Who Matters?

by The RevNo Comments
Take this little quiz (don’t cheat)… Name the five wealthiest people in the world. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners. Name the last five winners of the Miss America pageant. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress. Name the last decade’s worth of World Series winners. How did you do? The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies… Awards tarnish… Achievements are forgotten… Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners….Here’s another quiz. See how you do on this one: List a few teachers who aided your journey through school. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with. Easier?The lesson: The people who make a difference in your...
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Faith My Eyes

by The RevNo Comments
As we cast this vision we get many questions and many of them I can’t really answer. I have come to the conclusion that is OK. I don’t have to be able to answer every question. Why? That’s a great question. I think it’s OK because at some point in this process we have to yield to faith and trust. We have to believe that God is serious when he makes promises in his scriptures. He means it when he says that he will care for us. It seems to me that we have to come to the place where we can rest on the reality of his promises. Contrary to my boy Stuart Smalley: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DIETlxquzY?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=540&h=405] I am not good enough (just ask my kids and bride). I am not smart enough (just ask anyone that hangs out with me). And, if I am really honest with myself “people” don’t necessarily like me. No, the truth of the matter is that if any of this...
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The End Is Now

by The RevNo Comments
As I enter into this new stage of life I am realizing that I am about to embark on something unique. For the first time in my life I am the one who has to slow down and listen to God to determine what the ‘end’ is and how he intends to get us there. I think that he is saying that the ‘end’ is ‘now’. As our family steps out into this adventure of launching a movement we will begin with the end in mind. What do we want this movement to be? Do we want a large worship gathering to be our end? No. We want a movement that is engaged in their spheres of influence as representatives of Jesus. We want a community of people who are multiplying their lives and launching new movements in places we have not yet dreamed of going. Everything we do will towards this end. Everything. More on that some other time… ...
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Movement? Huh!?

by The RevNo Comments
I was in a great conversation with some friends the other day talking about The Antioch Movement. One of them asked me, “So you’re the lead church planter?” I responded, “Lead movement launcher.” The next question was money, “Why not a church?” So if you’re planting a church the end goal is to have, well, a church. A building or something, the focus becomes the Sunday gathering. We are going to try and build a movement that is reproducible and sustainable. The end goal is not the Sunday gathering, but to launch movements into the fourth generation and beyond. The “church” is a means for the expansion of the kingdom and not an end in itself.Everything we are going to do will be toward that end. So, I am not a “pastor” or “planter” but a “trainer” of “trainers”, if you will, and at the beginning a “launcher”. A quality response was forthcoming, “But the Bible has words for that, church and pastor....
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The Antioch Movement

by The RevNo Comments
This Sunday we shared with our community at Grace Chapel that God is calling us to follow Him to Ypsilanti, MI. It’s been a two year process of God pushing, pulling, and prodding. We have had to look, listen, live, and learn. Ever since we joined the staff of CRU I have been dreaming about a movement in a college town that mobilized the whole community. Now, God has opened the way for us to engage in this dream. What would it look like for representatives of Jesus to live together in community and invite people far from God to join them? Hopefully, The Antioch Movement. In Acts 11 we meet the church at Antioch. It goes like this, Those who had been scattered by the persecution triggered by Stephen’s death traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, but they were still only speaking and dealing with their fellow Jews. Then some of the men from Cyprus and Cyrene who had come to Antioch...
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A Story About Grace

by The RevNo Comments
“Hey Dad, why do some kids at school have ashes on their foreheads?” the kids asked. “It’s a Catholic symbol for Ash Wednesday, the day before Lent.” I responded. “What’s Lent?” That’s a great question. I went on to explain what Lent is and the response quite honestly shocked me. “We need to give something up!” Libby, our eight year old daughter gave up chocolate. Little did we know this decision was about to transform a life. My wife, Amy, and I are not legalists or traditionalists. We buck against kind of traditionalism and legalism. If you say we “have” to do something, odds are we won’t. Up until our kids wanted to participate in a Lenten fast it never really crossed our minds to do so. I have been so impressed at the faithfulness of my little family. Lent has been pretty well kept in our home and that’s saying something. However, one day at a party Libby wanted chocolate. Everyone else was having chocolate, but she...
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A Lesson

by The RevNo Comments
The quote below intrigues me. I think that this kind of “serial disruption” is required by churches. We must keep on “re-planting” ourselves. If we don’t then we become stale and lose our saltiness. The church needs to keep looking to the future and not allowing any sacred cows to keep us from being on mission. emergentfutures: “The lesson here is that a company that disrupts does not necessarily survive. Long term survival depends on the ability for serial disruption. Serial disruption is an uncomfortable state for an organization to exist in. As the story above shows, disruptions are usually enabled by “desperate” necessity. Desperation is not something management is trained to aspire for.” — The parable of Nintendo — Horace Dediu and Dirk Schmidt via Asymco (via paperbits) ...
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Ethan’s Essay — MLB Breaking Barriers National Essay Contest

by The RevNo Comments
Hi, my name is Ethan and I learned in school that Jackie Robinson lived his life by nine values and used them to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball. This is a story about a time that I used those same values to overcome a barrier in my life. At my school football got banned because some kids weren’t playing safely. I was very mad. It seemed unjust. I went back to my house that night to talk about it with my family. My father suggested a petition. At the time, I didn’t know what a petition was. So I asked. He explained that a petition is like a letter stating what I think should happen. It also should have signatures of the people who think the same as me. I decided to do it, but I was anxious. I couldn’t believe what I was on the verge of doing. When I woke up the next morning, my dad was still sleeping,...
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Blue Like Jazz…

by The RevNo Comments
One day in the spring of 2002 I returned home from a long day on campus. I was in the midst of my first year as campus director at Illinois State University with CRU. I was tired. In my mailbox was a little package and inside was a book entitled, Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller. I hadn’t ordered this book, it just arrived. The next day I sat outside a coffee shop and read. I kept reading. I kept reading. I finished the book in one sitting. I read it again. What I discovered afresh in Blue Like Jazz was clear call to gospel living. I realized that I had become more about convincing people of a worldview and winning an argument than I was about introducing them to Jesus. This book re-introduced me to radical grace. God used it to change my life. The gospel stopped being “Jesus and…” and became a clear call to Jesus himself. Legalism quickly became a thing of the past and in the pages...
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