City Impact Roundtable
After a couple of months at home and working out of my Tentmakers office, I'm back on the road. This time, it's Cedar Rapids, IA for the City Impact Roundtable. Not really the same as Africa or the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast, but as a friend once said to me, using his best John Wayne impression, as I left for a call to a pastorate in Indiana, "Muncie, Indiana...I hear there's a lot of sin out there!"
Whether it is the crushing poverty of Kitale, Kenya with all the corrupt officials; or the racist walls still so evident even after the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, sin and selfishness are evident everywhere. That's why a meeting like the City Impact Roundtable is so important. This is a learning forum I co-founded seven years ago with a number of leaders in the cityreaching movements of North America.
God's intention is redemption, not the human brokenness that comes as a result of sin and selfishness. His salvation comes through God's own intentional brokenness that brings a power confrontation at the crux of history between God's weakness and the evil one's stronghold. That stronghold is where the road of sin and selfishness ends in despair, loneliness, isolation and ultimately death. God chose a lonely road to a hill outside a holy city where criminals were cast to a disjointed death in despair and disrepute. In this season of Lent, we remember that God took death, the consequence of sin and conquered it by accepting the unjust judgment of a community of people broken into fractured relationships with themselves, their families, their authorities and even their God as a result of sin and selfishness. When Jesus died, death seemed to swallow up even the goodness of God. It was our own selfishness and sin that put him to death. It was my selfishness that pounded the nails into his hands and feet.
What power does God show in this weakness? It is a power greater than the trump card of despair and death played by the evil one. Could it be that the death of the Sinless One, Jesus, would be more than a heroic personal exemplary act? What would it mean if the Creator of the universe came and lived among us and was put to death unjustly? Isaiah says that "...by his wounds we are healed." Again Isaiah writes, "All we, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned and gone his own way, but God has caused the iniquity of us all to fall upon him." Who is Isaiah talking about if not, Jesus of Nazareth? His death puts sin to death and causes any who believe this to die to self and rise to new life in Him. His death creates a community of people who through faith become a new kind of people who put the brokenness of sin and selfishness, the despair of death behind them and become a community of love, grace and hope.
The City Impact Roundtable (CIR) is a community of servant leaders who have taken this so seriously that they are leading the way not only in the local churches they serve, but in bringing leaders of churches, ministries and marketplace leaders together to express a deeper unity. It is the unity Jesus prayed for when he prayed, "I pray that they may be one, Father, even as you and I are one, so that the world will know that you sent me." We are seeing an answer to this prayer in our day as the new community takes on the mission of "the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole city or community." Church leaders, lay or clergy, who humbly take the new servant leadership roles that Jesus calls us into are beating back the brokenness brought by sin and selfishness and showing new ways to bring hope and healing to a despairing dying world.
During the CIR, April 3-5, leaders of movements from more than 60 cities around the USA will share models of unity and compassion in which churches are working together to minister to those in great need. We will hear from seven cities as models from around the USA and will hear stories of what God is doing to bring the church together for ministry throughout the world.
On Wednesday, I will share as part of a panel about how the church can be more effetively prepared for crises. Today, I spoke to my friend JD Smith of Citi Impact Ministries who has been working in Waverly, MS since Katrina sent the punishing 30 foot tidal surge five miles inland on August 29, 2005. Over 2,000 volunteers have come from churches all over America bringing a message of hope and healing. In one case, a couple of months after the hurricane's destruction, a family had given up hope of being able to recover economically and were at their wits end. They had in fact, made a pact with death that they planned to carry out at the end of the day, if God did not send a sign. It was that very day that a group of church volunteers showed up at their home with supplies, laborers and a message of hope. Today the family has a faith in a God, who has given them a much brighter outlook, and they have such hope that they are helping others.
Workers who come to the Gulf Coast are having their eyes opened. They learn about the healing power of compassion and bring it home to churches that have grown complacent. We are hearing stories of churches whose faith and love has been rekindled so that they are now more aware of the poor and disenfranchised in their communities. Now their compassion for the poor and their love for Christ is being revived and churches are coming alive as communities of redemption, love and hope.
Whether it is the crushing poverty of Kitale, Kenya with all the corrupt officials; or the racist walls still so evident even after the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, sin and selfishness are evident everywhere. That's why a meeting like the City Impact Roundtable is so important. This is a learning forum I co-founded seven years ago with a number of leaders in the cityreaching movements of North America.
God's intention is redemption, not the human brokenness that comes as a result of sin and selfishness. His salvation comes through God's own intentional brokenness that brings a power confrontation at the crux of history between God's weakness and the evil one's stronghold. That stronghold is where the road of sin and selfishness ends in despair, loneliness, isolation and ultimately death. God chose a lonely road to a hill outside a holy city where criminals were cast to a disjointed death in despair and disrepute. In this season of Lent, we remember that God took death, the consequence of sin and conquered it by accepting the unjust judgment of a community of people broken into fractured relationships with themselves, their families, their authorities and even their God as a result of sin and selfishness. When Jesus died, death seemed to swallow up even the goodness of God. It was our own selfishness and sin that put him to death. It was my selfishness that pounded the nails into his hands and feet.
What power does God show in this weakness? It is a power greater than the trump card of despair and death played by the evil one. Could it be that the death of the Sinless One, Jesus, would be more than a heroic personal exemplary act? What would it mean if the Creator of the universe came and lived among us and was put to death unjustly? Isaiah says that "...by his wounds we are healed." Again Isaiah writes, "All we, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned and gone his own way, but God has caused the iniquity of us all to fall upon him." Who is Isaiah talking about if not, Jesus of Nazareth? His death puts sin to death and causes any who believe this to die to self and rise to new life in Him. His death creates a community of people who through faith become a new kind of people who put the brokenness of sin and selfishness, the despair of death behind them and become a community of love, grace and hope.
The City Impact Roundtable (CIR) is a community of servant leaders who have taken this so seriously that they are leading the way not only in the local churches they serve, but in bringing leaders of churches, ministries and marketplace leaders together to express a deeper unity. It is the unity Jesus prayed for when he prayed, "I pray that they may be one, Father, even as you and I are one, so that the world will know that you sent me." We are seeing an answer to this prayer in our day as the new community takes on the mission of "the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole city or community." Church leaders, lay or clergy, who humbly take the new servant leadership roles that Jesus calls us into are beating back the brokenness brought by sin and selfishness and showing new ways to bring hope and healing to a despairing dying world.
During the CIR, April 3-5, leaders of movements from more than 60 cities around the USA will share models of unity and compassion in which churches are working together to minister to those in great need. We will hear from seven cities as models from around the USA and will hear stories of what God is doing to bring the church together for ministry throughout the world.
On Wednesday, I will share as part of a panel about how the church can be more effetively prepared for crises. Today, I spoke to my friend JD Smith of Citi Impact Ministries who has been working in Waverly, MS since Katrina sent the punishing 30 foot tidal surge five miles inland on August 29, 2005. Over 2,000 volunteers have come from churches all over America bringing a message of hope and healing. In one case, a couple of months after the hurricane's destruction, a family had given up hope of being able to recover economically and were at their wits end. They had in fact, made a pact with death that they planned to carry out at the end of the day, if God did not send a sign. It was that very day that a group of church volunteers showed up at their home with supplies, laborers and a message of hope. Today the family has a faith in a God, who has given them a much brighter outlook, and they have such hope that they are helping others.
Workers who come to the Gulf Coast are having their eyes opened. They learn about the healing power of compassion and bring it home to churches that have grown complacent. We are hearing stories of churches whose faith and love has been rekindled so that they are now more aware of the poor and disenfranchised in their communities. Now their compassion for the poor and their love for Christ is being revived and churches are coming alive as communities of redemption, love and hope.
posted by Glenn Barth at 7:00 PM
