Big Projects, Small Starts
Jan 20, 2022.Every once in a while we are faced with an unusually big task. When this happens to me, my adrenalin starts pumping, my sleep becomes shallow, my mind starts breaking down the project into tasks so much so that I become aloof to everything and everyone around me. Grief! Please tell me you can relate at least a little bit; I hate the thought that I am alone in this reaction, and that my wife is the only one who suffers from a detached husband.#JesusStories: The Gospel is a BIG project. In fact, Christianity is the greatest rescue mission the world has ever seen. And yes, when I first started out in ministry, I saw the Gospel as a project to be completed, and about burned out my adrenal glands running after it. But frankly, the Gospel is just too big and too life-long to treat it as a sprint. We need to apply some wisdom here.Early in Jesus' ministry Mark 6 reports that he called together his twelve apostles and sent them out two-by-two with power over evil spirits. And they went out telling everyone about the kingdom of God, forced out much evil, and healed a lot of sick people. Though it is not clarified in this verse like others, I suspect they followed the pattern Jesus used of 'healing by day and dinner with sinners by night'. I am taken initially by the fact that Jesus handed his spiritual tool kit to the disciples, and they were as effective as Jesus was. That bodes well for us, because we are Jesus' disciples too, if even 2,000 years later.But the truth from this story that grips me the most is that Jesus was called to change the world, and yet he started by merely sending out his disciples two-by-two to the small villages around them. Wow - such a big worldwide calling started in such a small way. As it turns out, Christianity has always functioned from the margins. From these days of Jesus until the present, the inbreaking kingdom has advanced with the least, the last, the lost, and the left-behind.In this day, we too are called to change to the world. And true to form we start with a nearby isolated neighborhood, a Jesus Table in an obscure gathering place, re-telling Jesus Stories as we eat together with people who are very different than us, and engaging in prayer walks that disinvites evil and invites the presence of Christ step-by-step. These are all small engagements that are right in front of us, but somehow they start adding to the inbreaking Kingdom in such exponential ways that it changes the world near and far. Jesus' big Gospel has always advanced with small starts. Never underestimate what your simple Jesus Table efforts will turn into.#DinnerChurchQuotes: After the Moravian Agape Meal revival, there was launched 100 years of 24/7 prayer. (Susan Harper)#PracticalStuff: Have a conversation with your team that their small weekly efforts are actually connected to a HUGE Outcome. They need the encouragement from an enlarged faith perspective. Then will you lead them in a collective prayer that assumes something MUCH BIGGER than what your team should naturally accomplish?Blessings & Boldness,Verlon
