Journey Church: A Holistic Missional Christian Community in Dallas Texas

Growing

2007-06-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

Tillandsia, commonly called "air plants," are the most transportable residents of the plant kingdom. They can grow in the unforgiving desert, the sunlight-starved forests, and even rough mountain terrain. They are unique in that they do not have roots and they do not require soil. Rather than using roots to plumb the soil for nutrients, they rely on their leaves to collect nutrients from whatever surrounds them. You often will see tillandsia attaching to other plants, the group hug of the plant world. This isn't to say that they are parasitic in nature; they don't latch onto a nearby plant unannounced and unwelcome, draining it of its own resources. They simply connect, and allow their leaves to collect everything they need from the dust and moisture in the air. Their grip is light and leaves no mark after they have gone. In fact, they are just as happy hanging onto a piece of driftwood or a seashell or your windowsill as they are another plant. One website said you can even hang your tillandsia from the ceiling, by a string.

I can't help but find correlations between this eccentric little plant and our eccentric little community of faith. As we've spent these past few months considering a number of possible locations for our near future, I have been struck by how incredible portable we are. Deep Ellum, Design District, industrial warehouse, or storefront along 75, there seems to be the sense that no matter where we go, we will be just fine. We do not want to be bogged down by an enormous building. We do not wish to shove our roots into a chosen plot of land and decide to stay there, come what may. Our hope is to be nimble, simple, flexible, open to the Spirit, and connected. Regardless of our location, we will continue to stretch out our arms like leaves and find the nutrients we need by doing what we do best- connecting with one another, reaching toward the Spirit, hands outstretched towards the world.

We are not a community of faith that is defined by our location. We are defined by our relationships, our community, the places we serve. These things are delightfully portable. And they are also incredibly strong. I have been struck in community discussion after community discussion in the strength of what makes us Journey- that "thing" that holds us together, keeps us united. It only makes sense, considering that the One we follow is infinitely accessible in\n this God-saturated earth. The Scriptures tell us of a God who is with us in the lush Garden as well as the years of wilderness wanderings; a Savior who reveals himself in a small, quiet stable and walks toward us in torrential thunderstorms on the sea; a Spirit who hovers over the formless deep and swirls in our presence as tongues of fire. God is with us on every juncture of this human journey.

As breathtaking as the oak tree may be, if Journey were to be a plant, I would choose the tillandsia every time.

- Danielle Grubb Shroyer, Journey Pastor

The Complete Blogging the Bible

2007-06-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

This week marked the end of a Journey that took a little over a year and that covered hundreds of years and thousands of miles in the story of a nation. I'm talking about reading the entire Old Testament.

Every week David Plotz of Slate.com, a self described "proud though not terribly observant Jew", read through a section of the Old Testament and posted his thoughts as he read these words for the first time. It was this way that for a year I tuned in for my weekly trip through time into this book that we call the Bible and discovered the fascinating though often times quirky, and strange stories that are in our sacred book.

If there is one thing that we value here at Journey is experiencing the Bible in ways that we haven't before, and finding ways to engage the deeply rich narrative embedded in the pages of this book, and it is in that way that Blogging the Bible tapped into that very core and although I am sad that the series is over (although I'm crossing my fingers for a New Testament run), I am glad to say that it was a very enriching experience and one that I hope others get to be a part of.

The Well

2007-05-30T09:28:00.000-07:00

Journey is a place that offers many gifts including blessed community, intelligent conversation, and opportunities to reach out to the very real needs in the world around us. That is one of the things I love about it. We really live out the message of Christianity in very real and practical ways within our community and the ways we love each other. But also in the small gestures (and big) that we extend towards our global and local community.

One of the things I look forward to the most each month is The Well.

One Saturday a month, Journey folks gather in Oak Cliff to prepare a meal for the members of this unique community. The Well’s mission is to “engage people with mental illness in a life-giving community of peace, love and hope.” Each month, we have the opportunity to participate in that. The amazing part is that I always find myself leaving with a little more life than I came with. The economy of God’s love is often more backwards than we think. I think a lot of us have really begun to feel at home at The Well. We help folks eat and simply talk and listen. It’s really pretty simple. We prepare a home-cooked, nutritious meal for the community members, enjoy their worship service, and clean up! Mother Teresa said, “We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it.” And I’m humbled every week as my friends at Journey reach out, with great love, to these friends. In their eyes, we see God. And so, really, they minister to us as much as we have the chance to minister to them.

- Michelle Randall

ReGift!

2007-05-23T09:16:00.000-07:00

Danielle spoke last Sunday about regifting the things that we have been given. When we begin to see all that we have as a gift from God, not as something we've earned or are entitled to, we are compelled to want to give those things away again. Here are some ways you can give:

www.thewellcommunity.net
Journey partners with the Well once a month to serve them dinner. This ministry for people with mental illness has plenty of opportunities to serve.

www.kiva.org
Microfinancing organization that allows you to loan money to specific individuals throughout the world. When the loan is paid back to you, you can re-invest it in someone else. Talk about regifting!

www.planfund.org
Local Dallas branch of microfinancing.

www.heifer.org
Provide livestock to families in need. The livestock gives the family both food and income, and Heifer’s “Passing on the Gift” program allows recipients to give offspring of their livestock to other families in need.

www.servlife.org
Sponsor an orphan for $30/month and provide them with food, clothing and private Christian education.

www.ntfb.org
North Texas Food Bank. Volunteer to feed those in our own village.

www.habitat.org
Help build houses for people.

www.wilkinsoncenter.org
Local Dallas organization serving children, the elderly and those who are hungry. Volunteer opportunities abound.

The Latest from Africa

2007-05-11T21:29:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, Luke Miller, our very own Community Pastor (and the North American Coordinator of Amahoro) and John Venuto, one of our fearless Leaders, are in Uganda right now at the Amahoro conference.

Amahoro is a place of conversation for those engaging the church in post-colonial Africa, and a place for those of us in the postmodern West to learn and listen to what God is doing in their midst.

Luke has been busy posting blog updates for those of us state-side.

Check it out here.

Next Wednesday

2007-04-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

Friends of Justice is a faith-based criminal justice reform group which organizes across Texas and Louisiana to fight wrongful prosecutions in poor communities. Their Executive Producer, Alan Bean, will be in Dallas on Wednesday, May 9th to talk about his work and how the local church can respond. Join Journey and other communities of faith as we host him and learn more about the call of Jesus in our criminal justice system. Contact Danielle at dgshroyer@yahoo.com for more info. The discussion will be held at CityChurch, 3601 Routh Street.

thoughts on time and neighborliness

2007-04-25T10:17:00.000-07:00

last week at church we discussed what it is to be a good neighbor. seems a simple concept, but the idea of being too stressed and distracted to really live in the present kept surfacing as i listened to everyone's thoughts. darrell mentioned that oftentimes we are too busy to even muster up common decency and consideration for another's well being. our culture drives us to propel forward without so much as a glance to the left and right of us. makes me wonder what better people we'd be if we would just stop to breathe and look around. we'd probably notice more... be aware of our neighbor's pain and struggles. it's such a mindless "duh" kind of thing, when you think about it, but it is in fact SO HARD for us to really practice. anyway, i wrote more about this on my personal blog, which i've copied and pasted below..

'there's always something to look forward to. always something marked on my calendar. fun just waiting to happen. i spend much of my time and energy looking ahead to what's over the horizon..the next step.. things to scratch off my list..new goals to accomplish.

day to day, hour by hour, much of this future-mindedness is unconscious. just how life works; a reason to keep waking up every morning. but i am finding myself losing much of the present. well, i find myself not truly engaging in and experiencing what each moment has to offer.

it's like a super stressed bride and groom on their wedding day. they plan, they toil, they put so much of their time and thought into the big day, yet most say that they don't even remember eating the food-or knowing what songs were played- or what relatives they even spoke to. it's all about what's next on the list. and stress inevitably takes control and makes sure that you aren't relaxing and enjoying what's happening right now.

i've been trying really hard to step outside my routines and my stress and my calendar and just take time to look around at my current world- the emotions i feel, the weather, interactions with friends, smells, sounds, the work i'm doing (however tedious and pointless), and allowing certain moments to linger just a little longer than i would normally let them. sometimes this makes me seem ultra sappy or weird, but it's the only way i know how to slow down the clock.'

Easter reflections

2007-04-12T05:53:00.000-07:00

Easter is (obviously) an important event on the Christian calendar. I grew up in a tradition that avoided putting too much emphasis on certain days of the calendar. This is because, of course, Christians should celebrate the resurrection every day! This is a great thing, but it can has the potential to become repetitive. I mean, every single Sunday recounting the death and resurrection...what a drag! (notice the sarcasm here).

I know there are pros and cons to both approaches, but for Journey we love following the Christian calendar. It gives us many opportunities to truly engage and remember in unique ways. This was the case for me this year. From Ash Wednesday to Palm Sunday. From Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Each gathering held a unique purpose and used a unique form to help us to experience the event.

For me, I particularly enjoyed the 'grand finale,' if you will. The final weekend. Good friday was a powerful time of silence and reflection as we had prayer stations set up to engage the senses to remember the brutality and ugliness of the cross and Jesus' death. Then on Easter Sunday at 6:45 am - as the sun rose in the sky - we were reminded of a new day, a new hope. I love how the whole thing was a process. It was 40 days of intentional remembering leading up to a simple (yet profound) celebration of life that stood in stark contrast to the despair of death.
And the whole process was done in community. We remembered and experienced it together. I am thankful that we can embrace the tradition of following the Christian Calendar, but in a way that gives us freedom to do it in the context of community.

black gold: this friday

2007-03-12T11:06:00.000-07:00

This Friday, journey will host a semi-exclusive screening of black gold, a film about the coffee trade between the two-thirds world and the west. Fair trade coffee will be available to drink (for free - thanks to 963 coffee) and to buy by the pound ($12, but $5/bag will go to Invisible Children.)

Come enjoy a good film, good coffee, get educated, and enjoy the company of friends. See you there!

Wake up and Smell the Coffee

2007-03-08T18:41:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't heard, our church will be hosting a screening of the documentary film "Black Gold: Wake up and Smell the Coffee" which looks into the multi-billion dollar coffee industry and shows the plight of poor Ethiopian farmers who grow the beans, but see little of the profits. Hopefully this documentary will become a great vehicle to entertain, inform, and ultimately motivate us, as consumers, on how we can directly empower poor coffee farmers to elevate themselves out of extreme poverty.

Incidentally, we have a couple of Starbucks employees who frequent Journey. So I decided to check out the Starbucks website and I found that they should be commended for their many social, environmental, and economic practices.

I also came across a Starbucks quicktime movie promoting its positive Ethiopian initiatives. From what I can tell, the improvements Starbucks made in infrastructure and methods (except for a $75,000 water well installed by the Brits) are basically just direct *business* investments with the intention of improving the quality of their product in Ethiopia. Which is not a bad thing necessarily, but it is just something that any ordinary company would do in a commodity oligopsony. By all rights, Starbucks is a very small buyer anyway--they only buy about 2% of their coffee from Ethiopia, but somehow they have come to the forefront of this issue. Starbucks happens to be a very large coffee retailer so their brand is shown in the movie, but I don't think that they are or should be villanized.

What do Ethiopian coffee farmers have to do with Journey anyway? Well, I believe that reacting to this issue embodies our value of "social justice." To me, social justice means that we must somehow seek to do what Jesus did--which was to go into the world healing AND empowering the marginalized. Jesus gave more than just gifts of miracles, he also gave an affirmation of value to those considered valueless by society such as the samaritan, the prostitute and the tax collector.

There are a lot of us at Journey who have social justice causes that we are passionate about. And unfortunately, the world has limitless cases of injustice! It's not just coffee farmers and it is not just Ethiopia that feel the pinch of imperfect markets. But so far, the only way to circumvent the exploitation of these extremely poor farmers is to inform the consumer of the importance of an available fair trade alternative. What better way to make a difference in the world by doing something we already love to do anyway: drinking coffee!

-John

http://www.blackgoldmovie.com/
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/blackgold
http://www.oligopolywatch.com/2003/09/05.html

free house show - wednesday, february 28

2007-02-23T13:26:00.000-08:00

The Well on People Magazine

2007-02-19T15:28:00.000-08:00

Here at Journey we are very proud to be serving the community of The Well. People's latest issue ran an article on it, and the Dallas Observer posted the content in their blog. You can read it here...

This Friday...

2007-02-13T08:48:00.000-08:00

Life as Investment

2007-02-08T12:49:00.000-08:00

I’ve really enjoyed our recent conversations about the end of time, the return of Christ and the kingdom. We said from the beginning that our intention was not to create a new system, or to crack some sort of code in our understanding. Our intention was to consider how our beliefs may affect our ability to follow our God, and to pray that through our conversations the Spirit would show us how we can be more faithful.

Sunday we asked, “How then shall we live?” As people who hope for the coming kingdom in its fullness and as people who are called to follow it, how do we live? Is there a way for us to engage both our need to be fully present to where we are and to hold a future hope for what will be?

I think Lindsay used the best metaphor when she talked about investing. As in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, we wonder what it would mean for us to be people who invested wisely. For those of us following the way of Jesus, investment in people, in creation, through our desire to see God’s kingdom come and God’s will be done in and through and among us, is our highest calling.

How do our lives beckon us to invest in grace? Invest in God’s justice? Invest in healing, or forgiveness, or love? If we take seriously the responsibility- and great joy- of living as God’s hands and feet in the world in every way possible, how then shall we live?

Perhaps these questions are fruitful ways for us to prepare our hearts for Lent. What ought we give up, or take up, as we enter this season of ashes?

Excavations and Revelation

2007-01-22T13:10:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago Winston and I took a trip to Greece, and in every single travel book and website we were admonished to visit the Palace of Knossos… it was amazing…. it was a labyrinth… it was the home of the Minotaur… in short, not to be missed under any circumstances. We got really excited about going. We hopped into our little car, drove down 1 lane roads in Crete, got lost a couple of times, got stopped by some sheep, all to fulfill this quest.

Once there, however, we got a far different picture of what kind of excavation this really was. Basically, back in 1900, this Englishman named Arthur bought the Palace of Knossos and set about “renovating” it. I picture him walking into empty halls and rooms and imagining what it might have been. “Maybe this is where they hung their clothes”; “This hole in the floor could have been a toilet”; “This red line on the wall could have been a giant painting of a Greek goddess”. Except that after he was done imagining, he actually reconstructed the rooms according to his fantasies. We pay money to go visit this site, and unless you very carefully read all the signposts and interpret them for what they are, you might actually think that it’s the real thing. I’m petitioning to have the site renamed “Place of Arthur”, but so far the Greek government hasn’t given me the time of day.

It’s human nature to “reconstruct” history like this. We don’t like the unknown, and God gave us a vivid imagination. We take the book of Revelation, which to me at least, is incomprehensible, and we make neat little connections and with a little bit of imagination we have something that kinda sorta makes a little bit of sense. But it’s not the real thing, and we have to remember that it’s just a reconstruction.

I’m not holding out hope that I’ll ever understand Revelation. And I hope that I’ll continue to have the strength to accept the not knowing.

it's the end of the world as we know it...

2007-01-19T07:06:00.000-08:00

this song has been stuck in my head ever since i found out we are doing a series on the end times. it just keeps going, on repeat, and it's driving me insane. but beyond that, i'm really enjoying the series and am learning stuff i would never have explored otherwise. eschatology isn't exactly the most exciting topic i can think of- when it gets down to its history and all the angles and layers. it all sounds a bit like crazy-talk. like i want to bust out in the middle of some of the explanations and yell "that's crazy talk!!" (revelation is bad enough as it is.. we needn't any more craziness). but i like how we're at least looking for some semblance of relevancy and seeking the nature of God through it all (rather than just being 'okay' with the left behind theology and continuing to scare children into a quick and efficient salvation). *the technical term for this theology is 'dispensationalism'. see? i learned some'in!

last week at church, we had a lot of discussion throughout the sermon (or 'talk', as we are prone to calling it). when the question was posed, "if we don't believe this (dispensationlist) theology, then what is the alternative? what's going to happen?" (i think i actually said: "what's going to help me sleep at night?") in response, someone (a new guy- his first time at journey) said something to the effect of: it doesn't make a difference. the not knowing is okay, and even freeing...

that 'not knowing' works for me when it comes to many big issues- like evolution, for example. if it's ever 100% proven, my foundation will still be in tact. i won't have to question my faith or denounce christ or concede that christianity is ridiculous. this is because i've decided that it's still worthwhile in SPITE of the evolutionary process. i've just got to start looking at revelation in the same way and go from there. so far, i've avoided it entirely. but then i feel ignorant, and there's nothing more frustrating than an ignorant christian who knows nothing about a very big part of the bible. (not as frustrating as narrow-minded christians who refuse to ever see the color gray), but i don't want to be either.

so the point is, i'm excited about this series.

Welcome to the JourneyDallas Blog!

2007-01-15T08:59:00.000-08:00

We'll be blogging here a couple of times each week to keep you posted about what's happening in and around the Journey Dallas Community. We'll tell you what's coming up, what's been going on, and what we've been thinking/talking about.

And this blog is for the whole community. If you have an entry you'd like to submit about something happening at Journey, e-mail Luke at luke@thedetour.net.

Stop by often or subscribe to our feed at http://www.journeydallas.com/blog/rss/atom.xml.

BTW- We kicked off our new series, "Leaving Behind Left Behind: a 4-week series about the end of time, the coming of God, and the future of the world," last night. The conversation was great, and we look forward to exploring these ideas over the next few weeks.