Primary Purpose Teaching In Adelaide

Thursday February 25 - March 1,  2010

I have just come home from spending four days inAdelaide.  The main purpose was to teach at Torrens Valley Christian Centre, but I was able to spend time catching up with a number of important members of my “family.”

This may seem a bit weird but one of my not-so-recent discoveries is that I have a few different categories of “family.”   It is a good metaphor because it’s the same with my natural family.  There are people in my family who represent a far more strategic connection than others.  By “strategic” I mean “greater importance.”  I have a wife (Nola), four children (Rachel,Paula, Nicholas and Benjamin and there are five special “in-law” people, and there are one or two others who are like members of my immediate family ), then there are grandchildren (seven going on eight). The most strategic relationship out of these is my relationship to Nola.  If I am offering the best fathering I know it is not enough.  The whole collection works best if Nola and I are working out of a loving partnership of oneness.  So I must work as hard as I can and become the absolute best husband I know, and we need to become the greatest “oneness” team we can, because if we do a whole raft of lives will be blessed in a way that no one else in the world can bless them.

And on it goes.

Then I have other members of my family that are important but not quite as strategic.  And then there are further relationships that are important pretty much for the individual relationship itself but nothing too far beyond that.  They are all family but some are more strategic than others.

In my natural set of family relationships, these are clearly set out and defined.  I only had one choice of relationship in all of that.  I chose to love and marry Nola.  I didn’t select out any of the others.  I didn’t select their spouses and I didn’t choose the grandchildren.  I could happily say they were chosen by God as far as I am concerned.  When one or another of my children got married, they chose their spouse and I agreed to love that person because of their choice. This has been a wonderful experience and one that has so much potential to help me become a whole, loving and redemptive person simply because I could only respond, not choose.

I think it is the same in the spiritual family to which Ibelong.  There are so many differentfamily groups in the body of Christ that it all becomes a bit meaningless tothink about a brother or a sister in Christ by the badge they wear or thetribal flag they fly.  Some certainlyprovide greater challenges for me than others in discovering how to love themredemptively, but once again I didn’t get to choose this family.  God chose it for me.  The Bible is very clear that there are onlytwo groups of people out there:  onegroup is made up of my brothers and sisters in Christ and the other is made upof people who still need to be loved into the kingdom and are not yet brothersor sisters in Christ.

But it is also true that within the various extended “family”connections there are some relationships that are have greater strategicimportance than others.  These must beallowed to qualify as levels of importance. It’s not a matter of some being in a kind of exclusive club becausethere is no such thing as an exclusive club of relationship in the body ofChrist.  All relationships should serveoutwards not default inwards.  That isthe difference between human tribes and kingdom of God people.

I do have this “strategic family” thing happening.  I need to belong to some people in ways thatI will not belong to others.  It is notabout “unity” but about strategic purpose. The whole army could be operating in unity.  There might be tens of thousands of soldiers,all working as one.  But there will be awhole structure of strategic connections where some relationships will becritically different.  It will have to dowith the flow of strategic momentum. Jesus had three and twelve and seventy and a hundred and twenty.  That was the way the strategic momentum ofkingdom advancement worked.  It movedfrom the mountain where a sermon was preached to the roads of Judea and Galileeto Jerusalem, to an upper room and then one person walking to a cross.  Then it was a few women early on a Sundaymorning, a couple of people walking to Emmaus and then ten of the apostles in aroom.  Then forty strategic days and thena hundred and twenty waiting in the same room. Then it was three thousand new believers and then five thousand and thenthousands fleeing persecution and then a gathering of Gentiles in Caesarea andthen more Jews and Gentiles in Antioch. All of these were served by key strategic relationships.

In my way of thinking, I am in the process of discoveringwho is in this family with me.  Jesustalked about the people gathered in a circle with him in a house in Caesarea(Mark 4) as being more his “close family” than his mother and brothers who werewaiting outside trying to drag him out of his Father’s will because theythought he was insane.  Those people werein the “family” group simply because they were willing to be where Jesus was,regardless of what the religious leaders thought and regardless of what themother and brothers thought.  I feel abit the same.

I tend to think that my “family” are those people who wantto do the revealed will of God more than they want their own comfort,reputation, preferences and limitations. This is a “family without borders.” I can’t say who they are and they won’t be selected because they happento “tribe up” with me.  They choose mebecause they want to do what Jesus told us to do -  that is to fully preach the gospel to everyperson (Matt. 24,28; Mark 16; Luke 24, John 20 and Acts 1).

I need to find as many of the people as I can who know thatthis is what God wants to do.  It will neverbecome an exclusive club because we will always be more interested in doingjust that than getting all warm and cosy in a room somewhere.  Because the task is big we will always belooking for the other family members we haven’t met yet and working alongsidethem to try and do what Jesus wants done.

I was among some of these in Adelaide.  Some were part of the Torrens Valley groupbut I also met up with a bunch of other leaders. One is building a church in apub in the south of Adelaide.  Anothercouple are reaching poor people in Elizabeth Downs.  Still others are learning how to love andserve their neighbours and others in their communities.  Some of the people I met with had otherthings on their mind and said nice things, but I don’t think they got ityet.  Some were so absorbed with theirown personal issues that it was impossible to think about whether the greatcommission was going to be fulfilled. Then I had a great time hanging out with lost people in all the companyoffices I worked in while I was coming and going.  Advance the Kingdom (Unlimited) has officeseverywhere.   On the plane, in theairport, on the bus, in the street and at a shopping centre I spend some timein.  In each of these offices I had totry and find God’s job card -  what hewas already doing.  Then I had to figureout how to get alongside of that and contribute to it.  I failed a lot, but amazingly, I am still onthe payroll.

This is the most difficult, undefined but exciting part ofmy life.  Mostly I am looking for thingsto change on the inside of me so that what is outside of me will feel, see andhear the impact --  that being something fromheaven touching their lives in inviting them to join the company.

I greatly value all of the people I am talking to aboutthese matters and the ones who challenge and comment and encourage.  In the end, I have no control over who I willfind in this very important, purpose driven family.