The Watsonian (blog)

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.

1.  Head­ing down to Orlando to help out with the first big gath­er­ing of Gen­e­sis Church.  We are going to be hand­ing out free food & drinks to fans & res­i­dents com­ing to the UCF v. San­ford game. 

2.  You can fol­low how things are going at the @genesischurch twit­ter, my twit­ter & my pos­ter­ous for pic­tures, updates & stories.

3.  My #13 Dawgs are kick­ing off this year at #9 Ok State.  Excited about this game & cheer­ing on Joe Cox this year.  Should be a great game with a pow­er­ful defense v. one of the most potent offenses in the country.

4.  Wed­ding is less than 2 months away (43 days to be exact).  Just a few more things to check off the list, but really excited about Paul doing our cer­e­mony.  Know­ing Paul’s heart and Katie and I’s heart for peo­ple in the com­mu­nity and around the world made this a VERY easy decision.

5.  Finally, no ser­vice this Sun­day for @tapestrychurch.  And if you want to part­ner with Tapes­try with the BIG MOVE, email Richard or visit the web­site & fill out the info form.

and, so I lied, there is a no. 6,

6.  Gen­e­sis Church is cur­rently look­ing for part­ners (churches, buis­nesses, indi­vid­u­als, etc.) to come together with us to reach the Orlando area and the world.  There is more infor­ma­tion here or you can con­tact Tim here  (tim[at]genesischurchorlando[dot]com) and let him know you want to help.

Well, grace, peace & be care­ful this weekend!