Touch A Life

Charles Kiser —  January 1, 2009 — 3 Comments

Happy New Year!

In the month of December, Storyline participated in the Advent Conspiracy, a movement of churches and people to revive and reclaim the Christmas season by worshipping fully, spending less, giving more and loving all.

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As a way of expressing our commitment to spend less on Christmas presents, give more of ourselves to other people and love all God’s people, particularly the downtrodden, we decided to take up an offering for an organization called Touch A Life.

ChildTouch A Life helps to liberate children from slavery, abuse and exploitation in Ghana, Cambodia and Vietnam.

It was an easy decision because in one sense Storyline already has something invested in Touch A Life.

One of our Storyline leaders, Patrick Cone, has recently made a documentary about Touch A Life’s work to free children sold to work on Lake Volta in Ghana, West Africa.

You can watch the video here. It’s worth your time.

Oprah read an article in the New York Times about child slavery on Lake Volta and sent people to help free the child featured in the article only to findoprah out that someone had beaten her to it — Pam and Randy Cope, founders of Touch A Life. Pam had read the same article and was moved to action.

You can read Oprah’s side of the story here.

Randy and Pam also have connections to Storyline’s heritage in Churches of Christ. Randy’s brother is Mike Cope, minister for Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas — one of Storyline’s supporters (and the church Ryan Porche grew up in).

I’m convinced that Randy and Pam’s work is close to God’s heart for justice and mercy.

Their ministry demonstrates the way that God’s salvation concerns not just the afterlife but also the present, when good news is proclaimed to the poor, freedom proclaimed to prisoners, and the oppressed are set free (Luke 4:18).

If you’d like to participate in our collection, you can make a donation here via PayPal with your credit card or bank account. Storyline will not be able to accept donations for Touch A Life after next Thursday, January 8th.

On Sunday, January 11, we’ll have the opportunity to present Storyline’s offering to the Copes in person at our community worship gathering.

In Justice
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Rethinking Christmas

Charles Kiser —  December 23, 2008 — 11 Comments

santa-claus-arrivesI grew up observing the cultural celebration of Christmas. We put up a Christmas tree, hung stockings, received gifts and went Christmas caroling.

My upbringing was also largely disconnected from the Christian calendar related to Christmas.

With many in my religious heritage (Churches of Christ), I heard a familiar script on religious holidays like Christmas: Jesus was not born on December 25th. We do not worship the baby Jesus. We celebrate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus every Sunday.

As an adult, however, I’m learning to appreciate—indeed, even to adopt—the rhythms of the ancient Christian calendar. It’s affecting my prayer life for the better (through Robert Webber’s Book of Daily Prayer). It’s affecting my leadership in the Storyline Community and thoughts about spiritual formation (through initiatives like the Advent Conspiracy).nativity scene

Given my bent for all things ‘story’, I love the way the Christian calendar is story-formed, particularly from Advent to Pentecost.

Christians are given the opportunity to journey through the story of Jesus via the Christian calendar: to wait for the Messiah in Advent; to celebrate the incarnation of God at Christmas; to declare the manifestation of God in Jesus to the world at Epiphany; to suffer with Jesus in Lent; to experience the death and resurrection of Jesus through the Holy Week and Easter Sunday; to receive the Spirit and be sent by Jesus into the world at Pentecost.

That the dates don’t line up misses the point. One can experience the story without that.

So my conundrum this holiday season is not as much about what to do with the Christian calendar as it is about what to do with the Christmas traditions I grew up with (Santa Claus, etc.).

I’m realizing that some elements of the Christmas holiday observed by the broader culture are at odds with the Christian story.

At the same time, there’s plenty of beauty and joy in those same Christmas traditions. I want to believe these good things come from God.

Carol Jean-Swanson, in an article she wrote for Mothering, articulates well this tension I feel:

Our jolly old Saint Nicholas reflects our culture to a T, for he is fanciful, exuberant, bountiful, over-weight, and highly commercial. He also mirrors some of our highest ideals: childhood purity and innocence, selfless giving, unfaltering love, justice, and mercy. (What child has ever received a coal for Christmas?) The problem is that, in the process, he has become burdened with some of society’s greatest challenges: materialism, corporate greed, and domination by the media. Here, Santa carries more in his baggage than toys alone!

jesus-santaHow do we integrate our observance of the Christian calendar with the cultural celebration of Christmas? How do we embrace cultural traditions related to Christmas without hijacking the Christian story?

Answering these questions is particularly important to me now that I’m a father who intends to pass on the faith to his children.

Here’s my instinct at this point in my process: integrating the observance of the Christian story through Advent and Christmas with the broader cultural traditions will require us to embrace the elements of such traditions that reflect God and relinquish the elements that do not.

From a missionary standpoint, this instinct reflects the arduous work of contextualization—that is, framing the gospel and life with God in ways that make sense in a particular cultural context without rewriting or hijacking the Christian story.

What follows is my working list of what to relinquish and what to embrace in my own family’s participation in the cultural celebration of Christmas this year.

What to relinquish:

  • Spending beyond our means and going into debt to buy gifts
  • Buying meaningless gifts for people
  • Getting caught up in the consumer rat trap that is Christmas shopping (did you know that Americans spend $450 billion/year on Christmas gifts?!)
  • Breeding our children for selfishness and greed by overemphasizing how Christmas is about what they want and what they get
  • Merit-based gift giving, where children are given gifts on the basis of being ‘naughty’ or ‘nice’ rather than as an expression of unconditional love from the giver

What to embrace:

  • The spirit of generosity and gift-giving in Christmas that reflects the way God gave of himself for us in the incarnation
  • The spirit of anticipation and waiting not only for gifts from others, but mainly for the Gift from God (My wife pointed out to me the way receiving gifts from others at Christmas might actually help a child to know what it’s like to receive a gift from God…brilliant.)
  • The relational elements of spending time with family and loved ones that reflect the way God gave relationally to us in the incarnation
  • Giving to others with no strings attached, just to make their day, regardless of what they deserve—again reflecting the incarnation
  • Giving to the poor and needy (Did you know that the original “Saint Nicholas” of Myra (4th Century) was known for giving generous gifts to the poor? It reminds me of how Jesus was born in humble circumstances to bring good news to the poor.)

What do you think about the way I’m trying to navigate all this? What elements would you add to the lists about what to relinquish and embrace?

In Christmas, Contextualization
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Sergio’s Baptism Video

Charles Kiser —  December 22, 2008 — 2 Comments


Thanks to Patrick Cone, our resident filmmaker, for preserving this great memory in video form.

In Baptism
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Worth the Risk

Charles Kiser —  December 15, 2008 — 11 Comments

Yesterday was a wonderful day in the life of the Storyline Community. Our first worship gathering went off without a snag.

Worship Gathering

No explosions. No violence. No earthquakes. No fainting. It was great.

Thanks to all of you who have supported us in prayer as we prepared. I’m so proud of my team. All of us worked together with God to do something greater than ourselves.

We talked yesterday about the story of Zechariah and Mary (Luke 1:5-56). One doubted God’s promises; the other trusted. One decided it wasn’t worth the risk; the other decided it was.

Contemplative Stations

Contemplative Stations

For all the challenge of planting a church, I’m sitting here this afternoon thinking: It’s worth the risk. God is worth the risk.

And of all the amazing ways to bring our gathering to conclusion – one of our Storyline people decided that yesterday was the day for him to declare that God is worth the risk of faith.

Sergio Sanchez doesn’t have much in terms of a spiritual/religious background. He grew up in Spain where most of the people he knew were atheists or agnostic. One of his parents is nominally Catholic; the other non-religious.

Sergio Sanchez

Sergio Sanchez

He’s always sensed that God was there. Sergio came to the US this past summer to teach Spanish in the Dallas Independent School District. We connected to him through a mutual friend and he began to explore the story of God more deeply.

Yesterday, Sergio made God’s story his own story and was baptized into Christ.

Sergio wore and old shirt that he used to wear for good luck and then threw it in the trash after he was baptized as a way of symbolizing that the new creation is here: the old has gone, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17).

What’s great is that Sergio’s parents were visiting from Spain and were able to see it. The don’t speak a lick of English, so our first baptism ceremony was bilingual. Sergio’s girlfriend, Kara, translated for us and did a marvelous job.

The Water Was Cold

The Water Was Cold

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Rejoice with us for the ways God is alive in the Storyline Community!

In Baptism, Church Planting, Worship Gathering
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Worship Gathering this Weekend!

Charles Kiser —  December 11, 2008 — 4 Comments

Worship Gathering

What we’ve been working toward for the last couple months is coming to fruition this weekend with the first monthly worship gathering of the Storyline Community.

Thanks to all of you who prayed that we’d find a venue to meet in — we did, and the doors opened for it in providential ways. Why did I doubt?

This is a new beginning for Storyline, though perhaps not in the same way the first worship gathering is for many new churches.

For many church plants, the launch of the worship gathering is a sort of grand opening — the birthday of the church.

When asked when they launched the new church, most church planters respond by mentioning the date of the grand opening worship gathering.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with that.

But Storyline’s worship gathering plays a different role. In the Storyline Community, the worship gathering demonstrates that we’ve succeeded in developing a network of house churches that now need a gathering in which they can come together for mutual support and celebration.

The launch of our worship gathering is not the launch of Storyline as much as it is an outgrowth of our house church network.

In fact, Storyline actually launched on May 4 when we started the first house church gathering. We launched again in the middle of October with the start of the second house church gathering.

And hopefully we’ll launch many more times in the future…one day sending teams of people who will go elsewhere to begin similar networks.

Rejoice with us as this community of house churches comes to life further through the advent of the first worship gathering. It is in a small way God’s own advent in Uptown (though he’s been here all along, of course).

On February 8th, we plan to host an “Open House” worship gathering where we’ll invite all our friends, partners in mission and the Uptown community to get a glimpse of what God is doing in the Storyline Community. The venue for the occasion will be one of Uptown’s coolest…we’ll keep you in suspense.

Everyone is invited.

We hope in that gathering to say thanks to our friends and supporters and also to pledge to our community friends that we are here to serve the cause of justice and mercy in our city. If Uptown Dallas is not a better place for Storyline having been here, then we are failing in God’s purposes for us.

Please pray for us as we continue to arrange the details for the weekend. We want more than anything for it to inspire people to trust God more deeply in their lives.

You can read more about our gathering at www.storylinecommunity.com/upcoming-worship-gathering.

In Church Planting, House Churches, Prayer, Worship Gathering
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