Radical Together, Chapter One

Lord, we don't want to settle for good things as your people. We want only Your best.

So this theme of Community keeps popping up for me (to be fair, there are lots of themes that keep popping up - trying to whack-a-mole them with study and the codification process into the knowledge-experience category). Read only the first chapter of David Platt's book yesterday.

We must be willing to sacrifice good things in the church (in life, yah) in order to experience the great things of God. Everything needs to belong on the table, available to the axe. We need to ask, What needs to go? What needs to change? What needs to stay the same? What needs more focus and resources?
And then wait for God to answer.

Asking the "What's wrong with..." question is counterproductive in this process. Because the good things aren't wrong. There's nothing wrong with so many of our pursuits - they are, definitively, good ones - but they're not the great, they're not the best, and they may not be God's will at all.

Platt had a list of church-program-related questions to skinny down his new church's activity set, but only a couple bridge into the personal as well:

What good things do we have, or what good things are we doing, that we need to abolish for greater ends?

Amid all the good things we are doing and planning, are there better ways to align with God's word, mobilize God's people, and marshal God's resources for God's glory in a world where millions of people are starving and a billion have never even heard of Jesus?

And the statement:

We will do whatever You want, we will drop whatever You command, we will eliminate whatever is not best, and we will add whatever is necessary in order to make Your glory known, no matter what it costs us.

Processing. Platt's concerned with the church community; their budget, activities, mission, giving. That's a start, but my start starts here in the home. We've been skinnied down to essentials over the last three years - from anywhere but a Lordly perspective, it's been a disaster. But it's been a blessing, really, and a natural training program to eliminate a lot of extraneous wants that weren't needs, some things that truly needed to go but had become lifestyle, and a lot of goods that weren't bests.
Now to be intentional about taking stock of what's left for us in our budget, activities, mission, giving.