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And finally… earth. Earth is our metaphor for creativity. This one is fairly straight forward, but it needs to be said because we often don’t. Often we christians spend most of our time talking about elimination of sin and almost no time releasing God-given potential. Certainly rooting out and eliminating sin is an important part of following Jesus, but is not even nearly the whole story.

Look around you. Go ahead, I’ll wait, find a window or better yet step outside and take a look around you. Alright, now that your back, can it be denied that our God is a creative God? And we are created in the image of this creative God! God breathed into a lump of earth and created humanity. Of course as a result of our own rebellion, we are broken vessels. Too often we make the goal of holiness to somehow get back to an ‘unbroken’ state, which we can’t do. So what is the point of character transformation (wood) then? Well, I think the point is that God has big dreams for you and I. We can’t ‘unbreak’ ourselves, so that we must leave to God, and move on.

There was a time when what people did with their lives was carefully considered as a calling from above. In fact, the very word ‘vocation’ includes this notion. ‘Vocation’ comes to us via the latin ‘vocatio’ which is rooted in ‘vocare’ which means ‘to call’. Ones vocation was once thought to be a ‘calling’. God has a dream for his people and it’s wrapped up in this understanding of ‘call’. God has uniquely gifted and equipped each of us for our call. Maybe it’s time to reclaim this understanding of our vocation as more than just a way to pay the bills?

There are many forms of creativity. To be a good accountant or financial planner takes creativity, right? Think about what it takes to be good at any given vocation. To be good doctors, lawyers, carpenters, barristas, cab drivers all takes creativity. You see, God has redeemed us for a purpose. God has a dream for us and it’s not just to ‘unbreak’ us. Creativity is the natural result of being formed by and following after a creative God. Together, we are committed to seeing and celebrating the God-given potential in every life. We are committed to embracing and releasing creativity in every form.

Jesus told a story about how our hearts are like earth. In the story the message of the Kingdom of God falls on different kinds of soil. When our hearts are like good soil (when we truly accept God’s message) there is a huge harvest. In other words, when we let God cultivate our hearts into good earth, the potential that lies dormant in each of our hearts is released and the dreams that God has for us come to life. So, I have a question or two for you. In what way has God gifted and ‘called’ you to a great harvest in the Kingdom? Have you ever thought about it before? How can we help each other to see and embrace our ‘call’?

Ok, fire. Fire is our metaphor for the way that God encounters culture. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about God is that God comes. God doesn’t just sit up in the divine council waiting for us to come. We all know that we’d never make it. Instead God comes to us. This is the heart of the Biblical story. From Genesis through Revelation, time after time, God comes to meet his people. Each and every time God encounters not only human beings but also the culture that inevitably surrounds us. Think about it. God can’t come to a person with out being relevant to that person’s culture (language, geography, ethics, morality).

So when God comes to dwell with us, and this may seem obvious, but God comes as Jew. Jesus was a Jew. The color of his skin and eyes, the shape of his face, the way he dressed and even the way he smelled was Jewish. Does this mean that out of all the myriad variety of human beings on this planet the ancient Jewish people are the best representation of God? Certainly not. God comes with a message, and in order that God might be heard and understood, God becomes relevant to Israel in the form of Jesus Christ. But Jesus was different. He was very much a part of the Jewish culture, but also he was more. He was the very best of that culture. He encountered the culture of the Jewish people and like a purifying fire, proceeded to transform it.

Encountering culture means being relevant and transformative. It does not mean unconditional accommodation of culture. But if the church has learned anything from the highs and lows of the last few centuries of missionary activity, it’s this: in order to communicate the good news of the Kingdom of God, we must first become relevant (in more than just language) to the culture. Fire seems a good metaphor for this encounter considering the frequency that God chooses to appear in fire (think burning bush, pillar of fire and smoke and pentacost just to name a few). So what does it mean to encounter and be transformative in our culture? This is a question that must constantly be asked if we are to be faithful witnesses of the Kingdom of God. To put it bluntly, relevance to culture is not optional.

Now as the message gets communicated in any given culture, the temptation is to view the whole combination as the gospel. At which point it gets scary to talk of changing the way we communicate when the culture changes. It’s a hard thing to say what is culture and what is not and I think the truth must be worked out in community, so….. Let’s start talking…

NOTE: disagreement is healthy and helps us learn and grow and I welcome it. In fact, the truth is that I really enjoy it (I’m sick, I know). Only let’s be generous with each other. Love you folks!

Alright, next up…wood. This one could be long (our name is the Branch after all), but I’ll try to restrain myself. Wood is our metaphor for transformation.

There are a few themes that if you pay attention, you’ll see biblical writers return to over and over again. One of these themes is the ‘tree of life’ theme. You see, God is a gardener and all that is good and life giving is represented in the this ‘tree of life’ theme. The Jewish people understood that after the blessing of eden was lost, God began to cultivate a new blessing. They understood that when God called a people, Israel was being grafted into this ‘tree of life’. So strongly was this belief that even the root meaning of the hebrew word for tribe or family is ‘branch’. Every family or clan is really just a ‘branch’ of this ‘tree of life’. Think about it. In some places the expected messiah is called the ‘Tsemach‘, which is a similar word also translated as ‘branch’ (see Is 4:2, Ezk 17:22 and Zech 3:8). So, the Jewish people were all about remaining attached to the ‘tree of life’ and waiting expectantly for THE branch to come and make Israel a great and wonderful blessing to the world (read that Ezekiel passage again and ask yourself who is the branch, who is the lofty cedar and who are the birds of every kind, for the prophets used nature as metaphor long before we thought of it).

So, why is all this important? Well, I think that if we don’t know a little of this ‘tree of life’ theme, it’s hard to really understand Jesus when he says, ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener…you are the branches.‘ This is the ‘Jesus Plan’™ for spiritual formation. It’s pretty simple really, ‘remain in me, and I’ll remain in you’. Together we bear much fruit but apart you can do nothing. That’s it really, no fancy bible study curriculum, no annual conference to attend and not even a hip young preacher’s tapes to listen to;-). Simply abide in Jesus and let the gardener cultivate your heart toward growth and transformation. As we remain branches in the true vine we grow like the mustard seed or the twig of cedar from Ezekiel. The branches of God grow up into a place where ‘creatures of every kind’ (read, people of every kind) will live and find rest. Spiritual formation for the sake of the world. We just can’t get away from the fact that we are blessed to be a blessing, can we?

Ok, that should be enough to get the conversation started. What else do you see here? What implications does this have for community(water) and mission(wind)? The ‘tree of life’ idea was intensely significant for Israel, what kind of significance should we as Jesus followers attach to it? By the way thanks for the comments so far…’as iron sharpens iron‘…

The next element I want to talk about is wind. We are using wind as a metaphor for mission. In the comments of the post on water we talked about what happens when a community stops moving. Mission is what keeps a community of faith moving. We are led by the spirit for the sake of the world around us that needs the love of God. Thus wind seems like a good metaphor for mission, especially since both the Hebrew and Greek words for spirit (ruach and pneuma) both include breath or wind in there meaning.

There has always been intense discussion on why or for what purpose the church of Jesus Christ exists. From my reading of the New Testament, the purpose of the church is mission. This is really the only guaranteed purpose of the church as far as I can see. Jesus never promised safety, community, security or anything of personal benefit to us. He came announcing that the Kingdom of God is at hand. He called out followers and sent them out on mission. It’s true that where ever the mission went, community was formed and the community facilitates the mission. Take away mission and the community makes no sense. Take away community and the mission is hindered

It’s important to visualize mission with movement. Jesus did not call his disciples with the words “believe this doctrinal statement” but instead simply said, “follow me”. To follow Jesus on mission requires movement. It requires following the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus to guide us.

I don’t want to start a fight or anything but perhaps a few words about what the mission is would be in order. Now, it seems to me that the ‘follow me’ that Jesus said has oft been replaced with a ‘believe this’ or ‘accept this’. There is a subtle difference in these words; ‘follow me’ implies movement or journey, while the others imply completion. Do this and your done. I’m not trying to say that following Jesus doesn’t have a lot to do with reshaping your beliefs, but I think we all know plenty of christians who have responded to a ‘believe this’ and figured they were done and so stopped moving. So Jesus says ‘follow me’ and then sends us out to make disciples (repeat the ‘follow Jesus’), baptize them (forming community with water), and to teach them what Jesus told us (in a nutshell: love God, love others). As far as I can tell that is the mission and it’s why the church exists.

Now, having said all that, I’m not the smartest person on the planet (I’m not even the smartest person I know), so I’d love it if some of you other smart people out there would contribute to this conversation! For those of you who haven’t read or posted a comment yet, you’re missing out on the fuller conversation, so click that link at the bottom of the post and bless us with your wisdom. After all, we’re blessed to be a blessing, right?

We’ve been working hard to develop ‘elemental’ metaphors for our basic values at the Branch. We’re pretty close to having it worked out so, I thought that I’d blog about each element and get some feedback from y’all.

The first element I want to talk about is water. We are using water as a metaphor for community and here’s why… with water we are baptized into community. Water gives life just as it cleanses and renews. Together we form streams of living water and offer love and hope to a spiritually thirsty world.

The above description is what will make it on the info cards that we’re working on, but the symbolism goes much deeper. There is a theme that runs throughout God’s word about ‘living water’ or, the ‘river of life’. Jesus references it when he tells the women at the well about ’springs of living water’. Erwin Mcmanus describes the way that baptism forms community in this way:

Every believer passes through the waters and becomes a part of the river of life. Alone, you are only standing in a puddle. Together we become an oasis where those searching for genuine love and acceptance can come and drink deeply.

Almost everyone I’ve ever met has a desire to connect on a spiritual level with something larger then themselves. Most are unable to articulate how or why but they feel it in their bones. It’s just the way we we’re created. However, our culture is constantly telling us that the material world (the world that we can see and touch and feel) is all there is to life. Culture is telling you and I that we are alone and we best get used to it and learn how to cope. This makes for a whole lot of people wandering and groping in a spiritual desert. They have a deep thirst for spiritual connection but find nothing to drink.

Jesus said that if we ask, he would create in us a spring of living water welling up to eternal life. The community that follows Jesus is the oasis of God. Together, we are the place of love where a thirsty world can come and drink deeply.

The symbolism doesn’t stop there but I will, and invite others in to the conversation. Use the comments to throw your 2cents in. Do you see the symbolism of water and community in other ways?