We helped Austin and Alesha load up their Penske Truck this evening for their move to Benton, AR. Sweet, because we know this will be good for them and our business. Bitter, because it seems as though much is ending.

Through the last five years, we have endured many struggles and hard lessons together. We have wept together, played together, eaten hundreds of meals together, prayed many hours together, searched the riches of Christ together, and sat many moments in silence together. We have rejoiced in many victories and dramatic breakthroughs in radical new understandings of our awesome God. We have cringed as lies, gossip, slander, and out-right Satanic attacks have affected our families. We’ve seen highs and lows. We have made many new friends together and seen other friends destroyed by bad choices.

It’s crazy that we are moving in a new direction apart from one another, yet we will always remain great friends and coworkers in business and the Kingdom.

The ministry that started as CrossLife over three years ago, now will spread into a new community. God only knows what will come next for us all.

Prayers, my good friends.

Though today the places we visit and the conditions we meet may be vastly different from those of the Scripture record, yet in principle the experience of the first apostles may well serve as a our example… Christianity has lost its original purity, and everything connected with it is in a false and confused state. Despite that fact, our work today is still the same as in the days of the early apostles – to found and build up local churches, the local expressions of the Body of Christ.

- Watchman Nee, “The Normal Christian Church Life” 1980.

Today if a man ventures to suggest that there may be something in the methods by which St. Paul attained such wonderful results worthy of our careful attention, and perhaps of our imitation, he is in danger of being accused of revolutionary tendencies… All I can say is, “This is the way of Christ and His apostles.” If any man answers, “That is out of date,” or “Times have changed” … I can only repeat, “This is the way of Christ and His apostles,” and leave him to face that issue.

- Roland Allen, Missionary Methods: “St. Paul’s or Ours?” 1962.

The above quotes came from the first chapter of Frank Viola’s latest book, “Finding Organic Church“. In this first chapter Frank writes,

To my mind, it’s a profound mistake to ignore what we find in the book of Acts concerning the manner in which Christian communities were birthed in the first century.

From there, He walks through the four models of planting churches found in the book of Acts. Any serious missional student, church planter, missionary, Pastor, seminary student, Christian, should read this book for the first chapter alone.

Thanx!

“As the Preacher of Ecclesiastes saw, “There is a time to break down, and a time to build up…a time to keep silence and a time to speak.” And the second Reformation, if it comes, will be distinguished from the first by the fact that it is a time of reticence, of stripping down, of traveling light. The church will go through its baggage and discover how much it can better do without, alike in doctrine and in organization.”

- John A.T. Robinson, as quoted by Frank Viola in “Finding Organic Church”.

True Christianity has no earthly boss, bosses, or layers of bureaucratic leadership. Rather, it has one, heavenly Head Who is made manifest corporately through the Word and the Spirit as each part functions as a body. This corporate identity of the Head, which is none other than the very person of Christ, is made manifest not with ceremonies, traditions, forms, models, services, buildings, programs, structures, rules, regulations, rites, creeds, star performers, or well-crafted speeches, but, rather, through self-sacrificing, obedient love. This is the essence of God, of His Christ, and of His Bride.