I made it to the final round of the blogging tournament over at PlantingSpace.com. Thank you voting for me in the previous rounds. I also want to thank Mark Doebler who has also made it to the final round. His posts have been excellent. He pastors The Grove in Peoria, IL, so if you are near his church, go check him out.

In this final round, we were supposed to encourage church planters to keep planting churches. Just like last week, I came up with two possible submissions, and then submitted the one that I thought was best. I will give you the other one tomorrow. I chose this one for a very special reason, which I will also share with you tomorrow. (I hope it doesn’t disqualify me!) If you want to vote for Mark or me, you can do so here.

Faces. We see them everywhere and every day. Some faces are recognizable and incite feelings of love, passion, tenderness, and happiness. Other faces give rise to feelings of anger, wrath, jealousy, or fear. It’s these faces that must push us forward, these faces that must motivate us to reach out with the love of Jesus.

You know the faces you need to reach. We all have them in our lives. They are the faces of God’s children, many of whom are far away from Him. Others don’t even know His name except in a curse. A handful of these faces knew God once, but no longer believe He cares about them any more. Still others feel that God couldn’t possibly love them after what they’ve done.

They are the faces of divorce, lust, abortion, drugs, abuse, violence, death, heartache, heartbreak, loneliness, fatigue, rejection, and pride.

They are the faces of your grocery clerk, your mailman, your boss, your neighbor, the homeless person you’ve walked by for years on your way to work, the pregnant teen whom you believe is just reaping what she’s sown, the bitter widow, the ex-con.

The list goes on and on, and it includes you and me.

Yet somehow, we think we don’t belong on this list. We know the truth. We are different.

But if that is so, it’s only because someone in your life answered God’s call to reach out to you, and help you out of the muck you were dwelling in.

God is calling again for people to go out and be His hands in the world; hands of love, grace, kindness, friendship, and truth.

Are you going to see the faces in your life for what they are, or for who they can be? It’s your move.

I wish I could be at Exponential this week. Instead, I’m going to Exposed, which I am actually a bit more excited about. Why? For three reasons. First, Exposed is more “grassroots” which fits me better. Second, since it’s smaller, It will be more intimate and relational. There will only be about 30 of us, so I’m hoping to make some life-long church-planting friends. This would be nearly impossible at Exponential. Finally, Exposed is closer to me, and therefore, cheaper, which also allows my wife to come. Yay!

Of course, as the title of this post indicates, I’m also feeling a bit exposed right now. I’m changing, in a lot of ways, and it’s somewhat scary and embarrassing, while at the same time exciting and exhilarating. One thing is for sure, I’m closer to Jesus than I’ve ever been before.

Anyway, I was reading Scott Hodge’s blog today, and he is going to Exponential, and he attended a pre-conference session in which the following questions were asked:

    What is the Missio Dei?

    What is the Gospel?

    What is the message of Jesus?

    What makes a church a church?

    What is evangelism?

    How does it happen?

    What is the relationship between Christ and culture?

    Does activity guarantee maturity?

    What can numbers tell us?  What can’t they tell us?   

    What does it mean to lead?

    What does it mean to go?

    What does it mean to gather?

    What does it mean to be faithful?

    What is hope?

As I read this list, it hit me that nearly all my answers to these questions have changed over the past 12-18 months. It really startled me. I thought about doing a blog post on each question to explain what I used to believe 2+ years ago, and contrast it with what I believe now, and why I think I am experiencing the changes that I am, but probably nobody would be interested in this but me. So I won’t bore you.

Instead, you might want to ask yourself the questions above, why you answer them the way you do, and how those answers lead you to live your life. My changes and current views on these questions are causing me to be more concerned about following Jesus, making disciples, caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, loosing the captives, living on less, loving others, and making friends with people on the fringes than ever before.

Where do your answers to those questions lead you?