Step 1

Step One has finally been accomplished. I have a job in Pittsburgh! Next step - attempt to live and work in the same city. Now I go back to waiting on God, while preparing for my start date. Make no mistake about it, God provided me this job. God will sell my house, and God will provide us a new place to live and build his church. I will wait and rest. I will do all I can, but I will rest in the fact that the Sovereign God who controls the universe is directing my paths and working while I am asleep. However, today I rejoice! I celebrate! God is working out his plan, and today was a victory! Today is a good day and I will savor it. Feel free to dance along if you want, or maybe just grab a big bowl of ice cream. Whatever floats your boat, or tickles your fancy, etc., etc.
Enjoying the ride,
SR

Core Value #1

At our church planting Boot Camp (hosted by some really out of place guys in the SBC), we were challenged to come up with a set of core values that would serve as the identity of our church. SR and I, being a little uuhh, off kilter, came up with an alternate list of about 40 core values that are of great importance to us. I would like to present the first. It was initially around #23, but I believe we would both agree that it deserves to be moved to the very top of the list of ones that didn't quite make the cut.

CORE VALUE #1: New Member Lemon Law

I hear the amens already...



P.S. I have learned of a grave issue that I feel must be worked out here. It has come to my attention that my friend SR, has the disturbing an un-American quality of not liking cake. I'm not sure how to deal with this, but maybe I should have seen it coming. He is Canadian after all. Sheesh.

Once Every 56 Years...

Something is happening that only happens every 56 years, and it is the worst possible year for it to happen. My wife and I are attempting to purchase resources we need for church planting, pay off school bills, and save a decent amount of money before I become a broke student again. We had a great financial plan all set up for the next 5 months before the move to Pittsburgh. Except for this every-56-year-phenomenon....

See there are 52 weeks to a year. Except on leap years, there are 52 weeks and a day. Every 7th leap year, or 28 years, an extra week has effectively accumulated on the calendar. No big deal. Until two weeks have accumulated on the calendar, which happens every 56 years - in this case, 2008. In 2008 there are 27 pay periods for those of us who are paid bi-weekly. Which means that my paycheck is lower by about $200/mo to evenly spread out over an extra paycheck. It would mean nothing if I were to be here for the entire year, for I would just get an extra paycheck this year. But with a June departure date, I am waving goodbye to that $200 a month as I scramble to figure out how to pay my bills. Stupid Leap Years.....

Core Values

Doxa Church started as a dream of a church where several things that we see as significant deficits of the current evangelical church were done right. We called these our Core Values. Now, having been through Boot Camp and multiple assessments, our core values have shifted and become better focused on the mission of the church. But we still see these as foundational to our vision and identity, and indeed to the Church as she is meant to be. They are, in all of their ridiculously alliterated glory:

(1) Masculine Leadership
(2) Meaningful Membership
(3) Missional Relationships

IN the coming weeks, SR or I will create a series of posts to flesh these out and open up discussion about what we mean by these ideas. For now, if you have any initial thoughts, feel free to add a point of interest.

School Started

Today, using my NEW Sony Viao Laptop (which I have 18 months to pay for) I logged onto my online Biology Course for the first time. I am taking it through Harrisburg Area Community College, which has the unfortunate Acronym of HACC. Hopefully in the summer I will be enrolled in the University of Pittsburgh to pursue a Master's Degree in Education. That, in turn, will be so I can pursue a bi-vocational career in secondary phsyics education as part of our church plant strategy (more on that later). But first, I must complete ONE class that is not in my undergraduate record. Biology. I have an Engineering Degree, and the only class I need that was not already taken is Biology. So, I am a student again, in order to become a student, in order to get a contributive job, in order to help plant a church. So this is sort of Yak shaving razor thing (see Ren and Stimpy or the Evangelical Outpost for an explanation).

This will be a good warm-up before I start the full time classes. I haven't been a student for some time, and I may be rusty! :)

Waiting and Dreaming

"If you are a dreamer, come in.If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer . . .If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire,For we have some flax golden tales to spin.Come in!Come in!" - Shel Silverstein

When I was a kid I loved this Shel Silverstein poem, and I think its a good place to begin with my first post. This is my first foray into the blogsphere, so be gentle with me. I am by nature a dreamer, and I love the big God-sized kind of dream. The dream that can only be accomplished by a God who is bigger than the universe, and completely sovereign.

This is a place for dreamers. A place to dream of the church as it could to be, and to both celebrate and lament the church as it is. A place to sit, discuss, and attempt to navigate the practical and theological issues that we are confronted with along this journey of church planting.

At the moment I am living on a dream, and waiting on God to make it happen. I'm sitting at cafe sipping some coffee while waiting for my house to sell, waiting to hear on my new job in the 'burgh, and trying to figure out when and if to put an offer on a new house. I'm going to be honest, I hate waiting. This whole process is totally stressing me out because I have almost no control. Right now, the dream is my salvation.

So, lets dream together of a church without walls, without borders, without programs, without classes or cliques. A church that is not vested in any one political party or nation. A church that seeks the welfare of the city and loves the poor, the broken-hearted, the marginalized and the oppressed. A church that is totally dependent upon the gospel and is led by only by Jesus Christ. So, if you are a dreamer, come in!

SR

Blogging a Journey

Yay!! Another new blog in a saturated blogosphere. What could this one possibly be about?

This one is about a Journey. A journey that has already started, but is now about to truly begin.
The journey is one of church planting. I, for now to be known as Hefe, and my yet-to-be nicknamed good friend are moving to Pittsburgh to bring a vision to life. A vision of a church that incarnates in a new, yet ancient way, to the people of one of the greatest cities in the US.

It will be a missional community. It will be a restorative community. It will be a blessing community. It will be one that paints a picture of the the glory and redemption of Christ to the city. We will be a city within the City. Our name is Doxa church, which simply means glory.

If none of this makes sense to you, that's OK. This is the place where we will blog our journey and our work in Pittsburgh. We have already been planning, dreaming, training, and preparing for sometime, but we want to use this forum to present our ideas, vision, obstacles, and anything else that presents itself on this road to planting Doxa-Pittsburgh.

Join the journey with us... Contribute to the conversation and the vision as we dialogue through this process. We don't know what the end of the journey looks like (or if there even is one), but we are setting out none-the-less. Hope to hear from you along the way. Welcome to the road!

Grace to you,
Hefe