Reflecting on Soul Care (Part 4)

Jon George reflects on his experience of being a part of Soul Care. Seven Mile Road is getting ready to launch three Soul Care communities next month and invite the folks in our community to jump in.

When I was first invited to join Soul Care, I was hesitant.  I had several excuses:  I didn’t have the time to invest in it every week; my schedule is variable and may not be able to commit consistently; I feel like I know these brothers and sisters well enough–no need to try to get to know them better;  I have enough family and christian friends around me for support and strength.  Nonetheless, as I started to delve into weekly sessions of opening up ourselves to the brothers and sisters in our Soul Care community, I’ve gotten to know these people at a level that I’ve never known any of my friends, bringing us closer in the Lord.  In a sense, I’ve gotten addicted to gathering on Monday nights that if I miss one night, I feel an emptiness that is not satisfied until the next meeting.  I’m not saying that it doesn’t take boldness and sacrifice because I volunteered information about myself that I have shared with few people, but I must add that I feel all the more stronger for it.  In my weakness, trials and temptations, I now have a circle that I can truly lean on for physical, emotional and spiritual support.  Having done this, I encourage you to give Soul Care a chance and allow yourself to team up with other brothers and sisters to run the same race and fight the same battle in this journey of life.

Guest Preachers

Hugely excited that in this season there will be a few times where Seven Mile Road’s pulpit will be filled by someone other than me. It will be so good for me and for our young church to hear other voices besides mine.

This week, we have Reid Monaghan from Jacob’s Well. Reid is a fellow planter and brother in the A29 Network out in Jersey. The name of his church comes from John 4 and the conversation Jesus has with the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well. This also happens to be one of the conversations we’ll be looking at in our Talks with Jesus series. This passage being close to his heart, I immediately thought of asking Reid to come and preach it for us and he graciously accepted.

Then in November, we have Angelo Juliani, planter and pastor of Bridge Church here in Philly. I met with Angelo one morning to talk about prayer at Seven Mile Road and he turned the conversation on me and made it about my personal prayer life. The conversation cut me to the heart and I learned a bit about prayer in just one encounter with him. One of the conversations in our series is where Jesus is talking with his disciples and they ask Him to teach them how to pray. I’m excited to have Angelo preaching that one for us and hope that Seven Mile Road matures in prayer.

Sometime before the end of the year, we’re trying to see if we can get one of the Seven Mile Boston pastors to come down as well. Long term, the goal is to raise up other pastors and preachers – but for now, I’m so glad to share our pulpit with these men.

Reflecting on Soul Care (part 3)

Read another reflection by one of the participants of our first Soul Care Community. We’re getting ready to launch three Soul Care Communities in November. If you’re at Seven Mile Road, get ready to jump in. The following is written by Asha George.

At times, church on Sundays can seem to go by quickly and the with so many people to meet/greet it’s difficult to engage in deeper conversations…this is where I see Soul Care playing a great part of being an extension of church.

Soul care has been a great blessing. I remember when we started off we were told to draw out time lines of our lives. Each week a few of us would get to share our life story. At first I was thinking to myself ok it’s just a bunch of Christians about to share the same old story….but that’s the best part, as each person shared I started thinking “tell me the old old story of Jesus and His love…” I can’t tell you how amazed I was to hear of God’s love and faithfulness in everyone’s lives.

Later on we started to split the evening in two parts. One part is where the men and women who have gathered take time to reflect on the last sermon preached at church. I like being able to review and have scripture passages really sink in the second time around. The second part is where men and women split up, it helps create a little bit more of a comfortable environment for us to be able to talk. It’s been neat to see how each individual in the group has opened up and let their lives become transparent. By God’s Grace this soul care has fostered a safe environment for me to be honest about my life, to share the good the bad and everything in between.  Soul care is certainly something I look forward to each week. I’m blessed to know there’s a group of people ready to pray for me, encourage me, and challenge me to grow in faith.

I’m hopeful to see people from different walks of life plugging in to Soul Care at Seven Mile. The great thing about this is whether you have believed in Jesus for as long as you can remember or if you don’t know about Jesus, Soul care is just another place to keep learning about him and His radical love.

Reflecting on Soul Care (Part 2)

Below is another reflection by one of the participants of our first run of Soul Care. We’re getting ready to launch three Soul Care Communities in November. If you’re at Seven Mile Road, get ready to jump in. The following is written by Siby Varghese.

Monotony is a rather effortless condition to stumble into. To walk through life without much shift or growth is easy because it is familiar. Nothing to contest your reasoning. No one to pick or prod at your life. Being present for a Sunday corporate gathering is indeed a good thing.Though one must ask, what transpires thereafter? Should there not be an avenue in which folks could gather to share their lives, peel away at pretension & challenge one another toward godliness, pursue the words of the Scriptures & have thoughtful dialogue of its truth, in hopes to live life passionately for Christ, the One whom has given us life itself?

I almost feel like a salesman when I say… “Yes, there is such a thing and you’ve come to the right place!”

I have had the privilege of being part of a Soul Care community at 7MR for a few months now. Previously, I have been committed to a few other corporate Bible study groups, and they have certainly offered great clarity to my understanding of God and Scripture. Since I have been part of this community however, I have been able to not only go deeper in God’s word, but also to share my heart, struggles, joys, and life with my brothers and sisters. It has been both refreshing and encouraging. And it has become vital to my spiritual growth. If I miss one, I feel as though the week is not complete!

This journey of faith does not have to be walked alone. In fact, it was not meant to be. Soul Care is a place where people who love God and His Word can come alive and truly grow in Christ, and for me, the relationships that have been formed here are certainly invaluable!

Total Church Seminar

Last week, I attended a seminar put on by a church in Jersey with Tim Chester, author of Total Church. A bunch of the guys in the Acts 29 Network highly recommend the material and so I figured it would be worthwhile. Haven’t read the book yet but some thoughts from the day.

1.  Was glad not to have to go alone. God is raising up leaders to own the ministry of Seven Mile Road in various ways. I could not be more excited about that. At any rate, Dennis, Liz, Shainu, and I (along with Hannah and Emilie) took in the day together. So now instead of the material just swirling in my head, it was good to process it together.

2.  Tim Chester does church in the UK very differently than we do in Philadelphia. Yet, if I had to reduce everything he was getting at to its key elements, it would be gospel, community, and mission. That’s cool.

3.  Tim Chester said that the Gospel we focus on is often an individual one. It is about how a person can get right with God. How if a person repents of sin and believes in Christ, they will be redeemed and have everlasting life. He stressed that while the Gospel is not less than that, it is more than that. The Gospel, as described in the Bible, is how God creates and redeems a community for Himself. Community is a central part of our identity. He taught that the Bible tells the story of how God is making a people for Himself.

•    Creation: a community who knows God
•    Fall: an alienated community
•    Abraham: the promise of a people
•    Exodus: a people set free to know God
•    Israel: a people in captivity
•    Prophecy: the promise of a new people and a remnant people
•    Jesus: God with us and God’s faithful people
•    The Church: the new people of God
•    The Climax of the Story: a new humanity

Seeing community as not just a benefit of the Gospel, but an essential part of the Gospel was good food to chew on.

4. Mission needs to mark our community. Chester made an excellent, wonderfully practical point. That instead of seeing community and mission as another thing to add to our schedule, we ought to see how we can infuse community and mission into our normal lives. So, what are the things you normally do in a day, week, month?

Groceries, eat, exercise, watch TV, shop, read, sports, church, etc.

So the point is not to add another thing to your calendar, but rather to see how you can involve people in the things you already do. So maybe you invite some folks from your church community and a co-worker over for a meal since you’ll be eating anyway. Or you take your neighbor with you to shop for groceries since you’ll be shopping anyway. Or you go to new friend’s house to watch the game since you’ll be watching it anyway. You’re not inventing more things to do, but being intentional about how you do it. These things will not happen without effort. Chester called it gospel intentionality – meaning that we need to intentionally commit to living our lives in community and as missionaries at all times.

So, I’ll leave you to chew on this:

A. List all the activities that you do (even the mundane ones) in a day, week, month.

B. How could you add community, mission, and gospel to that?

Reflecting on Soul Care

A few months ago, we launched our first Soul Care group with the hope of multiplying new groups this November. I’ve asked the participants of this first run to reflect on their experience and give a brief description for people in our community to catch a vision for what Soul Care is. The following is written by Shainu Thomas.

Just a caveat before you continue reading.  It’s a daunting task for some people to blog (and this, of course, includes me).  Having said that, the topic in question has become very important to me, and I cannot help but ‘blog’ about it.

The topic is soul-care groups. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, these groups are our small groups here at Seven Mile Road.  Words like trust, openness, vulnerability, encouragement and ‘just being real’ all come to mind as I think about soul-care.  I had the privilege of being part of a soul-care group in Boston for a few months before we moved to Philly.  For a few months even after moving here, I tried to cling to friends from that group through frequent e-mails and phone calls.  Slowly, I had to realize that Philadelphia was where God called us and this is where my life was going to “happen”.  I never thought I’d be able to trust anyone the way I did when I was in Boston.  I missed my soul-care friends. Then Ajay told me that he was starting a soul-care group with a few of the guys at 7MR Philly. Secretly I envied all of them.  I even tried to “encourage” them to allow some of us women to join.  Apparently, as rumor has it, some of the guys vetoed this idea:)

However, a few months ago, the soul-care group was opened to some of the women.  Although I had been waiting for this, I started to become skeptical. How much did I really want to share with these people? They were all super nice, but really, did I want to open up my life and my struggles with this group?  Then it happened. I started seeing others in the group doing it – sharing things I would not have imagined.  I started seeing the grace of God in each of their lives; how God has been working in their lives from the beginning – how through sin, struggle, joy and pain, God has been moving in amazing ways.

Being able to share my life with the women every week has been a blessing.  It’s a sweet time of challenging, questioning, encouraging and once again, being vulnerable. It’s a sweet time of remembering that we’re not called to do this alone. There are people whom God brings into our lives, who live in community with us, and along with us, depend on His grace alone.  I have been blessed to see His grace revealed even more through soul care.

Where is everyone?

Seven Mile Road is three weeks into weekly corporate worship. So far, we’ve been a bit spoiled. Everything we’ve touched has turned to gold. We need a website – we get a killer one for free. We need a space – we get to use a building sitting on six acres of land. We throw a barbeque – 115 people show up. We launch our first service – we put out seventy chairs but need more to accommodate everyone.

So then, it was a shock to my system when we showed up for service in week two and there were only 33 people there. Now I know in my head that numbers don’t matter. I know that we had a bunch of well-wishers from out of town for the first service. But my head didn’t relay those facts to my heart. You could feel the absence of fifty people in one week! I was hoping I was the only one who noticed. Wrong. Folks on the team thought to themselves, “where is everyone?” Regular visitors came into the room and looked at their watch to make sure that they weren’t there early because they didn’t see people. People noticed.

This past week we had about 40 people. But for two weeks now, numbers have been on my mind. I so badly want to be above all that and see how silly the whole thing is. And honestly, as I’ve searched my heart, I’m not looking for us to have five hundred people so we can make a name for ourselves. But the thoughts that have plagued me include: What if we don’t grow? If people don’t come – what if we fail? Is the team discouraged? Have we lost momentum?

Pause. Selah. Sanity.

Here are the truths God has been speaking to my soul through His Word and His people.

This is a grace from God. A friend challenged me to see this jolt, this shot in the arm, as a gift from God. In His grace, God humbles us so that we might learn not to trust in ourselves but to trust in Him (2 Corinthians 1:9). Church planting is not easy. Church planting “works” only by God and His power. Jesus makes His church grow. These weeks have been a good reminder of that.

Commit yourself again to mission. These first two weeks have already scared me about what happens if we turn from a church that is about mission to a church that is about maintenance. If Seven Mile Road becomes about a service on Sunday, we’re done. We’re dead before we know it. So may God renew us in our commitment to be missionaries to Philadelphia. How many people have I met in Philadelphia this week? Have I sat down with the local principals as the new school year has started? Have I talked to the people at Starbucks? How am I representing Jesus in my city today? These are questions I’m once again having to answer.

Commit yourself again to making disciples. Rather than working on building/growing a church, we need to focus on  making and maturing disciples of Jesus. If we can make disciples of those God has gathered together, they will multiply the disciples.

You’re just like Israel. I’ve been reading 1 Samuel in my devotions. I was stunned today by Israel’s faithlessness. God routs the Philistines for Israel through no effort of their own. He provides them a godly leader in Samuel. And how do they respond? They lose heart and plead for a king so they can be ’secure’ like other nations. They want someone to “lead them in battle.” What! How could they have forgotten that the Lord did this very thing just moments ago? And then it hits me. Looking at Israel is like looking in the mirror. I forget so quickly all the Lord has done. And I trade security in Him for a sense of security found in the number of people who show up on Sunday. Forgive me Lord for looking just like Israel.

People came! Have I really been complaining that thirty and forty people showed up to our service? Thirty and forty people came to our service! One man came cause he found our church on the web and he’s come back twice.  One of the guys at church was telling me how encouraged he has been that there have been new people at every service. He finds himself repeatedly introducing himself to people. How awesome is that.

The service has been great. We gather weekly to worship God, to believe the Gospel, to confess sin, to experience forgiveness, to take the sacrament, to preach the Word, to sing to Jesus, to fellowship with the saints. The hour and half we spend on Sundays together have been wonderful. I find myself singing the songs from Sunday throughout the week. People are having good conversations about the texts we’re preaching through. Weekly we’re brought back to Jesus and His Cross. We have a weekly service to invite friends to attend. All very, very, good.

Our Mission Field: Philadelphia

I recently spoke with some folks who expressed their frustration of going to a great church but not feeling like they were really serving. They had grown up being actively involved in ministry in their local church and were unaccustomed to sitting the sidelines. I love their heart. It’s rare today because we see the church through such consumeristic lenses that we think “How can the church serve me?” far more often than “How can I serve the church?”

But I think the reason seasoned Christians can get frustrated is because we’ve lost the sense of being on mission. We’ve come to see ministry in terms of defined roles and positions and titles. Unless we’re on stage, or teaching, or singing, or whatever – we feel like we’re not plugged in and serving. Now this is easy coming from the guy who gets to speak from the pulpit each week. But I really believe it.

Take a moment to write down what your life would look like if you were a missionary in Uganda. What things would go on the list?

a. Learning the language, culture, customs
b. Building friendships with people
c. Praying for people and for opportunities to share the Gospel
d. Serving in various capacities (children, mercy for the marginalized, volunteering, etc)
e. Speaking the Gospel to people and living the Gospel before people

The list could keep going. The hardest thing to convince us seasoned Christians is that we are missionaries – only God has called us to Philadelphia and not overseas. We’re called to do everything on that list – except we’re called to do it right here in Philly, right now. We love missions overseas and eagerly look forward to the day when we can send people across the globe to share the good news of Jesus. But how silly would it be to send people across the globe without also sending them across the street? What would my life look like today, this week, if I took this seriously? What if every member of Seven Mile Road saw themselves as a missionary? Taking this seriously means we all have a vital role to play at Seven Mile Road. Everyone of us. Not just the guys on stage.

Maybe God will call you to Uganda. Maybe He’ll give you a defined position and a title. But till that day comes, don’t sit the sidelines waiting to be in ministry or on mission.

A preacher once said, “Crossing a sea doesn’t make you a missionary. Seeing the cross makes you one.” Right.

Honor & Shame

ebook available online

Some good friends who had done ministry in the East recently recommended this book to Shainu and me. In fact, they did more than recommend it; they bought us a copy. We walked into our apartment building one day and saw this package waiting for us. What a great gift. I’d highly recommend this book.

It was a great reminder of what Jesus has accomplished for us through His Gospel. The author’s thesis is that in the West, we’ve inherited Roman culture and a Roman way of looking at the world. So we see the world in terms of right and wrong, guilt and innocence. Law is a big deal for us. As such, our understanding of the Gospel tends to focus on how Jesus has brought us from wrong to right and moved us from guilt to innocence. We love justification (and rightly so!) – the doctrine by which we have been declared righteous and imputed Christ’s righteousness. Our law-based culture even shares the Gospel this way. We have “Four Spiritual Laws” and the Romans Road all showing people how our sins/crimes are worthy of punishment and Jesus has paid for our crimes by being punished.

While the author celebrates this aspect of the Gospel, he challenges the reader to consider other movements that the Cross accomplishes. Particularly, the movement from a position of shame to a position of honor. Whereas guilt and innocence frames the way we see the world in the West, shame and honor frames the viewpoint of much of the East.

In the Garden, moments after the fall, we see our first parents overwhelmed with a sense of guilt for the wrong they had done. But we also see them hide from God in fear. And we also see them cover themselves because of their nakedness and shame. Sin produces guilt. But it also produces fear and shame. The glorious news is that the Cross has dealt with all of it. Jesus moves us from fear to power, from guilt to innocence, and from shame to honor. He clothes the naked. He cleanses the defiled. He elevates the shamed and seats them in places of honor.

The author argues that seeing this side of the Gospel is essential for ministering in the Eastern context where honor & shame  shape the culture.  This new lens is wonderfully effecting the way I view some familiar Scripture passages and bringing to new light everything Jesus has done for us through His Cross.

Anyway, the book has done what a good book will do. It has me thinking about its message long after I put it down. So I recommend it to you – particularly if you’re someone with an Eastern mindset or ministering to such.

Now Podcasting

podcast

Just a heads-up that we now have podcast. All sermons and other media from Seven Mile Road will be available each week. You can subscribe for free at our website, through iTunes, or by clicking here.