One Church, Nine Locations
City Bible Church has unveiled plans to extend their collection of regional campuses to a total of nine locations, strategically placed all over the Portland metro area. The aim, writes Senior Pastor Frank Damazio in today's bulletin, is that no one in the metro need "drive more than twenty minutes to experience church the way we believe God had in mind."
I have my thoughts on this, but I'd rather hear yours. Comments?
The Calling of a Shepherd
“Simon son of John, do you truly love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” – John 21:16
Any call to shepherding must begin with a personal call from Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, the Sheep-Gate, and the Chief Shepherd over many shepherds, who is ultimately responsible for the well-being of the sheep. He is the one to whom all under-shepherds must give account. Without a commissioning from Him, therefore, into the role of shepherding, all efforts to shepherd God’s people will prove to be vain—a monumental waste of time and energy. The cornerstone of pastoring is a personal call from Jesus Christ to take care of His sheep—feeding them, providing for their needs, protecting them, disciplining them, tending to their wounds, and ensuring that they grow healthy and strong as Christians.
A call to shepherding is a call to disciple people. Scripture records that Jesus was moved with compassion on one occasion as he observed a large crowd that had gathered to hear Him speak. Matthew 9:36 says that Jesus saw that they were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Mark 6:34 says the same thing, and then continues, “So He began teaching them many things.” Shepherding involves having a deep well of compassion for people who do not know about God—whether they are believers or not. When we see the multitudes ignorant of the promises of God and the true nature of reality, we should—we must—be moved with great compassion. That compassion should translate into action as we share the Good News and expound the promises and the life-changing message of Scripture to those who have ears to hear.
So these are the basics of how we know that we are called to shepherd God’s flock: We are given a personal call from Christ, which translates into a deep compassion for people, which in turn moves us to teach them truth so that they can change how they live. John 10:12 also tells us that a shepherd is someone who is loyal, laying his life across the opening of the sheep-pen so the wolf cannot gain entrance. If someone thinks that they are called to shepherding, they must exhibit a compassion for people, a desire to instruct them in the ways of the Lord (and an ability to do so), and a loyalty to people that would take the shepherd to the point of risking his own life so that the world, the flesh, and the devil do not overtake people and entice them back into sin.
If shepherding involves loyalty, the source of that loyalty must be a deep-seated desire to see Christ’s church grow up into the full stature of what she was created and called to be. Any would-be shepherd who does not exhibit a passion for Christ’s church—local as well as universal—is unfit to serve. We can learn from the example of the Apostle Paul, who wrote of his passion to see the Ephesians “grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ” (Eph. 4:15). Later on in the same epistle, he writes of his vision of a “radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” In a particularly moving passage written to the Corinthians, Paul writes, “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him” (2 Cor. 11:2). This is the heart of a shepherd singing out pure and true. Our hearts must be like Paul’s—seeing the end from the beginning, hearing echoes of the Wedding Supper even though the Bride has a long way to go before she is prepared to marry.
If we are to have the shepherds’ hearts that God has called us to have, we must be constantly aware that all our labors are for the Great Shepherd. We must have a firm understanding that we are merely stewards of what He has given us to oversee. All of our labors are like that of a best friend preparing his friend’s bride for marriage. We are overseers of God’s flock. If any man feels a call to shepherding, he must exhibit a clear understanding of his relationship to Christ’s authority and the parameters of his own authority as a leader. When a man can clearly demonstrate that he understands the principles of spiritual authority—and can adequately show that he is not prone to falling into its many abuses—then, and only then, is he fit to walk in his calling.
How does a shepherd know whether he is truly called to a life of ministry? He must have been called personally by Jesus Christ to the ministry of feeding his sheep; he must have a deep wellspring of compassion for people that prompts him to study the Scriptures and to expound them to people with the purpose of creating abundant life; he must have a vision for people that transcends the present, putting all his labor into seeing the great marriage supper of the Lamb made a reality; and he must demonstrate that he grasps his submission to Christ and to other spiritual authority, as well as the limits of his own spiritual authority. Having done these things, the pastor is called to walk freely in his anointing, shepherding and nurturing the flock for which God gave His own life.
Isaiah 40
Rewritten in songSpeak words of comfort to my people
Speak with kindness to Jerusalem
Today, your stain has been erased
Today, your sins I have forgotten.
Every valley shall be exalted
Every mountain and hill made low
And the crooked shall be made straight
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed!
Oh, the glory of the Lord shall surely be revealed.
And you ask me to cry, oh Lord
I answer, "What shall I cry"
What shall I cry?
"The Lord will carry His lambs in His arms
Not one of them will be forgotten.
And He will be our shepherd
He will gather us into His arms;
He will press us against His bosom."
5-Minute Rock Stars & Buddhist Cemeteries
Sunday - "Jumping Worship"
We took the train into the heart of Osaka to play as a worship team at J-House, one of the newest and liveliest churches in Japan. On the way, we met up with Eriya (one of last year’s graduates at PBC), who had taken the bus through the night to meet us at Osaka Central Station. After meeting him, we walked for about 15 more minutes to find the J-House building, passing a myriad of small Buddhist shrines on the way. Since we are a praise-and-worship team, we had all of our instruments in hand, and so we were quite exhausted by the time we got there.
During the walk, Sharon (one of our team leaders) observed that people were parking their cars on a sort of metal ramp which would then lift the vehicles up a few levels by pulley. She said that this was how Japanese had to park in these crowded urban areas. I would have taken a picture, but my hands were full of instrumental equipage.
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J-House was interesting--not a very big church, but full of young people and remarkable in a staid culture for its lively worship. Lots of “jampingu waaship,” as the pastor called it. (Bob seized upon this as joke fodder immediately.) Bob preached, Joel translated, and the rest of the team played for a special worship service. After the service, we all went downstairs and had lunch.
I met a lady downstairs from Jamaica there who was nice until I asked her how, being Jamaican, she failed to speak with a Jamaican accent. After this question (which I thought was innocent enough) she became quite prickly, informing me that any real Jamaican can immediately discern the conversational context, and can switch the accent on and off accordingly. I decided that that was a good enough answer and finished my lunch.
We hung around after lunch because the afternoon service was about to begin. This time, it was just our team’s band playing. So we played and I dropped my pick twice while trying to look cool and our jampingu waaship leader Shinya broke a string and despite our best efforts, everything still managed to turn out alright in the end.
The second service ended and we packed up and walked about 15 minutes to another building across the river (I have no idea which one). We went in and it was a youth rally taking place in a big theater-style building. A couple of kids sang a song and an older Japanese man preached (he had an amazing testimony – his Dad was a traveling evangelist who never had time for his family and as a result, his Mom abandoned the family when he was 9 – God helped him deal with abandonment issues), and the J-House worship team played for a bit. After everyone was done, we got up and played “Shine,” (a song someone at City Bible Church wrote) and then that was apparently all the playing we had time for.
I got to play the J-House guitarist’s Stratocaster, which was awesome. Eriya had told me before we went on that he’d asked him, but after the service said guitarist came up glaring and huffing.
“I don’t mind if you play my guitar, but it would have been a matter of common courtesy to ask,” he said in a way that let me know he’d been offended.
I tried to respond as politely as I possibly could: “A friend of mine told me he did ask you,” I said in a conciliatory tone. He appeared surprised, and then Eriya showed up and said some things to him in rapid Japanese, and I suppose that something was sorted out, because the guitarist proceeded to shake my hand enthusiastically, smile broadly and tell me how much he'd really enjoyed our set and how well I'd played.
We were all beat, but the night was not yet over. Kenji, the regal-looking man whose wedding we'll be attending at the end of the week, treated us all to dinner at a terrific Japanese restaurant. The Japanese guys on our team introduced me to "hambaagu"--which as far as I can tell is an American hamburger patty (pattie?) stripped of the bun, ketchup, mustard, and heart-arresting grease and chemicals, and served as a meat entree. I ordered it and it was good.
We had a long train ride home, and since Eriya had been awake for over a day without sleeping, he joined me in sleeping very soundly and awaking the next morning in a groggy state of mind and wishing I’d had just a little more sleep.
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Monday - New Hope Chapel
We got to sleep in a bit later this morning, since there was only one service to play at in the afternoon. Took the train out into the hills, got off at Yamazaki station, and made our way to New Hope Chapel’s beautiful new building. It had wooden floors and wonderful people. The youth leaders there had invited youth from other local churches to attend a small youth meeting at their church. There were maybe 30 people there in the end, which is rather large for a Japanese Christian meeting.
I looked in vain for an electric guitar and finally had to settle for playing my crappy Alvarez acoustic. I had forgotten my capo, so I had to play a lot of barre chords at first, which made a bad guitar sound even worse. By the last few songs, however, I’d hit my stride and kids were visibly touched by the worship as members of our team laid hands on them and asked if they needed prayer for anything. Shinya, Eriya, Andy, and Hisato all got down from the platform after a while and helped Bob and Joel pray for and minister. I was too shy to venture into the crowd and pray through a translator, so I stayed up on the platform and helped Kelly keep the music going.
I really wrestled with feelings of insecurity very badly today. Constant feelings of not being good enough, of not doing enough, of not being spiritual enough all plagued me to the point where I couldn't really enjoy anything we were doing. I was glad when the service finally ended and I could have a few moments to myself.
After the service was over, we hung around while pastors coordinated car rides back to the train station and Bob got bored and started messed around with the church’s Hammond organ, its wavering electric tones creating responses of deep approval within my brain.
As I listened from the top of the staircase, I tried to sort through some of what I was feeling while staring out the window at the Buddhist cemetery across the street. Several rows of narrow graves were stacked almost vertically straight up the side of a bald rock hill, and there were a couple of sad-faced girls solemnly carrying flowers in their arms as they picked their way down the winding concrete slope that ran between them. The combination of listening to the Hammond's strange, Gospel-tinged warbling (which reminded me of funeral scenes from films I'd seen that were set in the American South) and staring at the sad Buddhist mourners created a strange juxtaposition in my mind which seemed, for a moment, to explain some deep, ineffable ache within me. In a way (and I can't quite explain how), the idea that people all over the world were dealing in different ways with sadness and loneliness and loss in the best ways in which they knew how helped make me feel a little less self-conscious about sitting on the steps of a church and feeling so sad and lonely and lost myself.
A Hole To Nowhere
Once we arrived, my former roommate, Ryo-ichi, met us on the other side of customs, took our larger luggage, and showed us off to the J.R. line train that would take us into Osaka. The first 45 minutes or so of the trip into town felt like we were riding a ghost train, with a few odd people getting on and getting off as the conductor slurred name stops over the intercom and brilliant advertisements for anime films that I couldn’t begin to read swung softly from the fluorescent-lit ceiling. I was just about to wonder whether Japan’s reputation for being so crowded was vastly overrated when the mechanical doors slid open at Osaka Station and I experienced the crush of thousands of people trying to get onto a train that you are simultaneously trying to get off of.
From Osaka, we took another train to a suburb called Senrioka. Once arrived, we took our shoes off at the door, left our luggage downstairs and took a flight of very steep stairs up to the living-room level. My camera failed to do the stairs justice, but let’s just say that as you ascend, you can easily touch the stairs in front of you without having to bend your back. The house itself, however, was very nice, with wooden floors and a kerosene heater (there is usually no central heating in Japan) that warmed the house up veeery slowly. There was also a very nice traditional Japanese room with a tatami reed floor. That was the room I slept in. I went to sleep quickly, because by the time I went to bed, I had been awake for over 26 hours.
Saturday
I awoke to the strange sound of heavy panting and wood creaking and looked over to find Andy, our violinist, wide awake and doing push-ups at around 6 in the morning. My blurry eyes focused in on him in an awkward position, with his hands arched backwards and supported by the chair behind him. He was huffing and puffing and highly motivated. I rolled over and went back to sleep.
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Today was one of our free days, time taken out of our trip to rest and recuperate from all the traveling we've done. We decided to go visit Osaka Castle, which once was the seat of power for all of Japan during the Shogun Period. As such, it had been set on fire many times before eventually being burned to the ground and then finally rebuilt to its original proportions in 1931 by modern architects who had studied Shogun-era watercolors and diagrams in detail. (The fact that they were able to reconstruct it exactly to the original form certainly seems to say something for the abilities of ancient Japanese artists.) Although the building did suffer some damage after its reconstruction when Allied aircraft flew in to bomb the city during World War II, it has long since been repaired and stands as a beautiful relic of a time long since past. The stateliness of its design also seems to cast aspersions upon its more recently erected neighbors, a steel-and-glass assortment of skyscrapers and modern office buildings, none of which can rival Osaka-jo (as the locals call it) for its beauty and ingenuity.
The interior of the castle has been converted in recent times into a modern museum with typically Japanese high-tech animation and holographic videoscreens (the installation of which is highly controversial among the residents of Osaka). There are elevators (also controversial) to whisk visitors to the top floor, which is open around the perimeter and good for panoramic views of the city.
The area surrounding the castle is a large plaza-type area with all kinds of food vendors hawking takoyaki (fried batter encasing octopus meat), which is reputed to be an Osaka delicacy. There were some young workers on the plaza who were exhibiting a product that looked like some kind of cross between stilts and pogo sticks. The resulting invention allows people to bounce and jump along at about 3-4 ft. higher than they usually stand. The style of walking allowed by this invention looks pretty peculiar, since the curve of the “leg” is in the back rather than the front, which makes the walker look like a gazelle bounding across the African savannah.
I took a few pictures of the human gazelles before getting sneaky and playing the part of the innocent tourist, while I was secretly shooting a lot of good candids of passersby with my camera and a good use of its zoom lens. Thanks to team-leader Bob for showing me how to "click from the hip."
After I was done shooting photos, I noticed there were a lot of people looking down through a grate that covered what looked like an old well out in front of the castle. I walked over myself and peered into the hole. And saw nothing. I spent the rest of my time walking back and forth between the steps and the hole, trying to understand why everyone who entered the building was coming over to look into a seemingly empty grate. Was it a wishing well? An old dungeon? A tunnel to China? I guess I'll never know. I couldn't ask anyone and they wouldn't have understood me if I had. I wish I could have, though. Parents were holding their children up to the ledge, speaking soft Japanese words into their little ears.
"This is a very deep hole, Aka-chan. If you go all the way to the bottom and dig deep enough, it will take you all the way to America. Don't ever try to do that, though, Aka-chan. Gracious, we all know what they're like, don't we?"
Confused, I spent a few more minutes shooting pictures of all the onlookers before finally arriving at the conclusion that the whole thing was just a subtle form of peer pressure –- the mysterious power of seeing others doing something you haven’t yet done. After all, didn’t I just say that I did it, too? Several times? See, I must be right.
Ghost Ships & Empty Airports
From the air at least, L.A. appears to be vastly overrated. The “City of Angels,” as it is sometimes called, is not much more than a hazy, gray mess of smog and soot and buildings, buildings everywhere, and the coastal plain on which it lies is a never-ending series of street grids and building complexes that yawn from the Pacific to the smog-obscured San Gabriel Mountains. The hills to the north of the city looked quite beautiful and rugged, but they were also covered with suburban developments that appeared from an aerial view to be red-roofed leeches contorted into “S” shapes and slowly sucking the life out of the raw, red earth.
Once we landed, the view from the ground didn’t serve to improve my opinion by much. LAX is a writhing cacophony of gas fumes, concrete buildings, and automobile traffic, designed architecturally to revolve around a “modernistic” café which fits perfectly the definition of “modern” people would have held around 40-50 years ago. As it stands now—a rude, peeling-white mess of legs which rather resemble a squid with its legs proceeding from the top of the head rather than the bottom—it is a rather sad remnant of an airport built by architects intent on creating the future, rather than planning for it. (The futuristic café is now dwarfed by gargantuan concrete parking garages.)
Nevertheless, there are good things to write about. For one, I had the pleasure of changing about $500 U.S. into Japanese yen. The current exchange rate is 106, which means that I am walking around with around with a bizarrely high denomination of money in my pocket. As Paul Musgrave remarked when he visited Japan a few years ago, it feels empowering to be able to discuss dropping 10,000 in a day without discussing terms like “equity” and “prime rate.” For another, I am feeling strangely fine despite my having gotten only two hours of sleep last night.
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After 12 hours in the air, our plane landed in Osaka at around 9 p.m. local time. Around 500 of us deplaned and walked through a very long hall of the strangely empty Kansai airport down to customs, where we were met by an elderly Japanese officer dressed in a royal-blue uniform accented by white Mickey-Mouse style gloves, whose sole job description seemed to be to direct us with deft and gracious hand movements to the next open desk as though he were choreographing the flow of rush-hour traffic.
While we waited, I thought of how well the heater was working and how strangely empty the walk to customs had been. I read long ago that Kansai is built on an artificial island in Osaka Harbor made out of an enormous amount of fill-dirt borrowed from the mountains that surround the city. Although it is truly a marvel of modern engineering, its architects didn’t count on the effect that gravity and the ocean current would gradually have on the enormous amount of dirt they had just deposited. As a result, Kansai sinks into the ocean at a rate of something like 2 1/2 inches every day, and to counteract this, an enormous (and enormously expensive) maintenance project goes on around the clock underwater, buttressing the island by placing steel girders at the weak points.
Add to this knowledge the spotless, gleaming emptiness of the hallways and the strange, empty silence which accompanied the train ride to the main terminal—broken only by the mechanically cheerful voice of the intercom—and the airport felt like a ghost ship gone adrift in the middle of the sea, its hallways lying empty by some strange spell until the stroke of the clock. At this, the curse was broken as automatic doors hissed and peeled themselves back to allow a wave of people to spill through, preceded by the roar of shoes tapping and suitcase wheels rolling on the linoleum floor—and the sounds of happy people saying, “It’s so good to be home!” and unhappy ones cursing the length of the flight or the fickleness of the attendants—and succeeded by the resulting quiet of their departure and the strange, mechanical ignorance of the cheerful intercom voice, welcoming the walls to Osaka Airport and wishing the void a pleasant stay.
