Got The Blues

Matthew 4:19
The He said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men."

Revelation 3:20
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.

What have I learned over the past 20 years?
#1) The call to follow Christ includes the call to fish. To replicate believers through the process of sharing the message that Christ is the POWER we have all been looking for to bring a "completeness" to our broken lives.

#2) It is Jesus' church. Not mine, not yours, not anyone else. His church may stand under many different flags of denomination identification, but ultimately it is His church. Just as God took the rib from the side of Adam and created woman, when Jesus hung on the cross and his side was penetrated by a Roman spear, the blood and water that came forth was the substance used to create Jesus a bride....the church. The blood paid for our sins, and the water of the Spirit and the Word cleansed us.

#3) If I have been called by Jesus to follow Him and learn how to "Be fishers of Men," then there is some truth to this analogy that I need to consider.
      A.) I first must decide what kind of fish am I going after. What group of people am I being lead toward to share His message and fill them in on the truth of who Jesus is?
      B.) If a man is going fishing, he will use some form of bait to catch them with. The type of bait you use is determined by what kind of fish you want to catch.
So the vehicle or model I use to present the gospel should be designed to draw people in.

These are some things that I was taught early on after I joined the Vineyard.
I knew as early as September of 1998 that God was moving me and directing me to work with people in addiction. I knew that somehow God was going to tie in His desire to see this particular group of men and women come to the saving knowledge of Jesus through recovery. So what kind of bait would be needed to draw their attention?

What was the one thing I kept hearing over and over as I talked with people in recovery. They had an aversion to church. They had had some bad experiences in church. Now before we lay all the blame on the church, let's don't. What you really had was a collision of concepts and models. The church has a particular way of doing things: a particular language they use within the walls and community, that some, who are on the outside, don't understand. Things and ways of "doing" church, that those who attend love and hold dear to might not strike the right chord with someone who shows up for a worship service. Styles of worship....the liturgy of the service are foreign to someone who does not have a history of interaction with church. They truly feel like a foreigner in a strange land.

Through my time with the Vineyard, I learned to appreciate John Wimber's view that he was being lead to plant churches that were "culture-current". That the model and liturgy of the church should reflect the culture it was being planted in. The goal was to develop a non-religious attitude and language that would be easy to understand by those who attended. In my mind as I began to listen to God and draw up an outline on "What kind of church would it look like if the entire group who attended was either in recovery or was still in addiction?"
There are some things that are not up for compromise. This was first and foremost on this list I was working on.

Worship! This was not open for debate. We were not going to sing songs about Jesus....we were going to sing to Jesus. We were going to worship Him. We were going to teach how to worship...why we need to worship....what worship is...and it was going to be done with a genre of type of music that would speak to the hearts and spirits of those who attended. From this very thought was born our first recovery meeting: House of Blue
We chose that name for several different reasons. The obvious was that it was a spin off from the House of Blues, a restaurant and grille that had several locations around the U.S. They specialized in bands and entertainers who played blues music. The one thing I had noticed was that blues music seemed to transcend age, gender and ethnic background. The other thing was that if you read the Book of Psalm....you'll find some of the greatest blues songs ever written. The final reason for using the term "BLUE" was that this was the color of an open sky or open heaven. It represented direct communication that was not hindered by anyone or anything. Communication between God and us....and us and God.

Now the main difference between what we were trying to do and what the world did was obvious. In the secular world, blues music is a heart cry of pain and burden. It is merely a declaration of "I'm hurting and here's why." What I felt like God wanted was to use that form of music to proclaim the hurt and pain of the individual yet also bring in the hope of Christ and the healer of all all pain, Jesus.

Early on in my going out to Rapha to teach, I ran into this thought of using blues music by accident. Each time I went to teach, I took a worship CD to play at the beginning of our sessions. As the music played, the men were nice about having to listen but you could tell that nothing was going on. What stirred me did not stir them. I had been to a "Catch The Fire" conference in Toronto and during my time there had met Bryn Haworth, a blues guitarist and worship leader at Holy Trinity Brompton Church in England. I had purchase his CD "Slide Don't Fret". 

One of my times at Rapha, I had forgotten to take a CD with me so as I was rifling through my bad to see if I had anything, I ran across the Bryn Haworth CD. Oh well, might as well play this. The music started and as I sat there, I saw the Spirit of God come down and touch every man in that room. Twelve men sat, heads down, crying. You heard me...they were crying. Something in that music, and the Spirit of God had made a connection. So this was going to be the vehicle that our worship would be built on. It didn't hurt that my favorite form of music was blues....You go God!

I think maybe this is going to be a two-parter.
See you tomorrow.

God on you...
mb