God is setting us up.

Posted in: Blog, Uncategorized by Carolyn Moore on June 25, 2011 | No Comments

Did you happen to see the Reader’s Choice awards in Thursday’s Applause or today’s Columbia County News-Times?  The readers’ choice for the friendliest church in town is Mosaic.  Just so you will know … that’s not two Mosaic fanatics voting 100 times.  You can’t vote more than once and for the record, I didn’t vote at all because it’s sort of complicated and I couldn’t figure it out.  Our voters voted exactly the same way any other church-goer in town voted.  And I can’t tell you how pleased I am that we have this distinction.  I can’t think of anything I’d rather our church be known as.

If you’ve ever been part of a church before, you know friendliness doesn’t happen by accident.  It is a decision we make every time we open the door.  Kindness is a commitment.  It means loving people whether they deserve it or not.  It means going out of our way to make sure no one leaves unnoticed.  And it multiplies as we practice it.

Something that seems unrelated is sticking in my mind right now.  It happened on a recent Thursday evening at SafeHouse Outreach in Atlanta.  SafeHouse is a refuge for homeless people.  Every night, they host a worship service and a meal for about 200 folks on the street.

On this particular Thursday night, I was standing in the back of the room watching our kids lead worship at SafeHouse, when Adrian walked up to me and asked me to step outside.  Adrian is homeless.  He is also one of the most biblically literate people I know. He ran circles around me quoting the Bible.  He knew it by memory, and it wasn’t just the obvious verses everyone knows.

Just so I’d know that what he was saying was from God, he started with Zechariah 3, one of my all-time favorite passages and the one I’m pretty sure I’ve preached on more than any other passage of the Bible. It’s the passage I pull out when someone unexpectedly asks me to stand up and preach a little.  I know this passage pretty well.

I know most folks don’t hear a lot of sermons out of Zechariah so I don’t think it was a coincidence when this guy started prophesying over me using that passage.  He floated effortlessly from that passage to about ten others, prophesying over our church and calling me to take authority.  He said there are some things we are not able to accomplish because as a leader I haven’t taken the authority offered by God.  Wow.

At one point, he said, “You need to tell the people in your church to sit down, be still and listen when the Word is being preached.”  He said to tell you that it isn’t just about you … that whenever the Word is preached, God intends to touch a life and if you’re distracting that person, you may actually keep them from experiencing God.  That was profound to me, because just a couple of weeks ago I mentioned this very thing in worship.  It was the first time in eight years I’ve taken the time to talk with our congregation about being still during the preaching of the Word.  We’ve always had a sort of casual approach to things in our worship space, but I sensed that maybe we’d gotten too casual.  That maybe we were beginning to distract from God’s Word.

What are the chances I’d get on that subject within a week or so of a homeless guy telling me this was God’s word for our church?  Somehow these two things are connected in my spirit … this distinction of being of being known as a friendly place, and this word from a homeless guy about making sure our atmosphere makes room for the movement of the Holy Spirit.

You know what I think?  I think maybe God is setting us up for greatness.  I hope you are encouraged.  You should be.

Are you homeless?

Posted in: Uncategorized by Carolyn Moore on June 11, 2011 | No Comments

Last week, I spent two days on the streets of Atlanta soaking up a little of what it means to be homeless.   Forty-eight hours does not even begin to paint the whole picture, but maybe it was a start on understanding God’s heart for “the least  of these.”

I met a woman named DeeDee who asked me, within minutes of my meeting her, if I’d pray for her.  I said, “Sure.  What do you want me to pray?”  She replied, “Pray that I will learn to love myself.”

I met a guy named Ed who showed me some amazing artwork he created.  I watched him very lovingly, tenderly talk to a little kid, also homeless.

We discovered a little band of believers who have been handing out meals for something like twenty years.  They made long tablesful of sandwiches and handed them out to people who lined up at the back door of the church.  The guy handing the sandwiches out would ask, “Do you know Jesus?”  When the response was “yes,” he would say, “What are you doing about it?”

Jeff is the one who greeted us our first night on the street, showing us where to get water and assuring us that they’d look out for us. He also showed us where the Presbyterian church was where we could get breakfast.

I don’t know the name of the guy who said to me, “You think this is a game?  My life is not a game.”  And then he told me all the rough things he’s been through.  And then he prayed for me like someone who prays a lot.

Ann is the one who told me about being raped last summer.  It still haunts her.  She said it was the third time and the worst.  She didn’t realize is was still weighing heavy on her until she ended up in the hospital last week.  And then in jail.

By the second day, I had friends I could speak to on the street.

We slept in front of the Catholic church.  In the morning, around 6:30, the church security guard would come out and wake us up.  ”Good morning! Time to get up.”  And everyone would get up (there were about twenty people sleeping in front of that church), fold up their cardboard and stuff it into a nearby shrub.

I asked one guy, “What would happen if all the churches and missions stopped serving food?  ”We would be in big trouble,” he said.  I discovered that there is a web of government and church support that will provide all your basic needs if you choose to live outside.

Which sort of breaks my heart, because it is almost like the church has become a great, big vending machine for a lot of people who have learned to survive without purpose.

When it comes to mercy, we who follow Jesus have a bad case of the “can’t help it”s.  We like to give, and that’s a good thing.  And giving should be full of mercy.  To give only to people who deserve it would be missing a huge point. Jesus told a story about that, about learning how to give to people who can’t repay you.

But here’s the thing: our giving to homeless people is missing the one thing we are commissioned to do.  Jesus told us to “go and make disciples.”  And yet, we are spending huge amounts of energy and time feeding bodies without changing lives, without challenging people to actually follow Jesus.  So while Jesus has given us permission to call people home, we are handing out sandwiches and leaving them homeless.

Not all the time, of course.  There are some amazing people sharing the gospel in amazing ways.  I met a young man who has lived on the streets for a couple of years, just so he can understand God’s heart for the homeless.  He tells people he is trying to understand what it really means to follow Jesus.  Now, all kinds of groups want to hear his story. He’s making a difference.

We were hosted by Safehouse Outreach in Atlanta.  They hold a worship service 365 nights of the year.  That’s a lot of Jesus.  They are giving a lot of churches the chance to share Christ and get to know the poor.  A very good thing.

I don’t live in a city where hundreds of homeless people are clamoring at my door daily for food, water, a place to sleep or go to the bathroom.  I don’t know what that’s like so I sure don’t have a right to any kind of educated opinion.  I’m not one of those who live there and do this day in and day out.

All I have is a snapshot of an experience and a sense that maybe there’s something to learn here for all of us who want to give.   We are called to make followers of Jesus.  Jesus himself said to every person, “If ANYONE wants to be my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.”   That means you and me and Ed and Ann and Jeff and everyone else.  Any of us who choose not to take that path are actually choosing a path of homelessness.  Our souls find rest only when they rest in Jesus.  Our home is in Christ.

I am praying for The Church and for my church … that God will give us grace not just to offer mercy but to help people take up their cross and follow Jesus home.

Royal Weddings and Tornadoes

Posted in: Blog, Uncategorized by Carolyn Moore on May 2, 2011 | No Comments

I’ve been thinking about the news these last couple of weeks.  Huge things have happened.  The week following Easter we watched a series of tornadoes devastate parts of four states, and then in a sort of surreal twist, we ended the week by watching a fairy tale wedding.

The royal wedding was viewed by about 2 billion people.  One-third of the world watched those two people get married … about the same number of people as follow Jesus.  It was a precision event in every way and 2 billion of us had chapel-side seats.  We critiqued Kate’s form, behavior and dress.  The wedding was a topic of conversation in coffee shops and kitchen tables.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a few thousand people were beginning to pick themselves up after a devastating chain of tornadoes ripped through four states.  Hundreds of them were identifying the bodies of loved ones while others picked through piles of sheetrock for pieces of family photos and favorite toys.  Thousands of people are still dealing with a very real devastation.

Both events were real.  Both actually happened.  But while the royal wedding was a popular topic of conversation, it actually makes a real difference to exactly two people – Kate and William.  For the rest of us, it was an interesting diversion and a look into an unusual part of England’s culture.  But it wasn’t important.  Not to us.

The tornadoes, on the other hand, made a huge difference to thousands and maybe even millions of lives.  Certainly for those people living under the curse of that unfortunate damage, those storms were not only real but life-transforming.

Maybe there is a word here for those of us who follow and share the story of Jesus.  Because even with Jesus, there are two stories – or at least two ways of sharing the old, old story.  There’s the “happily ever after” story so often told on Christmas eve and sometimes even on Easter Sunday.  It is the truth, and it is the most important story ever told.  But there is a sterile version of it that manages to hit the high points without ever driving home the fact that Jesus matters to our everyday lives.  People who hear that story only never have the benefit of understanding how it might be good news to them.

Then there is the other story.  It is the story of how Jesus meets us in the midst of our devastation and questioning and turmoil, and makes a difference in how we live.  It’s the story of the alcoholic who found Jesus in step one, as he realized just how completely powerless he was. It’s the story of the divorced mom who found Jesus in the rubble of her marriage.  For the main characters of these stories, the “happily ever after” version doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as the one about how Jesus saves wretches and casts out demons.

The best lesson on the way to being a more compassionate follower of Jesus may be knowing when to share which story.  I can’t imagine standing with someone outside the rubble of their tornado-ravaged home, asking what they thought about Kate’s dress and hair.  But I can imagine them finding some comfort in the thought that God understands loss, and that in fact, he once made himself nothing for their sake.  That story might make them feel a little less alone.

Isn’t that how Jesus talked to people?  He took mud and lathered it onto a blind man’s eyes so he could demonstrate the power of God.  Among the crowds, he talked about farming and seeds, money and government.  He healed people and gave incredibly practical advice on relationships.  He taught us that the good news of God is best digested when it is served alongside the things we are actually dealing with.

The greatest story ever told was never meant to entertain folks for an hour or two on Sundays.  It was meant to meet us where we are, and take us where we can never go on our own.  Isn’t that a story worth telling?

Euthanasia

Posted in: Uncategorized by david on January 24, 2010 | No Comments

Message Transcript – 01/24/2010 – Due to technical issues, there is no audio for today’s testimony