“Fellowship is a kind of belonging that isn’t based on status, achievement, or gender, but instead is based on a deep belief that everyone matters, everyone is welcome, and everyone is loved, no conditions, no exceptions.” -Brian McLaren, We Make The Road By Walking, pg. 175

This Christ-centered uprising is for all people. Those who aren’t certain all the time. Those who tend to fear. Those who know exactly what they believe, and those who aren’t sure what or how to believe. Those who are brave and those who aren’t. It is for men AND women. It is for the rich AND the poor. It is for those who show their scars and those who tend to hide them. And it must be this way, because only together we can figure things out. Only together can we can learn to hope, believe, and love.

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Register for this event online!

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We’ll be snowshoeing up to Dream Lake.

Here are the details:

Date: March 12th
Time: 8:00 a.m. Church parking lot or 9:30 a.m. Bear Lake Trailhead
Trail Head: Bear Lake
Elevation Gain: 450 Ft
Distance (round trip): 2.2 miles
Approx drive time from downtown Fort Collins: 1 hour 15 minutes

Directions to the Trailhead:
From the RMNP Beaver Meadows Visitor Center on US 36, drive west 1.1 miles to the Beaver Meadows Entrance Station. Pass the kiosk (RMNP pass required) and continue .2 mile to Bear Lake Road. Turn south (left) and drive 9.2 miles to the huge Bear Lake parking lot.

Bring snacks and/or a lunch. We’ll meet down at Coffee on the Rocks for lunch. You can order hot drinks, panini’s and sometimes soup: 510 Moraine Ave, Estes Park, CO 80517 (on Hwy 36.)

If you’d rather bring your lunch, you can still plan to eat there with us. There are plenty of tables in this fast-casual restaurant, and if several of us order, it will be fine for some of us to just eat what we brought!

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We’ve got a huge celebration planned!

Here are the details:
9:00am – Free Breakfast for the whole family and a Jumpy House for the Kids
10:00am – 11:30am – Easter Celebration Service (Nursery care provided. Children ages 4 and older are invited to join us in the service. We’ll provide activity sheets and a special children’s message during the service.)
11:30-12:00 – Easter Egg Hunt for all ages!
If you have ever counted yourself unworthy of God’s love or just wondered if God could really love you, join us for a fun and encouraging service that explores the significance of Christ’s resurrection and God’s covenant with us.

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Scripture teaches there is a wedding coming (Revelation 19). The wedding is between the very different realms of heaven and earth, but when they come together it is beautiful.

I was always taught that heaven was “up there.” That if you could somehow go high enough into the sky that you would eventually come to a place where pearly gates and streets of gold are sitting on a cloud foundation and people have halos, wings, and a harp. While this is inspiring, it isn’t what the Bible says.

Heaven is God’s realm. It is the place where his will is accomplished perfectly every time. It is where his ways rule and reign. The New Testament often calls “heaven” the “kingdom of God” or the “kingdom of heaven.” Jesus taught us to pray, “May Your kingdom come, Your will be done; on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus taught us to pray that heaven would intersect with earth in order to display God’s goodness and his intention for the world. There are moments when heaven does intersect earth. It happens every day, all over the globe. Heaven and earth are interlocked at this moment, but they aren’t yet fully united. To keep the wedding metaphor going (and this may be a bit crude), heaven and earth are dating…..with the intention of getting married. And the person in charge of the courting is Jesus.

The ultimate intersection of heaven and earth is Jesus himself. The ultimate display of heaven on earth is the resurrection. In the resurrection, death was defeated and God’ new creation begun.

As we seek to understand the implications of the resurrection on our daily lives, we must realize that the resurrection teaches us to anticipate the day when heaven and earth will at last be fully united. To anticipate this day, we live right now in ways that demonstrate heaven on earth.

We forgive.

We love.

We answer injustice.

We create.

We play.

We delight in God’s good creation.

We worship.

We live in these ways in order to anticipate the day when heaven and earth are one as described in Revelation 21-22. Dress for the wedding. Discover some new ways that you can live in anticipation of God’s new world and the wedding of heaven and earth!

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However, if we first embrace the fact that resurrection is the stamp of God’s new world (as I’ve mentioned in a previous blog) then we will be given new perspective and see evidence of that new world breaking through. Every time you find healing from brokenness, every time your tears are dried up and peace put in their place, every time you experience forgiveness after you have wronged someone or offer forgiveness when you have been wronged, every time a person in need is offered a drink or a meal or a bed; these are all evidence of God’s new world breaking into our broken world.

Here, then, is our hope – if I can see the evidence of God’s new world now, I can have assurance of what the future holds. The preacher who wrote Hebrews put it this way, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

We can be sure in our hope because Jesus got up out of the grave, defeated death, and started a brand new world! However, hope is often reduced to a wish! I wish I could be reconciled with that person. I wish we had enough food on the table. I wish my dad would be healed. I wish I would be healed. We don’t have to reduce hope to a wish! We can rest on the assurance of God’s promise to bring a new world. One day you will be reconciled! One day everyone will have what they need! One day my dad will be healed! And one day I will be healed! Being hopeful is not wishful thinking, it is being certain of God’s future!

Every situation that seems “dead” and all hope is lost is pregnant with potential for resurrection! And that gives us hope!

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Too often the resurrection becomes a “remember-it-once-a-year” thing. We put on our Easter dresses, give away Easter baskets, and then hunt eggs.

Let’s admit it, the resurrection has become pretty far removed from our daily lives. This should not be. The resurrection is central to the Gospel. To live Gospel-centered lives means to realize the implications of Easter morning.

The message of Christianity is this – redemption. The word “redeem” means to “compensate for the faults or bad aspects of something” or “regain possession of something in exchange for payment.” Christ paid it all on the cross. He took on the sin of the world and died that we might gain possession of life. He has redeemed us, and the entire world. His work of redemption is complete, our only possible response is to accept His redemption through faith. We cannot be redeemed through good morals, acts of justice, or being really nice (something that “being Christian” is often reduced to). We can only be redeemed by accepting Christ’s redemption – His death & victory over death so that we can gain possession of life.

However, God’s redemption isn’t limited to you and I! Scripture clearly indicates that he plans to redeem all things (see Revelation 21-22, Isaiah 65:17-25 for example)! The resurrection, then, is the proof that redemption has begun for the whole world. Death and all the things that belong to death have been defeated and are being swallowed up by God’s goodness, mercy, and grace! Any version of Christianity that offers escape instead of redemption is not biblical. God’s plan is not escape, it’s renewal.

The purpose of the resurrection, then, is not so we can be more ethical or have a new spirituality or even “get to heaven when we die.” The resurrection means redemption has come and is coming to our world and to us! It’s all about you being made new. It’s about God’s new world breaking into the middle of this one! So to live in Gospel-centered ways is to proclaim God’s new world, to live according to this new world, and to help bring it about. God could just fix brokenness in a moment, but he chooses to use the obedience of His followers to bring about change.

Somehow, this is a scandalous idea. People are more comfortable with a Gospel of escape because it requires nothing of them now. We believe Christ died and rose, confess our belief to Him and then wait for this world to be destroyed in favor of heaven. Under this framework our only responsibility is to get others to believe so they avoid hell. The resurrection life of Jesus is much more profound than avoiding hell. If we allow the resurrection to sink in, embrace the full scale of his redemption we will begin to see that it is the stamp of the new world God is bringing, and God is inviting us to enter into this new world, participate in it, live in accordance with it, and work to bring it about. That moves the resurrection from a “once-a-year remembrance” to a way of life.

I close with this quote from New Testament scholar N.T. Wright:

“The world could cope – and would cope – with a Jesus who ultimately remains a wonderful idea inside his disciples’ minds and hearts. The world cannot cope with a Jesus who comes out of the tomb, who inaugurates God’s new creation right in the middle of the old one.”

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“What was so wrong with traditional church that you had to make it contemporary?”

or they carry baggage:

“Traditional is soft and boring.” “Contemporary is loud (too loud).”

Both sides will use scripture to defend their preferred method of doing church and church music. The traditional side will consistently call people to be grounded and established in what has worked for many years. The contemporary side will push ministry forward to innovate and do the unexpected.

All of this leads to a question that I, as the Pastor of a church, hear all the time: “Are you are a contemporary church or a traditional church?”

It’s a well-meaning, but misguided question. Scripture says that Jesus has promised to build and protect His Church; what we often miss is why the Church exists. From the Gospels to Paul’s letter, it’s clear that the Church exists to proclaim the Good News of Jesus to the world. That is precisely what the earliest believers did.

Acts 2 records for us a miracle of hearing as the very first believers proclaimed God’s wonders and the Gospel. It says that everyone who was gathered there “heard them in (their) own tongues.” While this is miraculous intervention from God, I believe it what the Church must strive for today. We must speak the Gospel in the tongue our culture can understand and identify with. Each church must have cultural touch points that allow guests to know that these people live in the real world just like they do. Some churches will choose to sing “secular” songs as a touchpoint. Others will use sermon series and titles that mirror something in culture (like “GodTube” or “Mynopoly”). The point is that the Church must speak to the culture, not just to ourselves. If we fail to do so, the world will not hear our message. We will be yelling in the wind.

In light of all this, the question is not, “Are you traditional or contemporary?” but, “How is this church speaking truth and love to the surrounding communities?” The answers will vary. Styles will be different. We must realize that contemporary and traditional are ultimately styles of presenting the Gospel. I know of “traditional” churches that have lost touch of how to proclaim Christ to the world around them. I also know of hymn-singin’, every-week-communion-takin’, Sunday-schoolin’, VBS-havin’ churches that are making a tremendous impact in their community. The same is true of “contemporary” churches. The issue is not contemporary or traditional. The issue is fulfilling our mission as the Church, and each church being obedient to the style God has called them to. Your task is to find a church that is reaching culture is a style that you agree with so you can get involved and help them fulfill their mission.

May His Kingdom come and His name be made famous through the work of the Church!

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