Sharing in Suffering

Try...to increase your knowledge of this Mystery of Redemption. - This knowledge will lead you to love - and love will make you share through your sacrifices in the Passion of Christ.

...Without suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the redemption. - Jesus wanted to help us by sharing our life, our loneliness, our agony and death.  All that He has taken upon Himself, and has caqrried it in the darkest night.  Only by being one with us He has redeemed us.  We are allowed to do the same: All the desolation of the poor people, not only their material poverty, but their spiritual destitution must be redeemed, and we must have our share in it. - Pray thus when you find it hard - "I wish to live in this world which is so far from God, which has turned so much from the light of Jesus, to help them - to take upon me something of their suffering." - Yes...let us share the sufferings...for only be being one with them - we can redeem them, that is, bringing God into their lives and bringing them to God.

- Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, The Private Writings of the "Saint of Calcutta", Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, c2007, pg.220

The Source

I have always been an early riser.  It doesn’t matter whether I go to bed early or late, rested or worn out; I am automatically wide awake at five minutes until six every morning.  You can set your watch by it.

Recently, I flew from Fort Lauderdale to the West Coast where I was to speak at a convention in the San Francisco Bay area.  Sure enough, I awoke the following morning at 5:55 A.M.

The only problem was that I was still on East Coast time.  The little red numerals on the clock radio in my hotel room greeted me with 2:55 A.M.! I tried my best to go back to sleep, to no avail.  Finally, I reached for the television remote control and flicked on the tube.

It doesn’t matter where you are in America or what time of the day or night it might be, there are always two things you can get on television: world championship wrestling and religious programming.  And there they were in living color at three in the morning in Oakland.  (And by the way, the world is asking the same question about them both—“Is it real, or is it fake?”)

Honestly, I could not take either one at that hour, so I got up and went to a desk by the window to work on some projects in my briefcase.  I reached for the switch on the desk lamp and turned it on, but nothing happened.  So I began a little detective work.  I came to the brilliant conclusion that the lamp had only three possible points of connection.

First, I looked at the source.  It was plugged in.  Next I checked the switch.  It was turned on.  There was only one other possibility: the socket.  Bingo!  The bulb was not screwed down tightly into the socket.  I gave it a couple of turns, and there was light.

Life is a lot like that lamp.  Add up all our relationships and they boil down to three dimensions.

First, we have a relationship with God.  This is the upward connection, or the Source.  We have an innate longing to connect with the Source, to be plugged in to the only power that can give our lives meaning.

Second, we have a relationship with ourselves.  This is the inward connection, the switch.  To be happy and effective in life, we must have the proper self-respect and self-love.

Finally, we have relationships with others, in the home, the office, and the social arena.  This is the outward connection, or the socket.  To light up the lives of those around us, we need to be in right relationship with ourselves, with others, and with God.  I like to call it the art of connecting.

Tearing Down Walls and Building Bridges, O.S. Hawkins, Pgs. 3-4, Thomas Nelson Publishers, c1995

Musings from Osborne's "Sticky Church"

We've discovered lots of ways to reach people.  We've offered the high-powered programs and slick marketing of attractional churches, the cultural savvy of missional churches, and the relational intimacy of small churches.  But we've often become so focused on reaching people that we've forgotten the importance of keeping people.  Pg.13

Stickier churches are healthier churches.  They not only draw in spiritual window-shoppers and lead them to Christ; they also grow them to maturity.  Pg.13

Everything we do is aimed at helping the Christians we already have grow stronger in Christ.  But everything is done in such a way that their non-Christian friends will understand all that we're saying and doing.  Bottom line: We've tried to create a perfect storm for come-and-see evangelism while velcroing newcomers for long-term spiritual growth. Pg.20

...a sticky church offers the perfect environment for come-and-see evangelism, because while every service is designed to help Christians become better Christians, it is always done in a way that non-Christians can understand evyerthing that's said and takes place. Pg.32

Most of our discipleship programs are very linear.  Unfortunately, most spiritual growth is not. Pg.41

Most spiritual growth doesn't come as a result of a training program or a set curriculum.  It comes as a result of life putting us in what I like to call a need-to-know or need-to-grow situation. Pg.42

Another spiritually crippling falsehood that began to lose its grip on our congregation was what I call the Holy Place myth.  It's the idea that God's presence is somehow greater in some places than in others.  It's why some Christians will tell a joke at the office they'd never think of repeating at church.  It's why others don't think twice about lying on a loan application but still swear they live by the Ten Commandments.  The Holy Place myth fosters a false dichotomy between secular and the spiritual by leading us to believe that there are some places where God hangs out and lots of others he seldom frequents. Pg.50

...transparency is hardly the hallmark of most churches.  So much so that for most people, the stereotype of a church is a place with lots of plastic smiles.  Pg.54

One reason I want my messages to be memorable is that I want people to apply the important spiricual truths and doctrines of the faith.  I know that if I can change the way people think, it will change the way they live. Pg.63

While I understand the desire to remove the intimidation factor, something seems wrong with a world where we remove all the adults from the nursery.  Pg.69

Assigning people to groups by neighborhood sounds great on paper, but it seldom works well in real life...That's because one of the poorest predictors of a potential deep friendship is the neighborhood we live in.  In most cases, it doesn't indicate anything other than shared economic status.  A much stronger likelihood of future friendship exists when we build groups around share interests or a common station in life. Pg.79

It all starts with our mission.  We describe it this way: Making disciples in a healthy church environment. It's our way of expressing that when it comes to ministry, both task and health are equally important. Pg.101

An easy-out philosophy doesn't mean a lower commitment level.  It actually creates more opportunities for greater commitment.  Pg.111

As important as it is to know what to look for, it's equally important to know where to look.  Some fishing pools yield far more of a catch than others. Pg.128

When we at North Coast Church began our small group ministry, we fell into a common trap.  We overtrained.  Pg.134

Despite the rhetoric, most small group programs and methods don't work very well.  They haven't for a long time.  There's a huge gap between what we claim they do and what they actually accomplish. Pg.140

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make when it comes to either launching or reengineering a small group ministry is a failure to carefully align both vision and methods. Pg.149

Sticky Church, Larry Osborne, c2008