Help! I Can't STOP!
Part 5 Semantics


Tera's blog made me think. I tried to look at different situations and then I broke out my Webster's dictionary.

Community- 1. all persons living in a particular locality 2. a group having interests or religion in common 3. joint sharing

Mission- 1. a sending; a charge to go and perform a specific service or duty 2. a delegation so sent 3. the service or duty for which one is sent 4. self imposed duty or function 5. an organized effort for the spread of religion in foreign lands.

Based on those definitions it seems that community involves things that happen with members who are already involved. Mission happens with those who aren't "members" (for lack of a better word, maybe I should look that one up).
Therefore, if we do a comedy night (September 11) , worship with music and listen to teaching (monthly Gatherings like August 14) , eat together etc...those things are community (ie definition number 3- SHARING and number 2- Religion in common).
But in order for something to be an ACTUAL MISSION it involves departing or leaving the community to reach outside of the base community. Notice the words in the Mission definitions: sending, service, duty, sent, spread, foreign (maybe even just people live in comminties foreign to us like homeless shelters, drug rehab centers, and old folk homes (August 13).

The way I understand it, the things we've been doing are community. I can say for myself that I always thought if the community part of things were good enough then outsiders would want to become a part. Therefore, I thought I was on a mission by being in genuine community with others including joint sharing and "religious activities" in common. So when I said that I thought we were an Object lesson for churches don't go from community to mission that's what I meant. People do see our friendships and think they are wonderful. They wish they had something like it, but they see them as already established and several people have said they think it is "hard to break in".

I think that we can "Mission" to our brothers and sisters in Christ but I'm not sure that is really the main mission we are called to. If we follow Jesus's example, he didn't spend very much of his time in the temple courts trying to show the members of the community their errors. He left and went to others who were outside, but desperately wanted to be loved.
I think we should be there to support each other, eat together, pray together and most likely mission together. GO and do yard sales for cancer victims (August 6). But I think we should also go to work, go to the park and share the love of God with those you meet. Everyday we go to Starbucks, Target, the grocery store, buy gas, take our kids bowling or to the park. There are people there who do not know who God is or how He loves them. That is a mission we are all on individually. We can also be on a joint mission to reach specific groups or individuals. (And as a side note, several opportunities have been set up for the members of Apex to explore different mission fields-see the website for more info). In my opinion we called to participate in ALL types of mission: to each other as needed when our friends are struggling, to the people God puts in front of us in our daily lives and people we KNOW are in need of God's love but wouldn't be accepted by the general population.

The Great Commission is Matthew 28:19-20 (Mission part of the verse)>"Therefore GO and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. (the community part of the verse) >And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

We could argue if the teaching to obey part is mission or communal because I don't believe it's just a list of rules. That is more complicated and probably relationships would be necessary for that kind of teaching.

I think it is interesting that verse 19 focuses on mission and verse 20 includes community. Maybe this verse is validating the quote on Kevin's blog.

If you've stuck with me through all of this then HATS OFF TO YOU! I do enjoy the quality converations and feedback. It has really helped me think through it all. I think I'm done, but I'm certainly not making ANY promises!

Part 4 (Last one I WANT to promise)

I wanted to be clear that we have some of the most amazing people I have ever known involved with Apex. I don't want to mention specific people, but most of my closest, dearest friends are "Apexers". I'm not trying to Christian bash or Apex bash. When all is said and done I am glad to be on this unpleasant journey and if it weren't for the people that "call Apex home" it would be a completely miserable journey. I have had to explore some tough questions in the past few years and I needed to do that. I have learned a lot about Jesus, love and community because of my friends.

So I want to end with a short story that happened tonight. We were supposed to go to the "Once Upon a Mattress" play at Spring Mountain Ranch. Long story short we couldn't so we went to the Lone Mountain Park to eat and play. We had a great little talk about heaven. The kids talked to plenty of strangers. One of the strangers was a German guy with a puppy. The kids petted her for a while and then her owner walked away. As he was walking away Little Miss Sweet Victoria yelled out, "I love you sir". The world would feel so much more loved if we could all be more like Victoria. Community and mission and love and service is all the same to her. She just IS in the image of her heavenly Father. God Bless us all.

Part 3 (see previous posts)

So, all that said.....what do we do now? Where do we go? Can this even be fixed? I mean, Kevin's quote basically said that churches don't go from nuturing communities to missional communities. What does that mean for us? Anything? Is this statement true?

Matthew 19:26 Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

Part 2 (you MIGHT want to check out part one to help this make sense.)


I have actually been thinking that Apex does not love enough. I thought it when old Apex members were leaving and staying members were hurt or put out (myself included). My sister left because they didn't feel appreciated. They didn't feel loved. Where they went to after they left didn't make them feel appreciated or loved either, but at least it was fun. (NOT a substitute and also not my point.)

I stand by my statement that I don't think we love enough.
Amy said: What if we taught our kids that by loving ourselves we make sure we are fed, dressed, cleaned and kept healthy and by doing those things for others is truly loving them?I guess to me it's just all too simple. I think the problem we have is that we talk about "loving people" but we don't understand that loving is an action not a feeling. I don't think you can truly love someone without serving them in some way. (As usual Amy, we are on the same page, but think we're on different ones because of the "translation" we are referencing.)

I say we doen't love enough. Amy says we don't serve each other enough and we can't love without serving. I would agree with that. I reference the following passage to describe the love I am talking about. These are verbs (mostly); actions of service:

1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perserveres. Love never fails......." Are we patient, kind, envious, boastful, proud, rude, self seeking, easily angered, recording the awful things others do, do we search for the truth and delight in it? Do we protect, trust, hope, perservere? Have we perservered together? Do we trust, protect and put hope in our leaders, in our friends? Are we selfish by asking what Apex has does for us lately? Do we show patience to the world? Are we rude to smelly people, people without cars or allergic to cats (just kidding). Basically, are we loving all our neighbors or only the ones who live in our neighborhood? People with food, cars, half a million dollar mortgages aren't the only neighbors we have.

My point is: We do not love enough. We never have.

Part One

I am actually going to be continuing my thoughts from a comment I made on Greg's blog. Which are thoughts I began having after reading Kevin's blog. Which are continuing beliefs I've been developing since about January 2004. The blogs listed above have many great comments. I encourage youto read those before, after or instead of this post.

TO CATCH YOU UP Kevin said: Gordon Cosby said something a few years back that haunts me. He said that in all his years of service he has never (and he emphasized 'never') seen a group go from community to mission. Rather, he said one should organize around mission and community will follow.

This statement catches my attention because I think Apex has focused on a community first idea for the past few years. AND I have NEVER been involved with a church that ACTUALLY put mission first. It was always things like building campaigns, paying the current mortgage, potlucks and picnics or being cool and generational (hahaha). I'm not even sure what a church with a truly "outreach to the world mission" would look like and whether or not Americans would want to be involved in such a church. Let me make it clear that I am not talking about outreaching to the suburbs. or outreaching to my generation. or outreaching to people who are easy to love and will make things convenient for the church to serve them. I am talking about outreaching to orphans and widows.(James 1:27) Outreaching to the people the world despises. The unclean, sick, poor, trashy-choose your judging word. Jesus spent his time with those people.

(James 2:1-11) comes to mind- particularly verse 8 & 9. "....Love your neighbor as yourself. ...but if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted......" Do we just serve the people we want to? The ones who shower and look like us? That sounds like favoritism.

This was not really my point. I just wanted to describe what I thought a "true" missional church would look like. Hopefully I'll make my point in part 2.

Remember the DQ Blizzard?


About twenty years ago my best friend's older sister was freaking out about the introduction of the Blizzard. She was so excited getting Heath Bar mixed with ice cream that the first time I tried a Blizzard I got a Heath one-even though I had never had a Heath bar in my life.
Now here we are twenty years later. You can buy half gallons of Snickers, Milky Way, M&M's, cookie dough (I remember when I heard about that coming out-I couldn't BELIEVE it!) and practically anything else mixed in ice cream. Even McDonalds mixes ice cream with candy now.
So my question is: How does Cold Stone have a place in our world? How do they convince high schoolers to scrape candy together into ice cream-that's practically slavery- when the same kids could work at the DQ or McDonalds where this thing called technology will do all the hard work for them?

So to Speak...

Jack has learned the most important of all Toddler words "my" translation "mine". He will grab a toy, yank it around behind his back, and say, "my".
No is another important Toddler word, but since Jack answers every question with the answer, "no", even when he means yes it is not as effective as "my". Besides that, he lives with 7 other kids under the age of 8. He will get a lot of use out of "my".

Through Other Kids' Eyes

Last night was Tommy's birthday party. Emma made friends with some girls about her age. I was standing in the sliding glass doorway. Emma and her new friends walked inside from outside. Emma pointed to Jack and said, "That's my brother Jack."
One of the girls said, "Oh, he's cute." I fast-forwarded about 12 years in the future when Emma will be 18 and Jack will be 13. Won't that be fun for Jack if 18 year old girls who are Seniors think he's cute? He will probably get more affection (and trouble out of Loredana's friends-who will be 15 at the time of my fictional story).
As Emma and her new friends came back through the kitchen Emma pointed to Marie and walked outside. As they came through the door I heard one of the girls say, " You sure do live with a lot of people!"
I laughed to myself at the time, but later as I told Kelly the story she said, " I wonder how long it will be before she gets embarrassed and realizes that it's weird that she lives with other people."
I don't know. I'm not sure I realize it yet.

All I Can Say Is.....


Thank God for clouds. What a blessing some good desert thunderstorms would be!

Movies

The movies I like have, what I consider to be, good characters with a good story. I like to care about the characters enough to cry and laugh. I have this thing with "action" movies that I just can't get away from because today's action movies are just getting more and more "action packed".
" Nonstop action" is supposed to be a good thing. For me-it's bad. For me, it pretty much kills the movie. What happens when an action sequence starts? Something bad happens and, if you are involved with the movie enough, then you get a little adrenaline rush. It's little, but still, it's adrenaline. So I get an adrenaline rush just as much as the next guy and I enjoy that-I 'm involved enough with the story to have a physical reaction similar to crying or laughing. But here's the destroying part: TWENTY minutes later my rush has worn off. I'm not afraid or thrilled anymore. I start to get irritated. It reminds me of tickling. At first you laugh and are having fun, but after a while you just want it to stop. That's me with action sequences. Enough is enough. If someone has escaped from a building, been chased by cars, trains, police, helicopters, gunfire AND fallen off a thirty story building without being killed, they probably don't really need to be chased by motorcycle while riding on the freeway on the back of a semi too.
Last night we saw a Sneak Preview for a movie called _The Island_. The story concept was really, really good. It dealt with the hard issue of human cloning. The characters were interesting, well written and well acted. There were also multiple action sequences, one of which I swear to you felt like it was 45 minutes long. I'm pretty sure it wasn't quite the long, but I would bet money that it was over 20 minutes. If you have no kids and like to go to movies, check it out. Especially if you really appreciate "action" movies. If you only see one movie every six weeks-IF you're lucky- wait for video when you can fast forward the explosions and ridiculous death defying feats that these characters must endure to get to the end of the actual story.
I give _The Island_ *** (that's 3 stars-out of 5).

Wow! It's been a long time....

It has been a long time because I haven't had anything worthy of a post lately-still don't if you want to tune out now.

I will say that it is more than hot. It is unbelievable! I drove home today at 12:30 cooking in my car (no air conditioning-crazy I know, but my husband is being very sensible), but I wasn't sweating. Seriously, it must have just been evaporating. I guess that's "dry heat" for you.

I have been making an interesting observation for the last year or so. It is amazing how many people say "Mr. Bush". I noticed it during the election. Reporters etc. call him Mr. Bush an awful lot. I only remember the other presidents in my aware lifetime being called President Reagan, President Bush, President Clinton. Even John Kerry referred to him as President Bush-which made me like him even more because he was still respecting the office even though he disagreed with President Bush. I just don't remember people saying MR. Clinton. They still refer to him as President Clinton. The last comment I want to make in regard to politics is this: I was a republican until President W. Bush was elected. Things have happened in my own life that don't really have anything directly to do with him being president, but his first term in office is when I officially declared myself a democrat. To quote the great "Freaks and Geeks" TV series that EVERYONE should rent and be sad that it only had one season, "Everyone is a democrat until they get a little money and come to their senses." Maybe when I become rich by American standards I'll become a republican again.

We are going to San Diego for the weekend. Nothing makes me question living in Las Vegas more than visiting that amazing city. Kenny pointed out that it is almost 40 degrees cooler there. Forty degrees is a lot! Downtown San Diego is beautiful and you feel safe. The buildings have character and very little neon. The weather is absolutely perfect.

The rest of the summer is just ho hum. The only thing I have to look forward to is my seemingly perfect job starting the end of August. Perfect if you have to work, which I do because the USA doesn't have universal healthcare. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" must not be at all related to your physical health or that of your loved ones.

WOW! I am so political today. I better go before I slip my thoughts of a conspiracy theory about the London Bombings.

Random part 2

Still waiting for Doug. I just thought that IF anyone was going to read this, it was getting kind of long. I decided to break it up for you.

NEXT TOPIC: People don't blog much lately. I think Greg was right is some of the reasons he listed for why people blog (or don't) and the things they blog about. Hmm....I'm trying to remember what he said about people like me (unthought out rambles). I can't remember, but I hope it was a good thing.

NEXT TOPIC: Remember how I was protesting the self check out lanes at the grocery store? Well, I still am, but I have had a couple of VICTORIES from the express lane. (I think I blogged about this already. Let me check-I couldn't find it, but I apologize if it's a repeat.)
Victory #1- I was waiting in the Express lane with like 3 things when a lady in the self check lane broke open and spilled one of those HUGE bags of dog food all over the self check lane. It was glorious! I was out of there before anyone in that self check lane.
Victory #2- I was waiting in the Express lane with a few things and my three kids. Emma was begging me to go to the self check lane, but I refused. Anyway, a few minutes later the guy in the self check lane has to call over the employee of Albertson's in charge of the self check lanes because apparently Emma had rung up an item from her hand on his self check lane. That's my girl!
Victory #3- Today I was in the Express Lane (yeah, I go there like everyday to buy 3 things. I don't do it on purpose it just works out that way) a lady in the self check lane calls over the employee because her generic bleach rang up for 99 cents when she claimed it had been 79 cents on the shelf. The next thing I know, a different lady is calling the employee over because someone just left the register in the middle of a transaction. HA! I don't know if the first lady just left the store without completing her purchase or if she just left the register to go for a price check (which they will do FOR you in a regular lane, but to each his own). In any case, they had to shut down that self check register so they could figure it all out.

NEXT TOPIC: You always hear about the language and disrespect for adults on TV today. I rented my kids the old Little Rascals TV show. In the first episode, they plan to sabotage the new teacher, they insult her nose, and say "Shut Up" twice. It sounds the same to me.

Hooray! Doug's home. He said he wants to blog, but we'll see about that!

Random

I am just waiting for Doug to get from work. He just got off and still has to drive all the way home. I decided to blog to keep myself awake-I'm not 100% sure what I'm blogging about, except that I do have thoughts throughout the day, most days, that I consider blogging about. Here are some of them from recent history:

FIRST TOPIC: I heard a story on KNPR (public radio) about Catholics back east camping out in their churches to keep them from being closed. Apparently because of recent events and changes in population etc that some of the Catholic Churches need to be closed because of financial issues etc.. AND in the story, there was one congregation that has gotten the Diases (I"m not sure of the spelling) to agree to keep their building open. BUT they won't leave because they don't trust the leadership to keep their word. They are afraid if they leave, the building will be closed. Because of where I am about "church" I just don't get it. Why don't they take their friends from their old congregation and go to another Catholic Church? They are camping out with these people like 24/7. What is it about these buildings? Then (this is an assumption on my part) but it seems like they are probably pretty strong Catholics. They are sticking with their denomination through all this sex scandal stuff, John Paul II dying, and financial hardship. But at the same time that they are defending it, not turning away from it, they openly admit they don't trust the leadership.
Right now I am thinking about a line from _When Harry Met Sally_. Sally says, " I miss the idea of him." (him being exboyfriend) and Harry says, "Maybe I only miss the idea of Helen, no , I miss the whole Helen." It's random I know, but maybe these people miss the idea of their church/faith. What am I trying to say? I'm not sure-it made sense to me a few minutes ago.

NEXT TOPIC: The other day the weather report said, "Clear skies with occasional smoke." The sky was brown the entire day. You could not see any mountains or clouds or blue or buildings on the strip. You could see brown. There was nothing "occasional" about it.

NEXT TOPIC: We have lived in Las Vegas for 20 years. We have lots of friends. That is great. It is difficult to keep up with everyone as well as we would like, but it's great. Despite that fact, we had no plans for the Fourth of July. Marie and I kind of talked about doing something small and informal here at the house. Easy, we don't have to go anywhere etc.. We are still in the planning stages and then today I got two phone calls from different groups of people we know inviting us to spend the Fourth with them. I am really just beginning to think that Communal Neighborhood is the only way to go. Holidays, birthdays, block parties, neighborhood watch, playgroups etc... But really, the only way to make my life as simple as I would like would be for EVERYBODY I know to move into a neighborhood with me (say in 3 years?). I mean everybody, unless you just want to drive to my neighborhood and have your kids' birthday party there-it's late, give me a break.

NEXT TOPIC: "Sunscream" -Loredana ; "Calepidder"-Emma; "No" (complete with head shakes"- Jack when he means YES.