Reed Fleming

I realize as I look over my last number of blog entries that I haven’t been saying much about Taylor College lately. I want to correct that somewhat. What lies before us as a college is an enormous opportunity, an opportunity to set a new and exciting course while carrying forward all that is so wonderful about our history with the Church Army and recently with Threshold Ministries. We will not have any students in our college building next fall. We had several serious applications but each has fallen through.  I will not sugar coat this, it has felt like death to me! I believe that we have a wonderful thing here at Taylor and our graduates testify to this but still we have no students in our buildings this year! I admit to being in a bit of a funk about this development.

One of my favourite quotes is from A Tale of Two Cities “It was the best of times it was the worst of times.” It captures for me what it means to be about the excitement of Kingdom business while still inhabiting this decaying world. All around is death and we have the opportunity to be the aroma of abundant life.  In the midst of my non-tropical depression I know that God’s Spirit leads and prospects for higher service lurk in the shadows.

We have for sometime been realising, as a community of evangelists, that God is directing us to more and more entrepreneurial Kingdom enterprises. This ‘down’ time gives us the opportunity to research and re-tool so that Taylor can be a place of formation for those called to new and creative ways of doing evangelism and raising support for evangelistic ministries.

For years Street Hope has been a significant vehicle for this creative outreach but the future calls us to expand into other forms of Church Planting and the creation of businesses which will employ people in our communities, provide opportunity to live out and share the Gospel and financially support the work of the wider Threshold Ministries. To do this Taylor will need to change! Over the months ahead I will be exploring the world of ‘business as mission’ or ‘social entrepreneurship ‘ or ‘transforming capitalism’, with a view to how we can position Taylor College to be a place for equipping leaders for this 21^st Century style of mission.

We dare not throw the baby out with the bath water! We must retain our strong Bible centred teaching and emphasis on relationship as the vehicle for all our mission. This will create a tension for us as we lurch ahead but hopefully it will be a creative tension which will take us to ever greater usefulness.

Please keep us in your prayers and if you have books or places or people you recommend as resources to help us in our thinking please let me know. If  you think I’m way off base please let me know that as well.

Lately I have returned to the “Red Letters”. I confess that for years now I had been concentrating mostly on other parts of the Bible. I was interested in reading about Jesus but was, in the process, neglectful of Him! Colossians 1 describes Jesus as the very centre of everything on earth. Revelation portrays Him as the centre of all in Heaven and for eternity. This is a person we should truly get to know, not just know about! I will be eternally grateful for what He has done for me but He is calling me to much more, and much deeper than this. He challenges me to move beyond being blessed acquaintance, to the place where I am a friend.

I learned the stories of Jesus at Sunday School and when I read them I was not paying close attention. In my head I was saying “Yeah, yeah, I know this.” When I would read Christian books and the author would quote Jesus, I would frequently scan past it to get back to what the human author had to say. By maintaining this attitude I ensured that my relationship (read friendship) with Jesus could not progress, as it should. In doing so I was, in some ways, letting a “Sunday School” caricature suffice as my  chief image of Him. I want to be clear that I have been well taught and my image of Jesus was true, but limited.

The challenge for a Christian is to continue “getting to know “ Jesus. We do this in the same way we nurture other friendships. We listen to Him! Not long ago I had an accident and I have lost some hearing but my children will tell you my real hearing problem comes with an uncanny ability to tune out what I am not listening for. This may be an attribute if I am watching hockey in room full of those who could care less about the outcome, but it does not help build relationships. What I do in physical realm I often duplicate in my spiritual life. I only hear what I am listening for! So I have decided to be intentionally focused on the words of Jesus.

Along with this concentration on the words of Jesus I have been reading: Re:Jesus by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, Jesus the Fool by Michael Frost, The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey, and Jesus Manifesto by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola. These are all books which challenge me to take a fresh grown up look at Jesus and discover again, for the first time this complex and simple Lord who stands at the very centre of all creation.

I highly recommend this exercise. I believe that we can take Jesus at His word “If I be lifted up, I will draw all people unto me.” The proclamation of Jesus is not the Good News,  Jesus himself is the Good News. Our mission and our Christian unity hinge on our personal knowledge of Him and our obedience to Him.

I have been reading a very challenging book “Jesus the Fool” by Michael Frost. Here is one of my favourite quotes.

 “Jesus was poor. His is a refreshing poverty that allows him to accept others as one with nothing to lose. There are no defences up with Jesus. Like a fool, too simple to know he shouldn’t be so accepting, Jesus fashions free and friendly space around. This is a space that quickly fills up with “sinners” – women, children, lepers, tax collectors and others. It follows, then, that the church should essentially be a community of poor people.”

I was sharing at Up Town Sunday night about the bumper sticker that reads “The one who dies with the most toys wins!” I asked how many had seen a U-Haul behind a hearse and of course none of us had. I suggested that the one who dies with the most toys is dead! The pursuit of riches leaves us ultimately in a place of true poverty. Riches when pursued take a power over us. Scripture tells us it (mammon) enslaves us. Jesus embraces a poverty which makes riches a matter of indifference and in doing so lives a life free of its power. In living this counter cultural life, pursuing solely the Father’s will; Jesus creates this environment in which the outcast finds a home!

This book challenges me to recall that I cannot serve two masters. I cannot pursue the things of this world and at the same time be pursuing God. I cannot fit comfortably with the culture around me and make a welcoming space for the outcast. If I am not finding my treasure in Him any attempt at mission is impossible. But if I follow Jesus and his indifference to riches I can perhaps be a part of the community of the broken which gathers around Him, who is our only hope and healer. I think that may be the life worth pursuing. Care to join me?

I was in a near panic the other day. My Kindle suddenly went blank and I could not get it to do anything. I am not at all a tech geek but I have come to really value my Kindle. It will hold up to 1,500 books, though I only have 38 on it right now. I love to read and this makes my library very portable. I especially like it on those days when my fingers aren’t working very well. It makes turning to the next page just a click of my thumb.  With this in mind you might understand my angst when I thought I had lost it all. I went to the Help section online but still nothing worked. The next morning I was getting ready to go online and report the failure to Amazon when I opened the Kindle and it was working fine! Now I did not pray for my Kindle nor do I think that God intervened with my book reader but I am so grateful to have it back, especially as Linda and I go on a holiday starting Monday.

One book I have been particularly enjoying is “Simple Spirituality: Learning to See God in a Broken World” by Christopher Heuertz. In the book he tells the story of Deepa. Deepa is a twelve year old Indian girl. Her mother had died of AIDS and her father was deathly ill. He vested Deepa and her younger sister. He was so frail Chris thought he would break as the girl jumped in his lap. Shortly after the visit Deepak’s father took his life. Chris and his wife sat with Deepa and cried with her over this great loss. His only legacy to his daughters was a scraggly potted rose bush. As Chris and his wife bade Deepa goodbye, with a tear stained face Deepa offered one of the roses to Chris’s wife Phileena.  Today he carries that dry flower and remembers her extravagant little gift.

This is so much like the story of the widow’s mite in scripture and it challenges me in my weak attempts to be generous. Perhaps the key to it all isn’t what I give but what I keep! By this I don’t mean just money but my whole self. I sometimes feel ‘superior’ because I give of myself for others. I think it is okay to feel good about this but certainly superiority is sin! But even as I examine what I give I recognize that I hold a lot back. I am an introvert by nature so I excuse this by saying I need time by myself. But I take what may be a basic need for my health and become a glutton!

This last month, as I have been writing about generosity, it became apparent that my 10+ year old car was not long for this world. My habit is to buy a very basic car and drive it until it won’t go so Linda and I toddled off to buy a new car. We went looking for the most basic of models when we learned from the salesman that the car with a number of ‘bells and whistles’ was actually as cheap. I suppose this is because there is not much of a market for a base model. At any rate we drove off the lot with a lot more car than we expected to. I find it kind of embarrassing but I know that when it is 10+ years old I will have long since got over feelings of embarrassment. Not long after buying this car we went to hear Tony Campolo and he challenged us to adopt a child through World Vision. I leaned over to Linda and said “If we can drive a new tricked out car then surely we can adopt a child. So now we have added Chordy and his family in Cambodia to our circle. I still feel challenged and I realise that this is a messy and life long struggle with no pat answers or 10% solutions. I am finding that this is what it means to follow after Jesus.

I was helping someone up a long set of stairs the other day and I was thinking how grateful I am that I can run up the stairs each day. A few years ago I had “a bit of a fall” (some Canadian understatement) and one of my biggest fears was that I would no longer be able to spring up the stairs, as has been my lifelong habit. Well I thank God that that fear proved unfounded (at least for now). I did gain strength and I am back to my usual racing pace.

I learned that I am quite jealous of my independence. I thrill to be able to walk and run and work! Yet there was an early time when I was carried before I could walk. I was picked up when I fell and encouraged to get up and try again. My development of ‘independence’ was entirely dependent on others. I learned to walk in community and after my fall I needed that same sort of community.

Jesus calls us to, take up our cross and follow Him. Paul describes this adventure as ‘walking’. The lessons I draw from needing a community to walk are very apt to my need for community to walk out my spiritual life!

There are stages when we need to be carried. There are times when we fall that we need gentle restoration.  There is always the need for encouragement. Equally we (the Church) are called to carry, restore and encourage others! None of these needs can be met in isolation. We need each other. While most of us live in single family dwellings (hedged off from the world) or in apartments (well named as apart-ments) this becomes a challenge.

I am not advocating that we all move into communes (though this has a definite appeal). I am advocating that we make intentional efforts to find and to be real community. This means going beyond homogeneity . If we are to carry, restore and encourage and be carried, restored and encouraged it will happen best with others who have diverse backgrounds.

When Linda and I first became involved in planting Up Town Church I was drawn to this community of need to satisfy my urge to fix people. This is not an ignoble attitude but it falls far short of Christ’s incarnational example. I soon came to experience a gracious transition from an “us (the ministry team) and them (the folks of Up Town) to an us. I even got to be the central player in a parable of this type of interdependence when I was so broken.

At Up Town we see ourselves as “an honest accepting community (my word for the day) of broken people; who are experiencing the Father’s love, finding wholeness in Christ, and performing acts of kindness in the power of the Holy Spirit.” Together we are experiencing His transforming power and leaking that transformation into our neighbourhoods.

“I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone you be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Luke 16:9

Recently I learned a new phrase “relational generosity. I came across it as I read “God’s Economy” by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. Jonathan is a brilliant writer from the New Monastic movement. Following are some of my reflections on part of his book.

We are not isolated from the economy as if we adrift in a sea too big for us to exert any control. We may be up the creek but we do have instruments with which to paddle. We have a role in the economy. Often we talk about being stewards. This means that we have an influence. James when he talks about the tongue illustrates that a little instrument can have enormous influence i.e. a small rudder turns a huge ship (perhaps very slowly) or a little tongue can cause a world of hurt. That we are small (like a mustard seed?) ought not to paralyze us in inaction but is evidence of the upside down nature of the Kingdom. It is our very smallness and relative impotence which comprises the foolishness God wishes to use to confound the wise.

Jesus enjoins us to a relational generosity. This involves an investment in befriending people, particularly the poor, and investing in them. In the macro-economics of the world we will never eradicate poverty. Jesus seems to affirm this notion when He states “The poor you will have with you always.” But a Kingdom view seems much more holistic and relational. Our Kingdom focus then is not solely on the end result (ending poverty) but is more keenly on obedience to the Kingdom means. Perhaps what we should take most out of Jesus teaching that we will always have the poor with us, is the final pronoun. The word “us” is a word of belonging, it is the ultimate expression of an intimate relationship. Jesus in his incarnation became one of “us”, as a ‘show and tell’ for the Kingdom. He sends you and me “us” in the same way to be a ‘show and tell’ through our incarnational and missional lives. The challenge then is to live lives of relational generosity, making friends with the poor until finally there is only an us.

I have friends who decry the relational generosity exhibited in Acts 4, as believers shared relationally. They point to the need for Paul to take up an offering for Jerusalem, but the taking of the offering only demonstrates that the lesson of relational generosity had become normative for the whole Church.

This whole idea has great appeal, to me, by virtue of its truly subversive nature. This is so at odds with all I have experienced economically. The beauty too is that in terms of the world this is apolitical. A conservative or liberal can equally practise relational generosity.

You're not in Up Town anymore Toto

It is time to begin planning for our annual “Up Town Vacation” to Deer Island. Each year a philanthropist friend underwrites all the expenses of a trip out of the gritty inner-city to the beautiful setting of Deer Island.

We look forward to this all year! It is an escape, sure, but it is also a foretaste of heaven for us. All of our physical needs are more than taken care of and we spend the time just being with and caring for one another.

The picture above is from our camp fire site. You see many sights in Up Town but never anything like that! On our first trip one of our friends said as we were about 30 minutes out of town, “I’ve never been this far from home, in my life.” Another friend who is estranged from his daughter invited her to come. For the past two years they have had real healing times on the island and she is looking forward to coming again.

People who know me know that it was on our first trip to Deer Island that I had a fall which nearly took but certainly changed my life! I think that my jaw and my life are a parable for the change we all experience on Deer Island.

We have a saying at Up Town “It’s not rocket-surgery!” There is nothing complicated about this. It is as simple as having and building wholesome relationships. We look forward to doing this again August 10 – 13.

Oops! I keep missing my own deadline! Last week I got to witness a great example of a community in mission. A friend of mine, Keith, pastors a church which is about 45 minutes from Saint John, in Penfield. He tells me that God is on the move in his congregation. The prayer meetings are exciting and he is experiencing a special anointing in preaching and people in the community are starting to be drawn in. I am reminded of a story of John Wesley who told people his secret was to be set afire by the Holy Spirit and then people would come to watch him burn. It is exciting to hear of a Church being so blessed by God’s Spirit but what really thrilled me was to see some 25 people from there come to Up Town and put on a delicious meal for our drop in crown (60 -70 people last week). Folks sat down and engaged our friends in conversation and the music group played. At first they played worship songs and people enjoyed that but when they expanded into ‘The Monkees’ and ‘CCR’, things really took off. Joy filled the place. People clapped and sang along some brave souls ventured up to sing with the group. People left fed in body, soul and spirit. To me this is the real fruit of revival. I suspect God is blessing my friends church so that it can be a blessing in the community and beyond! I must admit I am little sick of revival and renewal movements that reflect a consumerist “more for me and mine” attitude. This reflects a church which is infected with the culture of our times. True revival must reflect the heart of God which we see in the life of Jesus who came “to bring good news to the poor … proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go and to declare the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18 – 19). It is this Spirit which is designed to go out and infect the world.

I suspect that if you want to experience true revival, whether corporate or personal, it is most likely to be found in the company of the poor. Jesus says when you do it to the least of these my brothers, you do it unto me. Sometimes we think that means that when we feed cloth or visit someone it is like doing it to Jesus, and that is true but more profoundly, when we meet the hungry, the broken then we meet Jesus. That is where He hung out in his earthly walk and that is where His Body ought  to be today!

I mentioned in my last post that it has been a bit of a whirlwind the last few weeks. I went with our students to Paradise Nova Scotia at the end of April. We did a mission there which involved a coffee house outreach. The venue was packed and a variety of musicians played and sang out the Good News. The students and I premiered our drama. This was a bit outside my comfort zone but they really needed a guy and I was the best they could come up with. We visited a home for disabled people and a senior’s residence as well but perhaps the highlight was our visit to a Youth Detention Centre.  Mike, an acappella Gospel singer, joined us. His soulful renditions of some favourite hymns captured the young men in attendance. They sang with gusto and the Holy Spirit seemed   palpably present1 I spoke on the Parable of the two lost sons and the prodigal love of the Father. We had some great cookies and a time to chat afterwards. This one event made the whole trip worthwhile!

The following Saturday we had our graduation. This year all of our students graduated (I am experiencing ‘empty nest syndrome’). John Carroll who teaches Preaching for us gave the address “Why we do not give up.” I trust this stirring message will stand our grads in good stead in the ministry lives ahead of them.

On Monday Charles Price from Peoples’ Church in Toronto spoke about God’s call on our lives using the life of Moses as his template. This too was a very rousing message for all as we prayed for and witnessed the commissioning of five new evangelists.

Tuesday Linda and I flew off to Kola Manitoba where I led a series of meetings. Our topic, as you may remember from last week, was Jesus is Lord. This sounds like it might be elementary stuff for we do begin our walk acknowledging that Jesus is Lord but we must remember that He is the beginning and the end. In fact we will spend eternity focussing on this wonderful reality. As an evangelist I am used to preaching for a conversion to the lordship of Jesus but this was a happy opportunity where we got to go deep into what it means to practically follow Him, to become ‘little Jesus’ to the world. This requires a commitment to ongoing personal holiness and to a missional life style.

The prayer before each service was precious and I believe the Holy Spirit was working in the hearts of people. Many were visibly moved and shared a renewed commitment to Jesus’ lordship in their lives. Kola is a community which was founded for mission. The folks who lived there moved from the heavily Mennonite South East Manitoba to the South west part of the province in order to spread the Gospel. They were not welcomed in several communities but eventually carved a home out of the swampy ground in what is now Kola. While this is their history we know that we cannot coast on our yesterdays. Obedience needs to be fresh and willing. It is my hope that our time together will be used of God for the re-firing of the original purposes of this community.

Now I am back in Saint John and exercising my limited administrative gifts as I cobble together next fall’s program. I thank God that I still have Up Town to distract me from the desk bound existence of a college principal. I’m looking forward to our drop in tonight. I hear things went wonderfully without me last week (that is good news).

As I reflect on it all I can testify that … God is faithful

This has been a bit of a whirlwind week or so. The students and I got back from our mission in Paradise Nova Scotia, we had Graduation and Commissioning and then I took off for the Prairies where I am speaking at a Deeper Life Conference at a Mennonite Church.

I feel a little like I am taking coals to Newcastle because my journey over the last few years has made me a new comer to concepts long held by my Mennonite friends. I have grown to have a real unease with allegiance to ‘the empires’ of this world and the values of the dominant culture. I have come to firmly believe that Christianity demands of us a radical allegiance to the Kingdom of our God.

In this adventure I think of as an escape from churchianity I have arrived at the conclusion that to say “Jesus is Lord” is much easier than living it. To truly identify with Jesus and His Kingdom I must be dedicated to doing what He did. It is a call to be like him. Now I know we don’t need another Saviour, that position is filled, but following Him must entail imitating him. So what did He do? He proclaimed the Kingdom. He spent time with the poor. He relieved suffering. He suffered. He spoke prophetically to those in authority. He was reviled and reviled not. He loved! Now He did much more, in fact John says we couldn’t begin to compile an exhaustive list but this is a good start. So these are the things that my life ought to be about if I am really imitating Jesus.

Oh how I need his mercy! How far short I fall! But I cannot simply resign myself to a life of failure to follow! By His grace I will be like Jesus. This is my prayer. This is my determination.

I used to say ‘Jesus is Lord’ in my morning prayers and then ask Him to follow me through my day. (Sadly I don’t think I am atypical.) Now I say ‘Jesus is Lord’ and I ask grace that I might follow Him through the day. Scripture tells us “My sheep know my voice.” I want to earnestly listen for that voice so that I might be like Jesus.

He said “I do only what the Father tells me.” And “As the Father sent me so I send you” I invite you to join me in a commitment to a renewed imitation of Jesus. Only then will we be able to say with integrity ‘Jesus is my Lord’.