K-I-S-S.

I don't watch The Office normally, but one of the funniest lines I have heard from it is when Dwight is talking about the Acronym K.I.S.S and says, "Michael always says ‘K-I-S-S. Keep it simple, stupid.’ Great advice. Hurts my feelings every time." And it's really true.

Riverbend has been blessed by God to see a lot of growth over the last two years. Basically we have gone from 20-30 people each Sunday to 130 or so. When growth happens this quickly things get a bit crazy and our natural inclination is to build programs and systems to cover the growth. These aren't bad things to do, and most of them are probably necessary, but it has a very real potential to not follow the K-I-S-S advice. Next thing we know we end up forgetting what our mission and purpose is.

We have a pretty straight forward mission statement (http://www.riverbendonline.org/about-us/our-dream) but even this can seem intimidating in the midst of a bunch of community groups, events, and gatherings that can vary greatly in feel and context. This got me thinking about what is our purpose as Christians and the Church in simple form.

First off, we know its about Jesus. It's about the Gospel he lived out, died for, and rose again in. It's not about what we have done or what we do, but what he has already done. It's simple, it's radical. We don't have to do anything besides receive it and follow Him. The follow Him is what I get overwhelmed with and try to do things in my own strength. There may be some opportunity for me to elaborate more on this in the coming weeks and months, but for the sake of the Spirit of this blog, I'm going to Keep It Simple:

Following Jesus is like entering a traffic circle. We enter in one side when we start following Jesus and we go around the circle, which has two views, Proclaim and Respond, and then we exit, which is when we die.

That's it, we proclaim Jesus and then we respond to that Gospel, which leads us to proclaim it again. It may look different depending on our culture, context and audience, but to be a follower of Jesus means we are responding to the Gospel of Jesus which in turn should lead us to Proclaiming that Gospel to others. Period.

Keep It Simple.

complexity part II.

A few weeks back when the economic stimulus package was being discussed, I had mentioned how complex economies, government, and social structures are. Yesterday, or the day before, I don't remember when exactly, I had another realization. Some might classify it as a panic attack, but I don't think so. If anything, it was one of those moments of anxiety when every part of your life seems to be crashing down and requiring something of you. Here in the Northeast, and probably around the rest of the US, we call that everyday life. I don't know exactly what I had to do or why I was so stressed about it. Perhaps it was seeing my mile long list of everything that I need to do with the house, work, Riverbend Community Church, Jonathan, Lindsey, seeing the needs of the yard, the neighborhood, the Lehigh Valley, the World and not knowing where to start, what to do next, or how to go about it.

At that moment, I just didn't want to do anything at all.

I think that is why we are told in the Bible to "Be still. And know that I am God." That is a very reassuring truth, with a very difficult practice. It's hard to be still, to not do anything, to stop thinking even for one minute. But we should. We are not told to be still because we shouldn't be productive, but rather because this is the way we stay sane, we keep our stress down, and even stay healthy. Our personal lives are more complex than they need to be, our work lives, our religion, even the gospel we make more complex than it actually is. Why? That I don't know. What I do know is that we need to find ways, as we live life together, to live simply, love genuinely, and act justly. We won't be able to start doing these things though, until we can "be still and know God." I should put that on my list of things to do.