You've got to have a plan...

My fire department is on an ambitious path to build a new half million dollar fire station. It has become overwhelmingly apparent that we cannot serve the community of 8000 people with the same old tactics and same worn out facilities. With a call volume increase of over 300%, the department has filled the current fire station with apparatus and had to resort to parking some outside. A new facility is the only option. Nobody on the board of directors has ever undertaken such an enormous capital campaign. The process began with some unfocused fundraising--a mention in a mailout, a new web page focused to station updates, that sort of thing. When you're talking about a half a million dollars, the same old way of making money obviously isn't going to cut it. It became apparent that we all needed to sit down and retool. It was during this meeting that we all came to the same epitome. We need a plan.

If you saw my posting on February 20, then you know I am in a position in my Christian walk where I believe there HAS to be something more to the Christian community than what I see on Sunday mornings. It's not that I am disgruntled or frustrated... just that I feel I am missing something. Furthermore, when I seek out reasoning, the answer I often hear is "that's the way we have always done it." If you have not read that post, I encourage you to take a look at it (click here) before you read on.

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Well, if you are still reading, you must have gotten through my last post and somehow I have not scared you away. As I have been thinking for the past eight days since that post was written, I have been uncertain how to proceed on this quest to find what we are missing. I sat down for a few minutes the other day and I have come to an "aha" moment... the result is that I have realized that I need a plan.

Over the next couple of weeks, I want to outline a few things about Christian life and community with hopes that we can all walk away with a fresh perspective on the Christian life.

First, I want to undertake a criticism on our perspective of Christ, the man named Jesus. I believe we put him in a western culture sized box sometimes and fail to give him the worldwide context he deserves. Without an understanding of the perspective of Christ, we lack the ability to form a community in his image.

Secondly, I want to ask what worship is supposed to be like. Is it an event or is it a lifestyle? How did worship look in the first century, in the beginning of creation, and during the time of David; is that how we should do it now or do we need to reevaluate?

Next, I want to evaluate our day to day interaction as a community. How did Christ interact with people? How do we? Do those look alike or are we lacking a Christ-imaged interaction with others? This entails our interaction with each other and our interaction with people in the community.

With a new vision of community, I think it would be interesting to pursue how far we can logically extend ourselves. How many people can we have meaningful contact with and not lose a sense of community in those interactions.

So, that's my plan. Will the plan develop exactly as I have laid it out here? If I am listening to God and researching this with no personal agenda, I doubt it. But at least I have a loose guideline on the concepts I want to pursue.

After seeing how we should interact as individuals, I want to discuss something that I call The Body 2.0. It is sort of a new methodology of points of interaction during a week via face to face, social media, and traditional contact with an emphasis on interacting over geographical space and networking across the globe.

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If you didn't see my list of resources on the last blog, I have listed a few of them below.


I am reading through this book to get a fresh new perspective on Jesus who was the Christ. If you are interesting in going through this journey with me, I have linked to it here:



If you are also interested in hearing some prior reading I have done to get me to this point, I finished this book last year:



Finally, if you are questioning whether you even want to believe Jesus existed, I encourage you to read this detailed book: