Circle of Hope

Comparisons are odious. So let’s never compare ourselves to others, or our cells to other cells, or our congregations to other congregations, even our fair city to other cities. Figuring out how we are different and special, desperately trying to find a little place where we fit, is still all about “me” and is not yet about being secure in Christ. Let’s be secure in the love of God being poured out on us! And let’s love who we are and where we are enough, so we can love outside ourselves, love clear to the margins. We’re in with God; we don’t need to perpetually find our way in someplace. We’re safe with God, we don’t need to keep making a place safe for “people like me.”

The pseudo-science of western culture’s colonialistic ideas of race, class, identity, etc., keep trying to mess with our goal to be the new humanity. The sociologists/advertisers don’t allow for the Spirit of God, just quantifiable facts – like how many Eskimos do you have? how many Red Bull drinkers are there? The “science” does not account for the fact that all of us who follow Jesus, no matter where we have started from in the world “have taken off [our] old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” Colossians 3:9-11

So I offer a chart about who we are and how we grow as a people that isn’t all about standard ideas of who is in and who is out, who is like us and who is not, who recognizes their godless “identity” among us and who does not. I’m not sure it is a complete enough chart for the idea in Colossians 3, but I keep trying.

That thick blue circle in the middle represents the church called Circle of Hope – three congregations, so far, in one church, a collection of cells, a group of committed members of a covenant, a council of map-makers, sharers in a common fund. We’re hard to define, but who we are has a character, we have a sense of being a people. People have an idea when they are a part of us, and we need to be a part of the body in some discernible way. The dots and lines represent people or groups connecting to other people and groups and forming other circles of friends or partners.

We need Jesus at the center of who we are, so He is represented by his heart. Jesus holds everything together, drawing all people to himself. We need the people at the heart of us who are close to God’s heart, who commit themselves to each other and our vision and provide the gravity that keeps the whole thing together and moving along.

But you’ll notice that there is an outer blue circle, too. That’s the real frontier of Circle of Hope. The church isn’t just who attends the meeting, is part of a cell or makes the covenant. The church includes all sorts of people we touch and love and connect. The wind of the Spirit of God blows wherever. The church is, by its nature, diverse and becoming more so all the time. God is extending its borders and drawing people toward its heart.

The chart tries to show that movement. There are concentric circles that represent more or less connection to the Heart and to the core of the church. The lines of connection to Jesus and His people may be direct or indirect, so the lines that represent connections being made are going every which way and forming groups that cross various levels of integration – people come to cells and not PMs, people are involved in mission team projects and discover a church is behind them later, people read our blog and move here two years later, new believers begin to make an impact on their circle of friends, we plant a cell or a congregation in a new place and slowly make new connections, classes or events we hold touch the lives of people in a variety of ways. Hundreds of people are touched each week who never participate in a meeting. That’s also the church. So we probably should not compare who is far away and who is in close too much either!

The new humanity is not just a corral within which we try to balance out our livestock, it is a movement of love that crosses boundaries. The chart should be animated. The church is always reaching out and drawing in, always expressing grace and leaving the results to God. The heart pulses with creativity. Circle of Hope has a wonderfully diverse core, held together by the love of our leaders, especially, that crosses normally-uncrossed boundaries. But the web of relationships which knits us together and which marks the frontier of our mission is even more diverse. I hope we can get our minds around how widespread we are and not get pushed back into some little box by the philosophies of the world.

Especially, let’s not contribute to the loveless fragmentation of the world celebrated by Fox and MSNBC, solidified by a wall in Palestine, and demonstrated on the streets of Teheran, by comparing and contrasting and so denigrating elements of the Lord’s own body. Don’t make the willing appendage of the body of Christ called Circle of Hope a mere something that is not like something else. It is God’s creation. Likewise, don’t assign an “identity” to the beloved appendages within our growing circle that makes them merely part of some “niche.” Their loveliness is part of the Love.