.
That’s what I need.

A community built on the strongest foundation.
A community built on the gospel.

Make sure that you are a part of that community!

(How have you found this to be true? How have you found that the community you have with others through the gospel is deeper than anything that can divide?)

Categories
Relationships

Designed for Community

The Purpose for Life… What is it?
What is your purpose for life?
Could you verbalize it if someone asked?

I don’t know what you have chosen as your purpose for living, but I do know what you were designed for… Relationships.
Connectedness.
Community.

We all want to connect.
We all desire community.
But how will we get this community that we crave?guys cooking on a big grill to signify relationships and community

We find little connections all the time – at the ballgame with fellow fans, at the office with our co-workers, with our neighbors at the barbeque. But isn’t there a deeper connection we can find?

I love how this is explained in “Creature of the Word” as the authors discuss the early church of Philippi:

So the little growing church in Philippi was now home to people like this: a Wealthy, upscale businesswoman… a slave girl with a deep, dark, wounded past… a tough-nosed jailer and his family…. What else did these people have in common but the gospel? They never would have gone to the same restaurants, hung out in the same parts of town, or listened to the same music. But because God had radically transformed them, they shared a common bond deeper than anything that divided them. They were together only because of the gospel.

Together only because of the gospel….
You see, you were created for an intimate relationship with God and others.
It is the only thing that’ll satisfy completely.

Leave one or the other out, and you’ll still be missing a part of the community that you need.

What we find out is that the gospel is the only thing that can truly put us together in real community. It is what we were designed for.

Categories
Relationships

Obtaining Real Satisfaction

From my last post about filling our lives with Christ to find satisfaction, two questions were posed: What is “real satisfaction”? and How do you “fill your life with Jesus”?

The answer I shared was that the ever-increasing number of dissatisfied and depressed people in our nation is an indication that too many people are putting their hopes for satisfaction in the wrong place. So reading devotions, studying the Bible, getting involved in a church, listening to uplifting Christian music – all of these help us to fill our lives with Christ.

Two other quotes from Matt Chandler’s ‘Creature of the Word’ also spoke to this issue. Both quotes have to do with the satisfaction we try to gain through relationships and connectivity to others.

#1 – “We simply ask too much of our relationships. Women, you’ll never find a man who completes you. Regardless of what the TV shows and movies promise you, no one can fix what’s broken in your heart…. No man is enough. You need a Savior.” And the same goes for men – there is no woman out there that is enough. You need a Savior. We can so easily believe the lies of Hollywood…that there is some Mr. or Ms. Right out that there that will meet our every need. Perhaps that’s why Hollywood is filled with so many failed relationships – these actors believing the lies of their own TV shows and movies. When we believe these lies, we place too much stock in the belief that the other person should bring us all the happiness we need. Only Jesus can bring lasting joy. Once we have Him as our foundation, then we will develop a proper understanding of the roles of our other relationships – to supplement the lasting joy that He brings.

#2 – “Connectivity does not equate to community. Being able to make quick connections with people doesn’t automatically require any depth to the relationship…. So although we are more connected than we have ever been, we also feel more alone and unknown than at any other time in human history. We relate without relationships, all together but all alone. Thus, without the gospel forming community, We are doomed to connectivity and aloneness in the midst of crowds. Only the gospel forms deep community.” It is so easy to see the truth of these statements from the social media explosion that has taken place. We quickly find that connectivity does not equal community. The need for a Savior and the relationship transformations that He provides within His church – the forming of true, deep friendships with unity and interdependence – are essential for our total well-being.

So how else would you answer the two questions of:
1. What is “real satisfaction”? &
2. How do you “fill your life with Jesus”?