Kainos

This past Saturday night our church started Saturday evening services. The group is not intended to be another option if you are busy on Sunday morning, but is a new ministry with a solid core group who are dedicated to exploring what Christianity looks like in a new postmodern world. It is also the baby steps of our church exploring what it would mean to become a multi-site church. We expereimented with it for Easter and had a lot of positive things happen - it seems good to us and to the Spirit...

It was really great to be there. We've been talking for a few years in this direction and we have been gathering and meeting with the core group since January. I am really hoping and praying that we are able to be where God is working and follow His lead in this new congregation.

Anyway - I wanted to post my notes from the teaching here. We don't have a sound person at all yet, so there's no recording. If you want to hear Kainos you'll have to be there, or pray that God leads someone to become a sound person!!

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EPISODE 1

Too much thinking today begins in Genesis 3 – “we are fallen”

Misses the real beginning – WE ARE CREATION

Genesis 1:26 (MESSAGE)

WE are creation and so we are made GOOD – male and female – unique because we are images of God – moral, ethical, capabilities, different

We are the developers of CREATION – ‘rule over’

We are made to BE WITH HIM.

But God gives us a choice – to live as we are created to - or to make our own way

ADAM and EVE choose their own way, sin

This happens all the time

WE CHOOSE, WE HIDE, GOD PURSUES

People choose, yet God pursues

Genesis 3:9 -

1. SELF – first question – Where are you?
2. MOTIVATIONS - who told you that?
3. ACTIOS – what did you do?

We live as God asks these questions and creation groans in anticipation of God’s answer – the questions beg us to turn to God in worship because he is the only one who can respond to our choice to live away from HIM



EPISODE 2 – Old TESTAMENT

Sin decays the culture quickly

And people get the questions backwards –

GENESIS 11:3ff

Let’s do something!!
Let’s figure out who we are!!
Let’s maintain where we are!!

And the OT becomes a place where harmony must be regulated, produced and continually restarted.

They begin to need to produce places and ways to see where God is – yet, they continually have the choice – with God or not

Noah, Babel, the formation of Israel, the exile, the return to Israel – these are all stories of regulations, production, failure and restarting.

In this cycle – LEADERS arose – prophets and judges who called out the questions of God to the people –

We can see this in Daniel – THE MESSAGE

Chapter 1 – Daniel’s story tells : WHERE IS HE?
WHAT IS HIS MOTIVATION?
WHAT WILL HE DO?

And Daniel experiences blessing and a long career as he chooses to live with GOD instead of apart from Him.

And the voice of the prophets call out from a holy God –

WHERE ARE YOU?

WHAT IS YOUR MOTIVATION?

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

GIVE TIME FOR REFLECTION HERE


EPISODE 3

Hebrews 12 calls Jesus the Author and Perfector of the faith

CHRIST IS THE ultimate response to the QUESTIONS…

1. WHERE ARE YOU?
a. Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God

JOHN 8 – if you know me you know the Father

JOHN 1:14 – the glory of God exists in his identifying with our limitations. NO OTHER GOD does this.

2. WHAT IS YOUR MOTIVATION?
a. John 10:10 – LIFE TO THE FULLEST

Jesus was driven by the hope that you can have the best possible life – not just someday out there – but now and today

3. WHAT DO WE DO?
a. MATTHEW 5-7: the kingdom manifesto

Peculiar long teaching given by Jesus – no discussion – almost like a rant!

Summarize: (from McLaren, Secret Message of Jesus)

Be poor in spirit, mourn, be meek, hunger and thirst for true righteousness, be merciful, be pure in heart, be a peacemaker, be willing to joyfully suffer persecution and insult for doing what is right.

Be salt and light in the world – by doing good works.

Do not hate or indulge in anger, but instead seek to reconcile.

Do not lust or be sexually unfaithful in your heart.

Do not presume to make vows, but have simple speech, where yes means yeas and no, no.

Do not get revenge, but find creative and nonviolent ways to overcome evil done to you.

Love your enemies, as God does, and be generous to everyone, as God is.

Give to the poor, pray and fast secretly.
Don’t let greed cloud your outlook, but store up treasure in heaven through generosity.

Don’t worry about your own daily needs, but instead trust yourself to God’s care, and seek God’s kingdom first and foremost.

Don’t judge others, but instead first work on your own blindness.

God to God with all your needs, knowing that God is a caring Father.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Don’t be misled by religious talk, what counts is actually living by Jesus’ teaching.

SO WE live in this way of Jesus – sure we fail, but God is chasing us asking us questions, and providing Christ as a response to our choice to sin.

WE must know, though, that if you follow these ways, the only natural place to end up is the cross…

CENTRALITY OF COMMUNION

Center of our space, even as we are sitting open to one another in community, it is the sacrifice of Jesus which is at our center.

Kainos is new – but it is really just a very old way of people following these ways and participating in communion to show our unity with God and with each other.

Our desire to be the kingdom of God – to be Eden again.

INVITE


EPISODE 4

SO WE HAVE the beginning and the very ending of the story and our task is to

LIVE OUT the middle so that it aligns with the rest of the story.

The church is this act – universally and locally, SACC

There have been times when we have strayed from that story – both universally and locally…yet we continue to seek to get our questions in order and return to the gospel and be messengers of it.

Kainos is the new effort of SACC to bring the gospel to an emerging, postmodern culture.

We are asking who we are as Christians living in a new world?
How is the message of Jesus GOOD NEWS in this world?
What will we do to live the kingdom manifesto here?

LOSS OF CHAPLIN ROLE

Characteristics of the new world – authority based on trust, loss of a metanarrative, many truths can be held in opposition, deconstruction of hierarchy, communication revolution, terrorism – new kinds of military action, etc.

BARTH – “The gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a question mark against all truths.”

So it is my hope that Kainos holds a question mark to the emerging culture – not with words, but with LIFE!

So we will eat, play, sing, serve, explore, give and BE together as EPHESIANS 2:22

IN WORSHIP OUR Dominate metaphor will be a living room – as we sit totally comfortable with Christ in our midst.

By doing so, we hope to expand the mission to new places and reach new people with hope and light and love – 2 CORINTHIANS 10:15

But this is not our program or our mission –

Romans 12 (The MESSAGE) – we will all live it – we are all contributors – we are all co-creators as we partner with God


Blessing

Acts 4:33 –

Much Grace be on us all.