Give Us This Day Our Daily Dread

At Ikon we’re trying to learn how to pray. My mother – who is part of our community of faith – wrote this in the comments of a recent exercise on “daily bread”:

So I did this exercise the other day and thought to myself, OK, that was nice but do I really trust God to provide my needs? No not really.

Then today as I am coming back from picking up my husband and son from the airport and complaining how I need a vacation, we stopped at a light and I notice an old man on the side of the road with a card board sign that said, “Please, I’m Hungry” I’m looking around for my purse and I’m really agitated because I can’t find it, finally I say out loud, doesn’t somebody have some money on them?! My husband pulls out the cash in his pocket and I command him to give the guy the 5$ I see lying in his palm. Dave rolls down the window and the old man hobbles over to the car, not only is he old but he is also crippled. Dave hands the man the money and the guy not only profusely thanks us but He also says God Bless You. Now I am so pissed off I almost cry. I rail loudly to my poor family in the car against a society who doesn’t take care of it’s poor, it’s old, it’s crippled. But is that who I am really mad at? Could I be mad at a God who allows this old, crippled man to have to beg on the street? Or am I mad at myself because I allow it? Give us this day our daily bread…….

I love this tension. You know you’re reading the Bible wrong if all it ever provides you is comforting thoughts to reinforce a comfortable life.

There was a time when the Bible fed me nothing but comfort and I was a glutton. Then came a time when it fed me nothing but sorrow and I became an anorexic. Lord help me feast in temperance, finding joy and nourishment in both the sweet and the bitter.

New Prayer Series at Ikon Community

We started a new series on Prayer at Ikon Community tonight. We’ll spend the next several weeks exploring what prayer is and how we can become people who resemble Christ’s high value for prayer.

Also, I’m excited to announce that Christ Church, a new missional church community in Fort Wayne, Indiana will be joining us for this journey (or, maybe we’re joining them!). Their Pastor, Ben Sternke, will be sharing blog posting duties with me during this time.

Wherever you are – and whatever community of faith you call home – you are welcome to join us for our daily readings and exercises in prayer. If you do, we’d love to hear from you in the comments every day at the Ikon website. Continue reading…

Daily Advent Reading at Ikon Community

I mentioned recently that we’re celebrating a Progressive Advent over at Ikon Community – which just means we’re moving our four Advent gatherings to different homes each week. We had a great gathering last Sunday night for our first Candle lighting service and I personally enjoyed that we pulled both kids and adults into the liturgy (although it was a bit odd switching gears and being so formal!).

We’re also practicing daily Advent Readings together to enter into a rhythm of worship and formation during this season as we seek to prepare ourselves for the celebration of Christmas. From December 1 through December 24th we’ll follow three major scriptural themes concerning Christ: Continue reading…

Been There, Done That

Today the Ikon folks met at Grape Day Park in Escondido to have a Thanksgiving meal with our friends who live in the Park. For the past six months Cory and Crissy Verner have spent every Saturday having coffee and donuts with these folks, making friendships and immersing themselves in the lives of people who are typically overlooked. Once a month a few of us join them, bring real food, get to know people, offer haircuts, etc. Today they wanted to share the holiday with their new friends in a meaningful way.

Several things surprised me about the gathering, but one thing didn’t. Continue reading…

Announcing Progressive Advent

Our family is excited to be celebrating the Advent season this year with our newly initiated church family, Ikon Community. In addition to daily Advent readings and exercises from December 1 through the 24th, we’ll also be gathering in the homes of different Ikon families for each of the 4 Advent Sundays leading up to Christmas.

Jenell and I have worked every year to develop practices that help us re-appropriate Christmas as a truly Christ-centered holiday, and we’re excited to take this next step with a new group of friends. What do you and your family or church do during this season to refocus on the parousia of Christ? Continue reading…

Toward a Missional Economy, Part 1

I recently spoke on “Economy and Mission” at Verge L.A. 2009. Since starting Twoshirts.org almost two years ago, this has been a significant subject of study for me and it has direct bearing on how we shape community – something we’re currently neck deep in defining over at Ikon Community. So, over the next few days I’ll share my Verge presentation here in the hopes of stimulating some thoughtfulness about how missional churches might follow the Holy Spirit in cultivating subversive, grassroots economic communities in a desert of greed and inequality.

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I am an economist. Not by education or by training. The truth is I don’t know much about “macroeconomic rigidities” or “consensus forecasts,” but what I do know, perhaps naively, is that the heart of economics is merely the stewardship of resources, or, quite literally the “rules of the household” (Greek: oikos & nomos). Therefore, I am economist simply by living.

This means you are an economist too. It doesn’t matter if you’re poorly educated or hopelessly impoverished. Economics isn’t about what you know, or how much you have; it’s about how you handle what you have. Everyone has stuff, and everyone has a way of figuring out what to hold on to and what to let go of.

Obviously, then, God is also an economist because God has stuff – lots of stuff! So if, as I take it, “mission” means going where God goes and doing what God does (John 5:19) then a critical question for us is, “What is God the economist doing?” Or, perhaps a more helpful question for shedding our cultural prejudices would be, “What are the rules of his household?” Continue reading…

The Challenge of Community

I’m processing some of this publicly in the interests of transparency, and in the hope that some of you out there will have something to share that might help.

For about 3 weeks now at Ikon Community we’ve been engaged in an intentional conversation about what it might mean to be a “missional church.” The first week I talked about the basic paradigm shift from attractional (Christendom) church to missional church and proposed a “Discipleship > Community > Mission” rhythm of life. Then the second week I unpacked the subject of discipleship, or spiritual formation. So, at last night’s gathering we talked about community (I’ll bet you can see where this is going, eh?).

I’m sure many would disagree with me, but in my mind this is the critical topic in the formation of a post-Christendom church. Why? Continue reading…

Join Us For Thanksgiving in the Park

Over at Ikon Community Cory and Crissy Verner have planned a day-after-Thanksgiving dinner in the park in Escondido with their homeless friends. I’m really proud of these guys for subtly yet significantly different approach to helping the poor a radically by simply being their friends.

This is a great opportunity to meet some amazing people and make new friends. If you’re in the San Diego area we want to invite you do join us.

Click here to RSVP at the Ikoncommunity.com site. Continue reading…