The Web Cam Chronicles... Part 1

You know, God really moves in ways that I could never even remotely imagine! With our new church plant in Anthony Ks, (Life 180 Church), I have come in contact with so many people that I never would have by staying complacent in our previous church. He also is so cool in how He uses technology to do these things!

Every week, there are at least two to three people that I begin talking to that God has specifically either sent to me as encouragement or sent me to encourage them! Just this past week, we (Jason B. and I) started some campus pastoral training with Barry Worcester from H20church.tv. We used a website called tokbox.com that is similar to Skype and allows us to do video conferencing. We met with another guy from Bartlesville Ok. from Ignite Church. The information we shared was great!

Here is the crux of this posting...So many Christians hide from the world when they (we) should be invading it. If we truly are in a war, then why don't we take the next hill on the battlefield and continue moving forward? We hide in our "Christian Bubbles" and continue on through life with our christian friends watching our christian movies, going to this that and the other bible study that can turn into more of a gossip session instead of a prayer meeting and all the while wonder ... why don't nonchristians come to these things? I think the answer is that we don't let them in our bubble!

In our training with Barry, we began talking about the passage from John Ch. 4 about the woman at the well and how H2oChurch builds it's mission on this chapter. Specifically, Jesus was just outside the village of Sychar at Jacob's well in the middle of the day... noon'ish, hot as hot.. You get the picture! It says in verses 6-7 that he (Jesus) was sitting there next to the well when this woman came to get water.

Here is what I found interesting... the woman only came in the middle of the day because in today's language, she would have been thought of as a "fast woman", "promiscuous", basically she didn't have a good reputation in the community. Anyway, she came to the well at noon because nobody would be there at that time. She wouldn't have to hear the other women's comments, and she wasn't welcomed at that place when people were there. She went to the well to do a chore that nobody wants to do at the worst time of the day to do it and she met God! The creator of our universe sat in the heat and dirt and met with her!

What I learned in our video conference and as I rehash this here is that God has his own bubble, and everything in existence is in it... including us! Why do we as Christians so often try to only go after the affluent or the people that can do things to help our church? How do we know that God won't do amazing things in amazing ways with and through people we find completely unamazing and oftentimes repulsive!

So many of the "Lost" people of this world see Christianity as a religion where rules have to be followed, budgets need to be met, and committees need to meet when in essence Christianity is none of those things. We need to show people that Christianity is a relationship and a series of intimate moments with the Creator of the universe just like the woman at the well had by breaking our "Christian Bubbles"! Barry summed it up when he said, "Remove the bariers that hinder non-Christians from seeing God".

~Fahring