First part of this post lives here.

Simply put, I always need little reminders to stay the course and writing it down is one effective way to do it.  City Community Church has the incredible potential, as we all do, to drift from it’s intended course.  Especially in it’s infancy.  Even worse we all have the potential to be so  narrow-minded in our focus that we refuse to listen to God as He whispers new coordinates.  I pray and hope that we’ll all have ears to hear and backs to row…hard to ROCK the boat when your busy ROWING in a unified manner:)

Here are #3 and #4 (yes there are more in the world and I’ll just give ours two at a time) areas or problems that drive our lives and our ministry and help us plot City Com’s navigational devices.  The problems that drive us aren’t glamourous or glitzy.  They’re simply issues we feel compelled to act upon…so we are…and here they are:

3.  People are relationally fractured.  The fall, the hiding, the rebelling against God…all of those things don’t just stay vertical, they manifest themselves in very horizontal ways often damaging the people closest to us.  As I scan the landscape of humanity, one thing is for sure:  we’re all extremely broken and most of us don’t even know it.  Churched people can often be the most dishonest when it comes to this because they’ve been taught to hide the pain.  Even though God has made a way through Christ, our sin hinders our conversations with God and our busyness trying to fill our emptiness masks our inabilities to connect relationally with each other.  It’s a vicious cycle that we have to be intentional about breaking.  At City Com we want to challenge you to create SPACE.  SPACE in your day to be with your Creator and SPACE in your life to be with His creation.  What priorities need to change to allow you to have SPACE with God?  What SPACES can you create at home, work or the local coffee shop to create SPACE for conversation with others that might not necessarily look and think like you, but have the same need for connectedness?  In the summer we’ll be test piloting some small groups at City Com that just might jump start the process…

4.  Injustices permeate the world.  Around 6 or 7  years ago, I had a close friend with LSA from South Africa challenge me with a very pointed question.  He asked, “When you get close to God, what does He say?”  Uhhhh…I feel good?  I get goose bumps?  I get blessed?  Yeah, ok…I was stumped.  Here I was leading people in worship of an Almighty God and I didn’t even know what was on His heart.  I realized most of the time I was on a journey to self (hello!) so I purposefully started on a journey toward the heart of God.  It wasn’t long before I realized His heart for the poor, the oppressed, the widow, the orphan and that He had given ME a voice to speak into the injustice.  At City Com, we will INTERACT with Indianapolis, this nation and this world by not going to church but being the church.  We will open our hearts to the King, open our mouths for those unable to speak and open our lives to administer justice in the world.  We will not only share Christ’s love with each other but we will take His hope to the ends of the earth, knowing that the journey toward His heart means learning to become His hands….getabsorbed…n