Rich Kao

In Part 1, I described the angst I had in realizing I wasn't gifted as an evangelist, and then my subsequent discovery that "it's ok" that I'm not; I may not be a evangelist but I can sure do the "work of one." 2 Tim 4:5.

So how am I doing that?  Here's my run at it....

1)  Start a church!  Yeah, that's right.  If you want to serve ice cream, start a ice cream shop (or at least make a bucket of it).  This way, those who want ice cream know to come to "your place."  It's been said the greatest evangelistic strategy is starting new churches.  If that is true, then I'm in statistical good standing. No guarantee of success, but certainly increasing my chances.

2) In starting a church, you can serve bad ice cream or good ice cream.  Obviously we want to serve the good stuff.  Hence I work hard at speaking, communicating, preaching.  Yes, there are "bad batches," but hopefully the good ones outweigh the bad ones. 

3) Hire a great staff.  If the ice cream isn't good, at least hire good people to serve it!  One of my great joys has been hiring great people to be part of our team.  If I can't "get 'em" myself, than maybe a group hug will work. 

4) "Build it and they will come."  Vancouver is a tough place for "ice cream" shops.  They just don't let you build church buildings or develop church property easily.  Not much land, and expensive to build.  But we're honing in on a place we can lease that will be just like "home."  We think it'll be a winner, and help people find Jesus to be the highest of all delights.

5) Take your ice cream to the streets.  Maybe people don't know where you're located, or don't come to your shop like they're suppose to; well then we can take it to them.  We have on-going activities that reach out to the homeless, refugee families, and muslim kids. We like to do small things with great love.  Sandwhiches, mittens, and bikes show God's love in a practical way.  We're looking at providing after-school tutoring, french language assistance, art events, documentary features at a local restaurant, and more. 

Results: Well, we're haven't taken over the city yet, but we're working on it.  With so many other delights in the city...it's a crowded market.  But we're confident Jesus will become the biggest hit. 

It's a privilege for me to plant a church.  Evangelism is about sowing and reaping.  The gifted in evangelism seem to experience the reaping side as a norm.  For those of us doing the work of the evangelist, our norm seems to be the sowing side.  But I see planting a church as building a community, an atmophere & environment, creating a "city within a city," all which is like a big net.  It takes awhile to build it, but in due season, our haul will come.  We've caught some fishes already, but we're anxious for more.  (Luke 5:4-6).  I may not be an evangelist, but I enjoy doing the work of one.

We live in a generation in which relationship, authenticity, community, intimacy reign supreme.  However in our zeal to be re-rooted in these values, we mustn't just be "relational" all the time, we must also be pillars of truth (1 Tim 3:5). 

When Paul wrote to Timothy, he was writing to his young & beloved disciple on how to be a great pastor, how to care for people, how to love them and serve them, i.e. how to be great relationally.  But in the midst of his encouragements, he also charged Timothy to be a man of truth, to be doctrinally sound, and to exhort & preach with all confidence (2 Tim 4:1-3).

Why this charge?  Because relationship without truth is not love (Eph. 4:15).

2 Kings 4:38-41 gives us a powerful picture of what this generation is like...hungry for reality ("there was a famine in the land").  But when we we are living out of a famished state, our discernment is gone and we'll eat anything  ("wild vines, wild gourds").  We think happiness will be found in money, career, relationships, hobbies, nature, addictions; we're aching to fill the hunger, and as a result we eat things with "death in the pot."

What did Elisha do to remove the "death?"  He threw meal" (NIV: flour) into the stew, and "then there was no harm in the pot."

That's our call...to throw "meal" into the pot, i.e. to throw truth into those things that people are eating and feeding on, and is making them sick. 

There is a prophetic call (ala Elisha) on us to take the truth of the gospel and throw it into the "pots" of our generation so the "death" in it can be removed.

Let's be pillars of truth.  Fearless and bold in the name of love.  We'll save a lot of people from "death."

I love both Amazon (books, Jeff Bezos is a genius) & Zappos (CEO Tony's tweets are the best; my wife loves their shoes).  When I heard Amazon bought Zappos, I was anxious to hear Jeff's (CEO of Amazon) take on the purchase, and he did not disappoint.  Listen to what Jeff has learned in building Amazon; he's reduced it to just 4 things, and how Zappos fits into the picture.  Each of his lessons can be used for the gospel, church planting and Kingdom expansion.  See my applications below the video.   Great stuff.

Application:

Lesson #1 - Obsess over customers = Obsess over Jesus (i.e. what's the one thing your org is about?) Jn 12:32.

Lesson #2 - Invent = Creativity is the lifeblood of the re-articulating the gospel in each generation. 1 Cor 9:22.

Lesson #3 - Think long term = Have a 20 year plan!  See here.  Don't be afraid to take your time.  Our culture is obsessed with instant success.  Gal. 6:9.

Lesson #4 - It's always Day 1 = There's always something new to learn.  There's never a dull moment.  Be a life long learner.  Prov. 4:18.

I first read this quote when it was attributed to Jim Wallis, President of Sojourners.  That was about  a year ago.  The force of this thought didn't hit me until recently when I realized budgets are a great way to execute ones value, convictions and vision in a tangible way.  I used to see budgeting as a necessary evil, something I had to do to be a "good steward."  But now I see budgets as a powerful tool to create dialog, sharpen vision, and provide accountability and consistency for what one really wants to get done.  It becomes a servant, not a master.  Hence, the annual budgeting cycles is an exciting prospect of leadership, envisioning and execution, not just creating spreadsheets and passing papers out to the board.  I'm sure many understood this essential connection to budgeting a while ago, I'm just glad to join the crowd.

I'm a big fan of GK Chesterton, and wrote a post (How the Cross Helps us to Think Theologically Correct) which was in part based on Chesterton's thought from Orthodoxy.  Recently, well known Pastor John Piper posted an entry about Orthodoxy to commenmorate Chesterton's birthday, and in effect gave us a mini book review (albeit with from the  reformed view; Dr. Piper is actually funny tweaking Chesterton).  I found it humorous how Chesterton's book had opposite effects on us.  Dr. Piper became a "happy Calvinist" and I became a "happy Cal-menian."   I love being in the Kingdom where men of opposite views can be so in love with God!

May 29 is G. K. Chesterton’s 134th birthday. He was a British journalist and brilliant writer. Nobody exploits the power of paradox like Chesterton.

I celebrate his birthday by recommending his book Orthodoxy.

The title gives no clue as to what you will find inside. It had a huge influence on me forty years ago in ways that would have exasperated Chesterton. He did all he could to keep me from becoming a Calvinist, and instead made me a romantic one—a happy one.

If I thought his broadsides against predestination really hit home and undid true biblical doctrine, I would keep my mouth shut or change my worldview. But his celebration of poetry and paradox undermines his own abomination of the greatest truth-and-mystery-lovers around today, the happy Calvinists.

Nothing in this Calvinism-abominating book came close to keeping me from embracing the glorious sovereignty of God. On the contrary, the poetic brightness of the book, along with the works of C. S. Lewis, awakened in me an exuberance about the strangeness of all things—which in the end made me able to embrace the imponderable paradoxes of God’s decisive control of all things and the total justice of his holding us accountable.

One of the reasons that Calvinism is stirring today is that it takes both truth and mystery seriously. It’s a singing, poetry-writing, run-through-the-fields Calvinism.

It’s the Arminians that are the rationalists. Arminianism trumps biblical sentences with metaphysics: God can’t control all things and hold us responsible. God can’t choose some and love all.” Why? Metaphysics. Out with mystery! It just can’t be!

So Chesterton’s anti-Calvinist shotgun sprays all around today’s poet-Calvinist and misses the mark.

Read Orthodoxy.

A few of you may be swept away into the folly of Roman Catholic sacramentalism. A few others may be confirmed in your tiff with joyless Calvinists. But for many readers, especially the Bible-saturated ones, this book will awaken such a sense of wonder in you that you will not feel at home again until you enter the new world of the wide-eyed children called the happy-Reformed.

Here is a flavor of what to expect in Orthodoxy¹:

• “[This book] recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious.” (12)

• “It is one thing to describe an interview with a... creature that does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn’t.” (11)

• “Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.” (17)

• “Only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease but the medicine.... He was damned by John Calvin.” (17)

• “The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens in to his head. And it is his head that splits.” (17)

• “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything but his reason.” (19)

• “Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health. When you destroy mystery you create morbidity.” (28)

• “The ordinary man... has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradictions along with them.” (28)

• “When we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened the door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door.” (54)

• “Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live.” (159)

• “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” (48)