The Watsonian (blog)

“By the sev­enth day God had fin­ished the work he had been doing; so on the sev­enth day he rested from all his work.  Then God blessed the sev­enth day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of cre­at­ing that he had done.”

Gen­e­sis 2:2–3 (TNIV)

“The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suit­able for him.”

Gen­e­sis 2:18 (TNIV)

God did not design us to live this life alone.

We were and have always been designed to live in com­mu­nity with other people.

We were cre­ated to do this whole thing…together.

My wife is the best thing that has ever hap­pened to me.  Seri­ously, I don’t know what I would do with­out her.  And for a time before I met her, I even doubted there was some­one that I could find that would be on the same path as me fol­low­ing God and join­ing His story.  But I did and now I have a helper and a part­ner to jointly pur­sue the pas­sion and dreams that God has put inside our hearts.

I also have some of the best friends in the world.  This group of guys (who mostly were my grooms­men) are game chang­ers in all the are­nas they are in, from min­istry to law to phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­ogy.  But we didn’t become friends to change the world, we became friends to live life together and through that, visions and dreams are being birthed that WILL change the world.

None of these rela­tion­ships started from a desire to change the course of history.

But they will.

As many rela­tion­ships do, they are birthed out of a desire to be together.

It’s nat­ural.  It’s super­nat­ural.  It’s our DNA.

In the midst of chaos, God creates.

This is a pro­found state­ment that we all strug­gle with in appli­ca­tion and understanding.

But as we look into the Gen­e­sis narrative/story, we see that God cre­ated our world out of noth­ing and chaos.

And as we look into what he called the earth, the plants, the sky, the uni­verse, the ani­mals and our­selves, we see we were called GOOD.

Good is a bless­ing here and also a fact.

God did not cre­ate a “per­fect” world, He cre­ated a GOOD world and He has never not called it GOOD.

This is a hard fact to swallow.

A lot of us have believed most of our lives that the world is inher­ently evil and that has shaped how we view our occu­pa­tions & call­ings (spir­i­tual v. non-spiritual), oth­ers (“are you in or out?”), the planet  (pol­lute more so Jesus will come back) and our­selves (“I am just no good!”)

But when we view our­selves, first, as made in the like­ness and image of God, and then that with the mak­ing, God has also called us GOOD and blessed us, then our lives take on more meaning.

We don’t view our occu­pa­tions as mean­ing­less as we see we were called in Gen­e­sis 1 and 2 to cre­ate, order, orga­nize and serve in the gar­den, and thus in our “gar­dens” (even our urban jungles).

We don’t view oth­ers as in or out, or as evil, but as unique expres­sions of the divine image, cre­ated to do good, but that some­times choose to do evil and miss the mark.  This isn’t dis­count­ing sin, but it is say­ing that you weren’t cre­ated evil and can choose to be good, but the oppo­site in that we were cre­ated and called good and choose to do evil things.  That we all have the oppor­tu­nity, through God’s grace, to be agents of His King­dom and love to the world.

And we don’t view our­selves as worth­less or no good.  We don’t com­pare our­selves to the ‘per­fect’ peo­ple on TV, but under­stand that God has cre­ated us all unique, but with a divine spark within our­selves, that lets us know that we aren’t on this jour­ney alone.

And we don’t view the Earth as some­thing that we can use and destroy for our own lik­ing, but that we ALL have call­ings to be stew­ards entrusted to care for the earth until the ‘groan­ing stops’ and the Earth is renewed in some mirac­u­lous act of new cre­ation by God.  This means that no mat­ter if you believe in global warm­ing or not, that recy­cling, reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions and even work­ing and advo­cat­ing nuclear non-proliferation (see The Two Futures Project) means we are car­ing for what God has blessed and called GOOD.

So as you go through­out your week, and as we remem­ber today the death and sur­ren­der of Christ on the cross in the face of evil and injus­tice, and the tri­umphal res­ur­rec­tion and defeat of death and decay and the beau­ti­ful inau­gu­ra­tion of a new act of cre­ation on Sun­day, the begin­ning of a new week, let us live know­ing that we are blessed, good and cre­ated to live these out.

//join us this Sun­day at Tim­ber Lakes Ele­men­tary in the Water­ford Lakes/Avalon Park in Orlando FL for Gen­e­sis Church and the con­tin­u­a­tion of our series on ‘In the Begin­ning’ as we dis­cuss this very topic.  Check out www.onlyonecity.org for more information\\

There are two things in my head and heart right now:

Tomor­row, right before 5pm, will mark one week since the 7.0 mag­ni­tude earth­quake hit the poor­est nation in the west­ern hemi­sphere, Haiti.

In less than 6 days, we will be hav­ing our first gath­er­ing of Gen­e­sis Church at Tim­ber Lakes Ele­men­tary in Avalon Park/Waterford Lakes in the City Beau­ti­ful, Orlando.

One is very heart­break­ing.  The other is very excit­ing.  Both are oppor­tu­ni­ties for you and I to serve and give and pray.

If you fol­low my writ­ings at all, you know that @mrskatewatson and I are very pas­sion­ate about meet­ing the God of the Oppressed, Jesus the Mes­siah, in the mid­dle of the pain and suf­fer­ing in the world.  We feel this is where we are specif­i­cally called and truly what the Church is called to do.

So nat­u­rally, our heart­beat is to be on the ground in the nation of Haiti serv­ing the poor­est of the poor in the great­est time of need.

How­ever, this is not where we feel God lead­ing us.

Our call­ing is to be here in the com­mu­nity of Avalon Park in Orlando to be a part of Gen­e­sis Church.  Our call­ing is to cre­ate an envi­ro­ment where kids come and are excited about learn­ing the Big Story that God has writ­ten and is writ­ing for us.  Our call­ing is to serve, to give and to lead.

But our hearts are still break­ing daily for the peo­ple of Haiti…

So we have setup a web­site to donate, keep informed and see how you can get involved in our work in Haiti…

Gen­e­sis & Haiti

A lot of time is spent into prepar­ing and launch­ing a church.

Hours of think­ing, and rethink­ing and plan­ning and strate­giz­ing and ask­ing and beg­ging and believ­ing and trust­ing and pray­ing and more pray­ing and even more praying

And the ten­dency can be is to make more lists of what you are against…

What you hate about this church or that church…

And it cre­ates an atmos­phere of con­ceit, pride and arrogance

So in my talks with Tim about Gen­e­sis Church and our kid’s envi­ro­ment is list­ing what we are for and what we want to see happen

And believe me, it’s actu­ally harder to do it that way instead of say­ing what we are not

So over the next few weeks, my desire is to dive into our core val­ues and beliefs as a com­mu­nity of peo­ple rethink­ing life the way God intended and say what we are for…

OUR VALUES

Peo­ple

Peo­ple are God’s trea­sure. In fact he told them so in Exo­dus 19:5 “…you will be my trea­sured pos­ses­sion”. God‘s orig­i­nal design was for peo­ple to be together. All peo­ple. The Bible says in Eccle­si­astes 4 ”Again I saw some­thing mean­ing­less under the sun: There was a man all alone.” This is why we value build­ing authen­tic rela­tion­ships with peo­ple. Jesus’ min­istry & life were solely about help­ing, lov­ing and reach­ing peo­ple. No one was ever excluded and every­one was invited to join. In fol­low­ing the way of Jesus we wel­come, accept, invite, live with and among every­one, no mat­ter their back­ground, race, polit­i­cal party, shape, size, dress or any other idea that might put a divid­ing wall between two peo­ple.  God’s design hap­pens best when this way of liv­ing takes place.

//Genesis 2:18 / Exo­dus 19:1–5 / Eccle­si­astes 4:7–12 / Mark 12:29 / 1 John 4:7–21

Fam­ily

Fam­ily is impor­tant. Although each fam­ily looks very dif­fer­ent from the next, we believe that fam­ily should be of the high­est pri­or­ity. Out­side of our rela­tion­ship with God, our rela­tion­ship with fam­ily is cru­cial. The role of a hus­band to his wife, a wife to her hus­band, par­ents to chil­dren, and chil­dren to par­ents are painted all through the Bible. We believe that we are to help oth­ers under­stand that a fam­ily learn­ing, giv­ing, and being together has a huge advan­tage in dis­cov­er­ing the life God designed for each of its members.

//Deuteronomy 6:4–5 / Proverbs 13 / Eph­esians 5:21–33

Scrip­ture

We believe that the Scrip­tures are God’s very words given to us. They are inspired by God and recorded by men. God’s word is not just a check box each day on our list of things to do as a Chris­t­ian. We believe these poems, let­ters, accounts and sto­ries are essen­tial for daily liv­ing. Our respon­si­bil­ity is to learn how to live these words to the world we are placed in. We value read­ing, learn­ing, and mem­o­riz­ing these words so that we have them on our hearts and minds as we enter in and out of rela­tion­ships with people.

//Deuteronomy 6:4–9 / Joshua 1:7–8 / Psalm 18:30 / Philip­pi­ans 4:8–9 / 2 Tim­o­thy 3:16–17

Prayer

We believe prayer is not bound to time or sched­ule. Prayer is com­mu­ni­cat­ing with God in every moment of the day. Prayer is pow­er­ful and was estab­lished for com­mu­nity, heal­ing, and restora­tion among each other and with God. We believe God longs to walk and talk with us. We also acknowl­edge the honor we have to speak with Him, but must also have the dis­ci­pline to be silent to hear Him. We believe that God is always lis­ten­ing to the cries of His peo­ple and draws close to us when we draw close to Him. With­out prayer, we are inca­pable of truly liv­ing in a rela­tion­ship with God.

// Matthew 6:5–18 / Eph­esians 6:18 / James 5:13–15

Rest & Simplicity

We believe that God designed the world to work in a cer­tain rhythm. Most peo­ple enter in and out of their week, fran­ti­cally wear­ing them­selves out from try­ing to do too much. In doing so they never under­stand that they are try­ing to con­trol and dic­tate the out­come of life for them­selves. We believe God is in con­trol. We do believe that we are to work hard and that rest does not equal lazi­ness. Still our value is to teach peo­ple to step back, rethink their cal­en­dar and sched­ule times of rest. When we do this we are dis­play­ing to God that we trust him with all of our life.

We also believe that sim­ple is bet­ter. The world is already full of com­plex choices and deci­sions to make. The Bible although dif­fi­cult at times to under­stand, is an instruc­tion to live life dif­fer­ent from the pat­terns of the world. Through a sim­ple approach, we believe the best life pos­si­ble can be found.

//Exodus 31:12–16 / Deuteron­omy 8 / Matthew 6:25 – 33 / Matthew 11:28

Togeth­er­ness

We believe that we are to play an active role in the world God cre­ated. Together as a body we are to set the exam­ple of how to stew­ard our time, resources, and abil­i­ties in this world. We are the embod­i­ment of His mes­sage to those on the other side of the planet and to those next door to us.  We believe that God has a plan to reclaim and restore His cre­ation; and what we do while we are liv­ing mat­ters. Our call is to work together as a team to repro­duce peo­ple who under­stand this way of liv­ing. Through strate­gic work, we will see this hap­pen through net­work­ing with other churches, out­reach, serv­ing our com­mu­nity, church plant­ing, and any other crazy idea that just might work to teach peo­ple: that they are the church in the world wher­ever they go.

//Genesis 1:28–29 / Psalm 24:1–2 / Matthew 28:18–19 / John 3:16 / Acts 1:9 / Romans 8

Prepa­ra­tion, Cre­ativ­ity & Excellence

Our pas­sion is to engage peo­ple with the mes­sage of Jesus from the best we have to offer. We believe that we were designed to be cre­ative and that the best ideas, thoughts and dreams should come by those who see life through dif­fer­ent lenses. God has given each of us a small plat­form to use our gifts and skills in a unique way. We set high stan­dards and make our stan­dards explicit so that we can eval­u­ate our progress in this area as a team. We believe that every expres­sion of the Church must be done with authen­tic­ity, integrity, and excel­lence. Because we believe this, we find it impor­tant that we bring our hearts and souls when we come together. We hold the right to defer or decline any­thing that is not the best we can pos­si­bly do or within our pur­pose. Still, this value is only pos­si­ble when time and prepa­ra­tion are tak­ing place.

// Colos­sians 3:17

Play & Recreation

Each of us have unique hob­bies and inter­ests that allow us to enjoy the world around us.  It is vital that we enjoy these moments to find bal­ance to life for our own health. We will rec­og­nize the sea­sons of busi­ness and plan breaks accord­ingly.  We find extreme value in vaca­tions and sab­bat­i­cals to find fun and rest in the life God cre­ated for us.

This last Sun­day, Katie and I had the priv­e­lage of host­ing a launch team gath­er­ing of Gen­e­sis Church.  Gen­e­sis Church is a church that Katie and I are help­ing get started here in the beau­ti­ful city of Orlando (in Avalon Park).

And before this hap­pened, we did A LOT of things to our home.

We painted (pic­tures com­ing soon)

We bought fur­ni­ture (thank you God for Ikea)

We cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned.

And we tried to fig­ure out how our home could bet­ter fos­ter com­mu­nity.

And it got me think­ing, and then talk­ing, about how we design our church build­ings and if we are specif­i­cally try­ing to design envi­ron­ments that fos­ter community.

Star­bucks used to be known as a place that did this.  And then each indi­vid­ual store began to look the same, and the baris­tas all looked the same, and the fla­vor of the local com­mu­nity began to become bland, and then non-existent in each store.

And in my travel around the coun­try to both visit and see churches, I have noticed that churches are los­ing their local fla­vor.  They no longer look like their com­mu­nity but are begin­ning to look like North­Sad­dleWil­low­Mar­s­PointHill.  The church has taken the “now” model of Star­bucks instead of the entre­prenueral, community-minded model that was intro­duced in the 1980s.

And that brings me to my point, in my opin­ion, to bet­ter fos­ter com­mu­nity the church should look like the com­mu­nity sur­round­ing it.  If the com­mu­nity is a country/rock music style that loves foot­ball and nascar, then it should look like that.  If it’s a indie/folk scene, you should be see­ing a lot of art and man­dolins.  But the main thing to remem­ber is that you are try­ing to present an image of a Res­ur­rected Christ that loves these peo­ple, just where they are, and if we aren’t will­ing to bend our per­sonal prefer­nces to meet them there, then we are in trou­ble and are des­e­crat­ing the image of God we are presenting.

Yes, I know this a lit­tle old, but it’s still true.

The great­est gift we can give to Africa and among other areas of the world and our com­mu­ni­ties is life.

So as we cel­e­brate the day that Jesus, the promised Mes­siah, was born, let us remem­ber that our call­ing is not to build store­houses of wealth and riches here, but to bring a lit­tle bit of Heaven here to here right here and now.

Grace and Peace my friends, fam­ily, ene­mies and those who I have yet to meet!

‘A ship, belong­ing to a hea­then owner, was once sail­ing over the sea, one of the pas­sen­gers being a Jew­ish boy.  A great storm arose, and all the Gen­tiles aboard took hold of their idols and prayed to them, but to no avail.  See­ing that their prayers had been in vain, they said to the lad: “Call upon your God, for we have heard that He answers your peti­tions when you cry to Him and that He is all-powerful.”  The boy imme­di­ately stood up and called with all his heart upon God, Who hear­kened to his prayer, and the sea became calm.  On reach­ing land, they dis­em­barked to pur­chase their require­ments and said to him: “Do you not wish to buy any­thing?”  He answered: “What do you want of a poor alien like me?”  They exclaimed :  “You a poor alien!  We are the poor aliens; for some of us are here and have our gods in Baby­lon; other have them in Rome; other have their gods with them but they are no ben­e­fit to us.  As for you, how­ever, wher­ever you go your God is with you!“‘

so, we are leav­ing Tapes­try.  As I said in the last post, we are doing this with a heavy but hope­ful heart and with a knowl­edge of where God is lead­ing us.

But I was pretty vague about where he is lead­ing us…

so today, our final day in Cartersville, I want to tell you a lit­tle about our next 10–15 years.

Katie and I have always had a heart to live close to a major city.  We have prayed and looked at Bal­ti­more, DC, Boston, Atlanta, but none of those were where God was lead­ing us.  How­ever, there was an oppor­tu­nity that came open about halfway through our  engage­ment and it felt just right.  I actu­ally knew it in the mid­dle of a ser­vice at another church that we were look­ing at pos­si­bly join­ing with as staff members.

So with a bunch of antic­i­pa­tion, and none of the hoopla,

the Wat­sons are mov­ing to Orlando to join with Gen­e­sis Church!

Katie and I will be work­ing with Scotty and Shel­lie Pat­ter­son on lead­ing Kid­Ge­n­e­sis, the kid spe­cific area of Gen­e­sis Church.

To say we are pumped would be a seri­ous understatement…

but we are not going with­out needs/prayer requests…

- our move this weekend

- a nanny/child-care posi­tion for Katie

- the lead­er­ship team as we put a set of struc­ture and sys­tems together from scratch

- sev­eral of our team mem­bers need houses to sale, jobs to come open and houses in Orlando to close.…KEEP PRAYING!

- Alaina as she makes the tran­si­tion from being close to her NiNi and Mia (Katie’s mom and my mom) and for them also as they make this tran­si­tion also

- our fam­ily that we con­tinue to fol­low God and that He con­tin­ues to stretch our faith and under­stand­ing of what He is up to in this world.

This last Sun­day, Novem­ber 29th,  I served my last time as Direc­tor of Fam­ily Min­istries for Tapes­try Church.  It was a sad day for our fam­ily, but it was one that was also full of hope.  To put all rumors to rest, there was no prob­lem between the lead­er­ship team and I on the vision, direc­tion or man­age­ment of Tapes­try.  I firmly believe in what Richard, James, Roye and the rest of the steer­ing team are doing with Tapes­try.  And hon­estly, with things feel­ing like they are gain­ing momen­tum, it was very hard to make this decision.

But when you feel God call­ing and lead­ing you in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, it’s hard to ignore.  And Katie and I have known since July, and been in con­ver­sa­tion with the lead­er­ship team at Tapes­try since then also, about our depar­ture from Tapes­try and going on the new  adven­ture that God has laid out before us.

Atten­ders, vol­un­teers and staff of Tapes­try Church,

Thank you! Thank you for the oppor­tu­nity to join with you over the last year and half in our mutual pur­suit of a Risen Sav­ior who cares deeply for us and the peo­ple of Bar­tow County.  Thank you for you kind­ness and genoros­ity not only to the church but to the peo­ple in this com­mu­nity.  Thank you for so many times tak­ing your­self, break­ing your­self open and pour­ing your­self out for our world.  Thank you for your encour­age­ment and coun­sel­ing as I got mar­ried this year.  Thank you for just being you, peo­ple who are still rec­og­niz­ing their unique iden­tity and mis­sion as image bear­ers of the Risen Jesus.  Katie and I love you with all our hearts and know that wher­ever God takes us, Tapes­try Church will be a part of our prayers and thoughts.

Grace & Peace,

Joshua, Katie and Alaina

As for where God is lead­ing us, I will save that for a later post, but prayers will be greatly appreciated.