Thriving to Change

Hi Friends!

Thank you so much for hanging with me for the past month, as I have not been doing a whole lot of writing on this blog. Please know the intention was there, the time just wasn’t! ☺ Thanks for understanding!

Today I am FINALLY blogging about the launch of THRIVE CHURCH CHARLOTTE. Thanks for your interest and for patiently waiting until I could wrap my mind around the day enough to get some thoughts out about it.

And for those of you interested in She Seeks, I plan to post an update on that on Friday of this week. So, please stay tuned.

And...look for my next Monday post to be about the experience I had today serving the homeless community of Charlotte. It was a beautiful day in so many ways, and I can’t wait to share about it.

Of course, all this hinges on whether or not a child falls off something and requires stitches…I get the stomach bug and can’t muster up the strength to type…or my computer crashes and works against me. In which case I would have to break my word and not post until later. Hopefully none of those things happen, of course. Got too much to do to have a crisis. ☺

And now…the post…

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In the past three weeks I have experienced three things I never have before.

~Given my favorite shoes right off my feet and walked out of church in disposable flipflops.

~Saw someone pass from death to life on Easter Sunday in the ballroom of a hotel.

~Said the THRIVE declaration (you fellow THRIVERS know what I’m talking about! ☺) during church with 200 of my new homeless friends, on their turf.

It has been, without a doubt, some of the most memorable weeks of my life. Rich. Full. Interesting. Different. And…refreshingly…challenging.

When I wrote THIS BLOG over a year ago, I would have never guessed where I would be right now in many ways. I wouldn’t have predicted the past three weeks. I might not have been ready for them, if I had. But in many ways, I craved them. You can hear it in this blog.

Because inside of me there has been this place all along – a desire – a craving -- to be challenged like I have never been challenged before. Challenged to think less about my traditions and more about what Jesus would do. Challenged to push what I thought I could do for God to the absolute limit. Challenged to crave the interesting and raw over the safe and the content.

On a very personal note, I admit, there has been a temptation for me to blog about THRIVE CHURCH CHARLOTTE since it’s launch, three weeks ago. I am so excited about the mission of this church and what it stands for. I am so excited about it’s future and all the plans and dreams and goals we have. I am so excited about how it came to be and what it is built upon. And the truth is, I have started blogging about it on four different occasions. But I have always ditched the post and started a new one. I was waiting for a specific direction that would be what HE wanted me to share. Today as I sat to write, the words simply flowed. And I am finally able to share what’s in my very full heart.

Because my heart is full of Jesus. And He tends to supersede my need to provide specific details or mission statements or purpose points. I suspect there will be a time for that. But it’s not now. Not today.

But back to week one at THRIVE.

When I gave my favorite "speaking" shoes the first week of THRIVE, it was hard. For weeks I knew what Scotty was going to challenge the congregation to do – give their very best to God…give what they had to someone who needed it more than they did -- and to be honest, it excited me on a very terrified level. My flesh was convinced that some people might be put off by it. My fear-side screamed at me to ask him to pull the plug on it -- not to challenge people in such a bold way at the very 1st service. I mean, we were trying to attract people to come. In my traditional mind, I was sure we needed the colored lights, the expensive cameras, the rockin’ videos and maybe even some candy to bribe the kids. A raw “come to Jesus” moment involving asking people to give up their shoes just might not rub people the right way. I knew we were asking for the most expensive. I knew we were asking for the favorites. I knew we were asking for the best. And I wasn’t sure any of us, including me, were quite ready for that.

But oh, how I underestimated the very powerful challenge of God.

A little girl on the front row responded to the challenge, first. Pastor Scotty wasn’t even finished laying out the challenge before she sprung to her feet and led the way.

A mass of people followed after her, shoes in hand.

And as I watched men in full suits first file to the front of the room with their best shoes and then walk out of the room in a pair of baby blue flip flops…

As I watched women give up one day old well-shopped for shoes, some that cost as much as a night at the Ritz…

As I watched children pray in the halls about being willing to give up their favorite, broken in tennis shoes and velvet shoes adored with the pretty jewels…

I remembered the desire for the challenge that is in all of us. The same challenge; hungered for within me.

And as they responded to it, on their faces I saw joy. Pure joy. Joy in the challenge.

It defied the logic my human mind wanted me to hang onto.

And it made me cry.

Sitting in a metal chair, looking down at the busiest carpet I had ever seen in my life, I praised God for not letting my human fear of rejection stand in the way of His work, His challenge. And I apologized to Him for not giving the power of His challenging Word enough credit.

Really, they should have wanted the lights. They should have wanted the stage and the perfection. They should have wanted the familiar.

But the raw and very real challenge was enough to satisfy the longing in their heart.

It was simply…enough.

As I write this today from the deepest places of my heart, I am praying that challenge inside all of us will never be FULLY and COMPLETELY satisfied. For it is the longing of the challenge that leads us to minister in ways that keeps us from becoming what we don’t like about ourselves in the first place. It is what keeps us from the false idea that God will never use us like the person on our right. Or the bogus thought that we were meant to only do the mediocre. Or that we are stuck -- that all we know to do is all we can ever know to do.

Those are things we experience, only when the “challenge” is left unmet.

Giving the very shoes off one’s feet and leaving church, headed to Sunday lunch in disposable flip-flops is challenging. Unconventional. Radical. Freeing.

Spending the day serving homeless friends is, too.

My inner wild child longs to never stop living the challenge. Because it is in the challenge that I find my most fulfilling life. It’s the call I live for. And in it I find the way I always wanted to love Jesus more, serve people in a way that I really mean it, and dive into my own heart to find purpose in what I am even doing here in the first place. In it, I live out the first and second commandment in a new and different way. It is what THRIVE is built on. It is what we, as a body and as individuals, were born to do.

I’ll trade a pair of my favorite shoes for that any day.