Who we are

Our history and past experiences define who we are. Think about it. Take the one person who knows you better than anybody on this planet. I bet you have known them for a while. They have seen you, they have history with you, that person understands not only where you are right now, but how your world has changed over time. It takes time for us to allow changes to disseminate themselves through our lives, and even longer for those closest to us to recognize us as really changed.

This frustrates a lot of new believers. When people take the step to accept the free gift Jesus offers us and forgives our sins, we are reborn! We have experienced the love of Jesus for the first time, our lives are completely changed and we are ready for those changes to permeate all we are a part of. But people around us need time. They need to see that we have actually changed. That this is not just a fad or a passing feeling, but really a life-altering event. People who do not know us well or only are passing friends have the easiest time. This is a lot like a large aircraft carrier turning in the open sea. That giant ship takes a long time to change course, and the same can be true with those closest to us recognizing the change.

This is true both of an institution and an individual. RCC has existed for a long time and has made some decisions throughout its life that have helped shape what kind of church we are and what direction we are headed in. I didn't realize how much history people didn't know until I was speaking with an RCCer the other day and they did not know about our old building nor the repentence project...they only knew about us now. That made it clear to me I need to encourage people to research who this church is so they have the benefit of history and knowing what our direction is before they make a decision to plant roots here if we don't share the same core values.

Dean Jackson has pastored this church since 1991 and RCC has gone through two large corrections in its life since Dean's arrival. The first was the repentence project in 1998. That changed the face of RCC completely and was one of the first course corrections. Some people who had known us for a long time just stood back to watch us and see if this was a passing fad or was an actual change. Others were drawn to RCC because it resonated with them. But for a lot of new RCCers they had no idea of this part of our history.

The next big correction we have made (and are still working on) was the decision to move from the building to the theater. This was all a part of our fundamental thinking shift of trying to help people to get connected to God. We wanted to make it as easy as possible to attend a place where you could go and get connected to God, and with the theater at the center of the marketplace, it was a great idea! You see, at RCC we believe God is open source. Not proprietary to a single religion, but rather open to all who seek Him, and we try to live out those values in the way we present church.

So...whoops. I'll have to work harder to make sure new people understand who we are!

Growth Spurt

Anybody who has been around kids for any length of time understands the idea of growth spurts. Kids don't always grow in a linear way. Some days, they wake up .0025" taller than the day before, but other times they stay the same for a while and then almost overnight grow .25". It's easy to see in babies since they have to be fed all the time...we see how much food goes into them...in fact, my youngest seems to be going through a growth spurt as he is eating more dinner than anybody in the family recently!

Well, we have spiritual growth spurts as well. We can be cruising along doing our thing and just being the man or woman God has made us when we experience a growth spurt. I see these corresponding completely with the child's growth spurt. Normally, we as followers of Jesus do our eating. For me, that is a daily devotional time. I wake up, check email, read some scripture and pray to start out my day. That activity helps us to grow as followers and we are better tools for God to use.

Recently I been going through a growth spurt. I have just been eating all the spiritual food I can find. I have spent more time in scripture and exploring it than I usually do. I have been talking to people and exploring this idea that God is open source. It has driven me to use the talents and abilities God has given me to get some computer stuff going. By embracing the open source technologies, we continue to embrace this idea of God being open source. We can utilize the technologies available to help build a community of followers of Jesus that can come together no matter their geographic location and work towards a common goal with the express purpose of serving God. I am struggling to sleep at night because I am so geeked on this idea of God being open source!

Tom

I enjoy speaking in church

I really like the days I get to preach. There is the totally selfish aspect of it...I get to spend time in the scriptures. Now don't get me wrong, I spend time reading daily and I think that is an important part of my time with God. But there is a difference when I get to preach. I have an excuse to not just read the scripture, but it stays in my brain. This past Sunday I was able to wrap up our series on Fruit of the Spirit from 2Peter 1:5-7. For weeks before I spoke on it, I was thinking about the scripture and what each week of the series has meant to me and what I can take out of it. I was able to sit down and just spend hours looking up other references in scripture to these fruits and how they can be used in my life. And then I was able to look through materiel I like and try to find a video that showed it.

I was able to use a Good Eats DVD I had. In this one, Alton Brown decides he needs to get over his fear of all things French and make crepes. The snippet I showed was about 3.5 minutes long, but it started with AB in a shop purchasing the trappings of being French...the beret, keychain, flag, bumper sticker and his tape of "French for Stupid American Chefs" and it didn't work...he's sitting in his kitchen with failed crepes and batter and slop all around him calling Shirley at the "Suicidal Chef Hotline" telling her how it didn't work. Shirley asks the important question "Did you follow the recipe, Alton?" And he has to agree he didn't. Scene changes to him making crepes with a recipe now. Three blenders and three different crepe batters. All have the same basic ingredients...the basic crepe batter is just that...the basic ingredients, the savory crepe batter adds some herbs and the dessert crepe batter added some vanilla and sugar.

I loved this illustration because the idea behind the fruit of the spirit was that if we can apply this recipe Peter gives us to our lives we can end up with good character. The same process occurs for us in our lives...we put on the trappings of good character and eventually fail spectacularly. Then, once we realize there is a recipe to follow, we can then add these ingredients to our lives in the proper proportions and whamo we have good character! I really enjoyed AB making three different types of crepes with the same basic recipe. It's just like we are...we can take this same basic recipe in 2 Peter and apply it to us (whether we are basic, sweet or savory) and still have a crepe in the end...we can all have good character, it will just be flavored with who we are at the same time.

Anyway, that was fun. I'm looking forward to February when I get to speak on Proverbs, but I'm also a bit nervous. There is a TON of information contained in every verse in Proverbs and I could spend a lot of time deep ending there, so we'll see!

Culture of Open Source

This has been on my mind a lot lately. With my friends being laid off and seeing what they are going through in their searching for a job, and where my company, Novell, becoming a player in the Linux/Open Source world. Then Steve Jobs comes out with the latest Apple announcement that Mac OS X Tiger is going to run on Intel platforms. I see that move a necessity to compete in an area that includes Linux and Open Source stuff.

So I was driving back from a meeting taking Pastor Dean home and we're talking about this culture of open source. I'm talking to him about Pixar, Disney, Weta Workshop and the like and how they are starting to realize they do not want to be software developers, but rather they are artists making their product, so rather than continue making proprietary software to render animation, they are getting involved in FilmGIMP and contributing to the open source community and concentrating on their core values of making movie magic.

Well, Dean came up with it...are you ready...this puts it all together for me.

God is open source.

Yep, that's it. Now I get it and understand why I am so excited about this "culture of open source" that I want to foster and develop at RCC. Four words that convey so much meaning. Too many churches have run around for years and years saying God is proprietary. You must do things OUR way to worship God and be a part of what He's doing. Hooey! God IS open source. We all can have a relationship with Him in our own way, and He adapts to our own personal needs.

God is not proprietary, God is open source.

That one will stick for a while. Thanks, Dean.

Tom

I'm ready for the new year!

There are a lot of things I want to get done this year, and I'm really excited about the possibilities. This blog is one of them. I really want to be adding to this regularly and get my thoughts down. I also want to be more involved in the internet-space. I see this as a huge resource that can be used to provide opportunities for people to get involved with doing some work for God. Whether they are in this area or not, people can be a part of what we are doing and partner with us using their talents for the furtherment of God's kingdom! But I need to get some work done so we can make this available.

That's the problem. We need help so I can go through the effort of posting information on what kind of help we need. It's a chicken and egg phenomenon. We need help with online projects but I need help locally with actual people to free up my time to focus on what I feel that I'm being asked to do. Where are we going to find people? It's my belief that there are a lot of people who understand that God has a job for them, but they just need that little nudge to get going. We need another SongShow Plus person so we have two. We need a person who understands video so we can make that look good, we need another producer and a setup person who is reliable above all else to get things going. The producer needs to be able to stay calm and fix problems that come up. We need help. But I believe it will be coming. I believe help will be coming to us soon...we just need to be ready when they arrive.