As It Relates to New Things

I think if you asked us what the purpose of The Phoenix Project was, I hope we would respond with a two-fold answer.

1) That it is an environment where we can all come and be challenged, encouraged, and become more faithful to the way of Jesus. This is not to say that our current churches and small groups are not doing these things. However, it is to say that we all need to be a part of a community that seeks to provide answers to the questions we are asking (challenging environment). It is to say we all need to be a part of a community that inspires us, refreshes us, and leaves us better off than we were before (encouraging environment).

Again, it’s not saying our current churches and/or small groups are unable to do these things for us. However, many of us are small group leaders, or worship leaders, or volunteers. We spend so much time giving and pouring our lives into others, that we rarely have a chance in our current environments to be challenged, encouraged, and inspired to become more faithful to the way of Jesus.

2) That it is an environment where we can feel safe and comfortable bringing friends and family who have questions about God and Christianity. There is a large group of people who will never walk through the door of a church. No matter how nice the buildings are. No matter how great the music is. No matter how good the message is.

There are a growing number of people who simply do not see how the church can help them in their spiritual lives. The Phoenix Project will attempt to provide a safe space where people can “belong” to a faith community before they necessarily “believe” everything that we think they should. This is the opposite of the way most faith communities operate today, where you have to believe rightly before you belong.

So it’s a two-fold purpose. It’s for the sake of our own spiritual journey and it’s for the sake of our friends’ spiritual journey.

We are not against our local churches. We are not against the traditional types of small groups. We are not against our pastors. We are not against those who are immersed fully in church world, those who are still challenged and encouraged by their local church and small groups.

I’m pretty emphatic about that.

This is not an “us versus them” thing.

We will not be critical.

We will not be judgmental.

We will not be prideful.

We will not act like those who are not “with us” are “against us”.

And if we come to The Phoenix Project with this type of spirit, with that approach, I think we’re missing it. And missing it big.

Humility, learning, authentic community, exploring what it a new kind of Christian looks like . . . these are our goals.

We are not separating ourselves from our local churches . . . we are still active participants. We are a part of the local church. We are just creating an extension from it, another platform to challenge us, encourage us, and to help us become more faithful to the way of Jesus. And to create a context out of which we can “do life” with our friends and family who would never walk through the door of a church.

Beginnings . . .

Most people don’t have a problem with God, they have a problem with Christians and the church. Gandhi even said something like that once, “I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

That cuts. Deep down we know it’s true. Deep down we feel irrelevant. We feel like what we do is pointless. A rat race. Running around in circles, going through the motions. It’s a heavy load to carry. Kind of the opposite of when Jesus said, “My yoke (way) is easy.”

We know something is wrong, things are not as they could or should be.

The problem comes when we refuse to do anything about it. Or don’t think there are any alternatives. It’s either Republican or Democrat, left or right, conservative or liberal. And I think the way of Jesus is a way that transcends stereotypical polarizations. He takes things to another level, a higher plane. And gives us a third way. That’s the way that I began to discover about 3 years ago and continue to discover.

However, it was an extremely frustrating and disillusioning experience at first. As you transition from one paradigm to the next, there is this stage of disembedding, and in a larger sense a deconstructing of what you’ve always known. Which leaves you feeling torn, like you’ve all of a sudden become some sort of a heretic. And so you’re torn between the way that is giving you a glimmer of hope and if you stay with it, you feel like a heretic to what you’ve always believed and done and it scares the hell out of you. The other option is to give up hope, slip into the flow of the norm, and quit being true to yourself and become like everyone else but you. So there is this tension. A very real tension. And this process for me took about 2 years. It was long and painful and I felt like I was being torn in a million different directions. And I’m just now coming out on the other side of it. And as I do, I really fill like one of the children of Narnia running out into a wide open space with rolling hills, free to run and experience God in a much more real and satisfying way.

I think it took me 2 years, because I didn’t have any one to walk with me on the journey. So I was by myself. I didn’t have any forums or outlets to question, think, dream. Every time I would bring something up that I was thinking, I was quickly given the evil eye. You can only imagine what that looks like working for 2 Southern Baptist churches during this period. But God was faithful. I kept moving forward. I kept praying “Open my eyes to the reality of it all”. And I’ve come through that narrow tunnel of disembedding from the old way to becoming a part of God’s new way.

This type of transition is not unprecedented. I can’t help but think that Martin Luther probably felt the same way. And went through some of the same type of tensions, between feeling hope and life and authenticity to feeling like a heretic. In fact, its hard to believe that any great movement, any great hinge of history, didn’t go through this same type of awkward transition.

All I’m saying is that you’re not alone. It’s ok to feel what you feel. It’s ok to be frustrated with what you’re frustrated at. It’s ok to not be satisfied, to not be content, to just eek through life, in the words of my friends from Dumb and Dumber.

We’re not satisfied for a reason. We’re discontent for a reason. It’s not just because we like to cause problems. And it’s not because we want to start a revolution. But it’s because we want to get closer to God. We want to be more faithful to the way of Jesus. And if that is our starting point . . . then I think we might be in much better shape than we might think.

The Phoenix as Symbol and Icon

I wrote this back on October 30 of 2002. I put it back on my personal blog back then. And I thought I would just give a little picture of where the name came from.
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The phoenix was a bird from ancient Egyptian mythology that flew so close to the sun that it was consumed by fire and fell to the ground, only to rise later, to fly again, reborn out of the ashes.

The phoenix symbolizes us on our journey with God. As time has gone on, we have flown so close to the flames of this world that we have been consumed by it so much that we have lost our ability to fly. Now as followers of Jesus, we lay in the ashes, broken, beaten, and barely breathing. A far cry from our ultimate purpose that we were created for. So now its time for us to rise up again. Time to be renewed again with a passion for our Creator and for our world. A time to be intimate with our maker and relevant in our context.

It is time for the church to rise out of the ashes and become a thriving social and spiritual capital once again. It is time for the church to quit flying so close to the flames of politics, religion, and tradition. Its time to fly again. Renewed. Reformed. Revived. Risen. Refreshed. Reprogrammed. Its time for the church to be church.