Check out these photos from last Tuesday’s Gathering at The Kay Center.  It was an amazing night and as I think back to last week, I’m filled with anticipation for what God is going to do in that room this Tuesday night.

See you tomorrow night, AU!!

How do you know how bought into the vision of your ministry someone is?

That’s a real question every leader wrestles with as we walk into staff meetings, planning times and conversations with individual leaders and innovators in our ministries.  It’s on my mind this afternoon since I’ll be spending tomorrow morning with the amazing student leaders of The Gathering at American University.  They’re a relatively young leadership team and I want to know how bought in they are.

While my answer to that problem isn’t foolproof, it is simple and it’s effective.  Run the pronoun test.  Here’s how: listen when someone uses a pronoun to refer to your ministry.  Do they use “you or them”  or do they say “we or us”?  You can tell so much from that.  Someone who sits in a meeting and says “you guys really should….” isn’t bought into the vision yet.  But someone who says “we need to…” is more bought in than you might think.

Really simple, I know, but it’s a great way to take the temperature of a room.

Praying I hear a chorus of “we” and “us” at AU tomorrow!!

Hopefully this post is no surprise for all of you who call the lovely little corner of NW Washington known as American University home. But our first Gathering worship experience of the semester is tomorrow night at 9PM in the Kay Center. It’s going to be great to reconnect with those of you who are back for another year and every bit as amazing to meet those of you who are brand new to AU.

We’ve created a Facebook event as a way of inviting your friends and spreading the word. Would love to generate a little FB momentum today. I really think it gives people who can’t decide if they’re going to come or not a little more reason to show up if they know they aren’t going to be the only one there!! So, head on over to the FB event and let us know you’re in – and maybe shoot an invite to some of your friends as well. Here’s the link: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=122156422063&ref=mf

See you tomorrow, AU!!

John

We launched a new version of The Gathering’s website this week. I really like what our team came up with. Check it out at www.gatheringonline.org.

Summer’s winding down, but life on college and university campuses is accelerating pretty rapidly these days.  Some of us are enjoying the last few days of summer while getting everything organized for the trek back to campus and others are already settled into the dorm or apartment we’ll call home for the next nine months or so.  All the fall sports teams are back to practice in the lovely 90 degree humidity of a DC summer.  And campuses ministries are in a frenzy getting ready for or participating in welcome week events.  I know life for our Gathering team is pretty full on right now.

If we’re not careful, we can buy into the lie that we’re too busy to rest.  It feels like the last thing we have time for is a day off.  It’s funny – we don’t argue with the idea.  We just plan to put it off a bit until things get a little less hectic.  Of course, we all know that never works – those “less hectic” days seem to be perpetually just out of reach.  So, we don’t rest because we’re just too busy.

God anticipated that scenario in a little conversation He had with a guy named Moses on the side of a mountain called Sinai.  It was the second time the two had gotten together up there but God’s Words were no less penetrating this time.  Listen to what He instructs Moses, “Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.” (Exodus 34:21)

It’s the familiar command to rest.  But look at the second half of the verse – even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.  Those were the two busiest times of year in an agrarian society!  God knew that Israel would try to dodge rest at the times they were most busy, the times when they needed it most.  Same thing for us, right?  And God goes out of His way to remind them and us that even in the busiest times of life, we must rest.

So, it doesn’t matter how busy this season is.  The question is the same for all of us – when’s your next time of rest?  And if the answer is “when I have time”, you need to go read the passage again and get something more specific on the calendar!

The fall is always a dizzying array of posters, flyers and rave cards on campus.  The Gathering is jumping into the sea of things competing for student’s attention with a version of the above poster that’s customized for your campus.  We’re praying the Lord will use posters like this to connect students not only with The Gathering but infinitely more significantly, the life changing power of God.

We wanted to toss it up here as well in case you want to grab the image and post it to your Facebook page or anywhere else for that matter.  Feel free to use it any way you think would help get the word out to the campuses of DC.

Yesterday was an almost surreal collision of two very different events.

I spent my morning with an amazing team of students at American University serving their new classmates during freshman move-in.  It was like watching The Gathering come back to life for the year one sweat drenched box at a time.  It was a reminder that the church is here to bless the world; to be an undeniable positive in our culture.  Move-in is a strange mix of fear, anticipation, joy and uncertainty for the members of the class of 2013.  But it carries the feeling of a fresh beginning for all.

I left the high of move-in to go to a small church in Maryland to join with a beautiful community gathered together for the funeral of a dear friend’s mother.  Don’t get me wrong; there was hope in that church as well – the hope that comes from knowing that while gone from this world a loved one dances in the presence of a Christ she loved very much.  That joy was real.  But so were the tears.  Maybe both were heightened by my friend’s age.  She’s only 22 and just graduated from American a year ago.  Maybe you know her and her husband -they were deeply involved in creating The Gathering at AU and still serve Christ with their young lives today.  But even if you don’t know them, you can imagine the pain in one so young saying goodbye to her mother until they are reunited in heaven.

Quite a collision.  But out of it came clarity.

The church was filled with family and friends but also many young 22 year old faces.  Friends who had come to support, to love and to care.  Friends who had met in college for the most part and devoted much of their collegiate experience to serving Christ through The Gathering.  That’s when it hit me – some of the friends you make during move-in will stand with you for the rest of life.  These college years matter.  The Gathering isn’t just an event on your campus.  We’re a community of people striving to love God and each other well.  That’s what we’re here for and what God will do with that if you give yourself fully to His work and His plans is breath taking.  Sometimes it’s the “carry a box for a stranger” kind of breath taking.  And other times it’s a “I’m here for you” kind of breath taking.  But this thing we call the church really is breathtaking.

So much of my week at the lake can be summed up in one word: Recalibrate.  The dictionary.com definition explains why, “Recalibrate – to correct a measuring process by checking or adjusting again in comparison with a standard.”  The longer I live the more I realize my own need for regular times of spiritual, emotional and physical recalibration. 

The standard we use to guide that process should be the Word of God and the truths it conveys.  It really is amazing how many areas of life the Bible speaks to directly if we just look.  But let’s be honest.  The hard part for most of us is not discovering the standard but rather finding the time to check ourselves against it.  That’s why vacations, days off and nights where the cell phone goes on silent are essential for all of us. 

That’s been the story of my week – looking at God’s standard and my life and seeing where the two deviate.  Truthfully, the answer is way more places than I would like.  I need to get in the gym more, I need to rest more, I need to trust God in the lives of the people I lead more, I need to have more fun, I need to invest more in relationships and the list goes on and on. 

Now let me make it one step more convicting – all of that self checking isn’t even the hard part!  If we go back to the definition, we realize that if nothing actually changes, there’s been no recalibration.  Welcome to the truly impossible part!  Vacation sentiments have a way of getting crushed by the real world, I know.  We want to make all of these changes, but they never happen.  Ever been there?

Here’s the amazing news of the Gospel.   God not only leads us to the changes we need to make but also promises us the strength to live life in His rhythm.  Once we see the need to change, a sovereign Christ promises to bring that about by the power of the Spirit in us!  Recalibration is actually possible in my life and in yours.  Not because of our will power but because of the power of the One who loves each of us no matter how misaligned our lives are now.

My prayer is that each of us would find space for regular recalibration in life and the result would be an even more God focused life for each of us. 

Time to hit the beach,

John

One of the greatest phrases I’ve picked up from Lon Solomon, MBC’s Senior Pastor, is “trickle charge.”  It’s a pretty simple concept and I’ve found it amazingly helpful in my life.  Here’s the idea – humans are a lot like batteries.  You can shock/rapid charge a battery if you really need to get it up and running right now.  You just apply a ton of current in a really condensed time and it’s back to normal.  But if you shock charge a battery too much, it ruins it.  It’s far more effective to “trickle charge” a battery – let it get back to full strength slowly and over a prolonged period of time.  Trickle charging takes a lot more time, but it’s better for the battery and the battery holds it’s charge much longer.

Interesting, huh?

I guess I write all of that because I’m spending this week “trickle charging” in a small lakeside town in Upstate New York.  It’s been an amazing year and a great summer.  But I need a little bit of a break.  I need to “trickle charge.”  Any chance you would be willing to pray for me this week?  Would love to know some of you are praying for me – for rest, for fresh vision, for a renewed passion and to come back to DC ready for the year God has for us.

But I would also like to know you have some trickle charge time on the calendar.  Trust me, you need it…we all do!