The Parable of the Two Farmers

Once there were two farmers who each had a vision of a wonderful crop, free of weeds and producing a great harvest.

The first farmer gathered all the seeds and spread them out, then began picking out the weed seeds from among the wheat seeds.

The second farmer sowed all the seeds right away.

Some time later the second farmer was busy at work pulling the weeds each day as the crop grew, while the first farmer was busy at work searching for and removing weed seeds in preparation for planting.

Eventually, the second farmer had a wonderful harvest. The first farmer had a lot of very clean seed.


(Just a little window into my world on a Wednesday morning.)

Putting Your Life in Forward Motion (Excursion 4/Road Trip #14 June 24, 2018)

This is the fourth and final message in the Excursion for June 2018. It's also message # 14 in my "Road Trip" series at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church. 

Title: "Putting Your Life in Forward Motion"

Message Summary:  If we've made it a regular practice in our lives to let the Lord fill us up with life, then that "inflow" will want to go somewhere! So the final theme has to do with letting the Lord direct our lives, direct the flow of love from us to our neighbors. This message introduces the image and metaphor of The Asteroid Field to talk about navigating in our ever-changing lives, which is to say, following where Jesus leads. The process of "orient, act, repeat" turns out to match beautifully with the way Jesus describes his core message in Mark 1:19 saying "The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom is near - repent and believe the good news." 

Video: Click here to watch video of the message on Facebook.

Audio: Click here to listen to audio of the message.

Slides: Click here to see slides from the message.

Conversation Questions from the Travel Guide

• Where in your life do you see something exciting or something with “energy around it” right now?
• If the Lord was inviting you to “go for it!” or otherwise engage in that area, what would it look like if you did?
• Where in your life do you see something that’s really concerning for you – a person, issue or problem that’s just “on your heart” a lot at this time?
• If the Lord was inviting you to “go for it!” or otherwise engage in that area, what would it look like if you did?

Bible verses for Learning to be Loved:

• John 10:1-6
• John 8:12
• John 6:60-69
• John 15:10-12
• Luke 10:27
• Matthew 16:24-25
• Luke 5:27-29

Join the Conversation in June

For the month of June I'm inviting people into conversation - with each other and with me - around four weekly themes that I have found to be foundational in the way I understand and practice my faith. Would you like to join in?

The themes are part of a "Visual Catechism" I'm developing. The first theme is "Flow," which explores the idea that humans are designed to be like L-shaped pipes that receive and release goodness so that it flows through us from God to each other. The second theme, "Abide" emphasizes the importance of learning how to be loved since the inflow from God is what drives the outflow. "Rhythm" considers how we can order our lives so that this way of living is built into our schedules and not dependent on when we happen to be having a good day. Finally, the "Follow" theme looks at how we can hear and act on what God is up to in our lives which gives our outflow direction in the world.

To support conversation on those themes I've created a downloadable Travel Guide with scripture references and discussion questions, and a Facebook page that will follow along with the weekly message I will be preaching at St. Stephen's in West Saint Paul. The messages will be posted online here for easy access. All these resources are being collected on the Excursion tab on this blog, so that's the hub for pretty much everything you might want.

To participate, all you need to do is find someone else that you'd like to explore these themes with, grab the resource and run with it! If you'd like to be in conversation with me and others along the way, the Facebook page is the place for that.

I hope you'll come along on the Excursion! It's be a joy to have you in conversation and a real help to me as I continue to work on creating a resource that I hope can be valuable to many.

Tim

P.S. - Some of my icons are drawn from or influenced by the resources of the 3dm Movement. I HIGHLY recommend you check them out!

My Favorite Metaphors: Asteroid Field Navigation

I want to start collecting some of the metaphors and visuals that I keep returning to and thought I'd start with Asteroid Field Navigation. I touched on this briefly once before in the context of making "mistakes" but thought I'd brush it off and represent it.

Asteroid Field Navigation

Back in the days of Lewis and Clark they could spend a few years making a map, hand it over to you, and it would still work because all the mountains and rivers were right where they left them. In our world, the terrain itself is unstable, and it's better still to go the next step and just acknowledge that there is no terrain period. Instead, we travel and navigate in an asteroid field where everything is in motion, including us.  If you try to make a map, you won't succeed because by the time it's done, it's obsolete, and you've probably been hit by an asteroid in the mean time anyway.

But navigation is still possible. They way you do it is by constant course correction in a three step process.

First, orient yourself by quickly getting sufficient clarity about where you are and where you are going. "Where you are" includes getting a bead on the rocks in motion around you, especially those on a collision course.

Second, move. Take some action that avoids catastrophe, utilizes immediate opportunity and moves you in the direction of the destination even if it's not a straight-line course. (Fellow geeks will enjoy visualizing this with vectors.)

Finally, now that you have initiated movement, your whole context has shifted. So go back to step one and start over. Orient, Act, Repeat.

Spells OAR. Cute, huh?  That's just icing on the cake, speaking metaphorically.

Asteroid Field Navigation

A clergy friend posted a nice thought this morning that got me pontificating about the Asteroid Field again. (Not that it takes much to get me to pontificate.)

He wrote:

"When you are organizing a new kind of community you will make mistakes. Admitting when you are wrong is essential to successful organizing. Self awareness is healthy. But like any community the main thing is to have fun together and git 'r done. For my money this means foster creativity, celebrate liminality, open source crowd source strong networks, and grow this frickin' church. Spirit willing that is."

I replied:

"Count me in. And FWIW, I suggest pushing back even harder on the assumption that we shouldn't make "mistakes." Embedded in the notion of mistakes is the idea that a correct path exists that you cold, theoretically, follow correctly. Like a trail map through the mountains that you could deviate from by a mistake in navigation. Much of our context no longer even allows for the possibility of a map, because there is no terrain. We navigate the asteroid field now. There can be no map, and if you try to write one you'll get hit because you sat still too long while drafting it. In fact, I'd say that the most common "mistake" in our context is just that: sitting still too long. The only chance at survival (not to mention progress) is *constant movement and course correction.* Orient, Act, Repeat.

"As a side note... OAR navigation works much better with very small teams, I think. Taking a Star Destroyer into the asteroid field is lunacy. Going in with a TIE fighter or the Falcon is pretty darn risky... but survivable!"