Dan O'Deens

Have you heard it?   I have even said it!  “There is NO “i” in TEAM!   That is fallacious at its core.  It also undermines the uniqueness that God created ‘you’ in His image.   We have become worshippers of a sort of false pride.

We sing a song, someone comes up to us and compliments us.   We respond, “it wasn’t me, it was God.”  Funny, it looked like you, sounded like you.   I could have sworn that was your mouth moving to the music?  Wow…you are an incredible lip syncer!

There is a difference in being humble enough and gracious enough to recognize the team that God has put around you, but make no mistake.  If you take each ‘i” away from the team…you have NO team!

Give honor to whom honor is due!   Praise your team!   Choose to be a part of a TEAM.   But bring your “A” game to the team, because your team NEEDS YOU!   There is an ‘i” in Team.  Check it out below!

Living a rhythm helps us shift from being church consumers or spiritual tourists, into being pilgrims, adventurers, and partakers in the body of Christ.  Simplicity is key.  The rhythms of life that have worked, and continue to work are those that are easily understood and grasped.  Each rhythm must be identified and born out of the unique person that God has created you to ‘be.’  The best and most productive rhythms should include:

1. The rhythm for your life (what you do) flows out of your identity (who you are).
2. The rhythm of your life is formed by the way your family behaves and the things that are important to you.
3. Your identity needs to be found in who Jesus is rather than what you “DO” for the Gospel.

VALUES of “Breathe Life” – MIG Communities:

presence
We commit to journeying together with God and each other, by meeting together as a community, in prayer, in worship, friendship, grief, and happiness. We live and breathe life in community.  We define the church as the presence of Jesus among His people called out as a spiritual family to pursue His mission on this planet.
acceptance
We desire to accept both ourselves and other people wherever they are in their spiritual journey, and to allow people to say what they believe without fear of judgment. We want to err on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion.  We want to love God and people completely.
creativity
We want to have an open approach to how we learn, live and encounter God as Missional, Incarnational Gateways in the community and world in which God has allowed us to live. We wish to be creative in our worship, in prayer, in learning by balancing christian tradition, theology and culture using the Bible as our sole foundation for Truth.
balance
We aspire to live with integrity in community, striving for balance in our passion for God and compassion for people and in private purity and public charity. James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
accountability and relationship
We desire to be accountable to one another, to grow and journey together, listening to the Spirit of God, each other and the wider Christian community for wisdom rather than trusting only ourselves. We want to have a willingness to share life, rather than to privatize it and we seek to walk together in a deep way rather than as strangers who only know the surface of each other.
mystery and adventure
We wish to step into the mysterious journey of pursueing Jesus by embracing courage, danger, adventure, mission and risk. We strongly adhere to a process of disciple making rather than discipleship.   That process includes:

1. Relationship – multiplication does not happen apart from relationship
2. Discernment – discerning where someone is spiritually and determining where they need to go.
3. A Commitment to Prayer:   “Holy Spirit, please give me discernment into the heart and life of my new friend.  Give me Your wisdom and insight so that I may know how to love them right where they are and encourage them for where You want them to go as we walk on this mutual journey with You.”
4. Release –  We will structure to keep our Biblical Community from becoming busy ‘at’ church and release them to ‘be’ the church and GO and make disciples.

I am looking forward to a new ‘rhythm of life’.   I so want the Lord to Breathe Life into His Church so that a true ‘movement’ of the Spirit of God is experienced and the desecrated spaces of our world are redeemed and turned into sacred space.

There is much to learn about – the MIG Church    Will you join me?

Col. 2:7  You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.

We have been blessed to bless others.

This Thanksgiving and Christmas, we invite YOU to be the ONE to help CPR-3 make the DIFFERENCE!

- making a difference ONE person at a time, ONE village at a time, ONE school at a time and ONE business at a time

Your generosity will support long-term, sustainable solutions impacting thousands for generations!

Give Clean Water through our justaddwater-wash campaign. Provide clean water, sanitation and hygiene to thousands

Give Quality Education through programs, training centers, school supplies, desks and sponsorships

Help with Micro-Enterprise/Fair Trade initiatives that ensure a family’s long term economic stability

You have the opportunity to GIVE Joyfully and to GIVE Generously.

Check out:  http://www.cpr-3.com/#!year-end  Turn your thinking about ‘living’ into ‘giving’ for living!  Make an investment into the life of ONE other person right now.

THANKS for all you have done to make the first year of CPR-3 a HUGE success.    Happy Thanksgiving!

As I look back at my life I have to honestly say how humbled I am to realize that so much of what I am thankful for today was born out of deep hurt or excruciating circumstances.

I have been guilty of assuming that God is pleased with me when He is blessing me and that somehow he is angry with me when He is seemingly distant.   Today I’m reminded that story of Christmas has so much to do with Thanksgiving.  God is with us…Emmanuel!   He is with us in the good times and the bad times.   My life is a journey and has many chapters all of which play into God’s EPIC story.

“I tend to take all the gifts, pleasures, happiness and the joy without saying much to God.  I take my health, strength, food, clothing and my loved ones, all for granted; but the moment anything goes wrong I start grumbling and complaining and I begin to think, ‘Why would God do this to me, why is this happen to me?’ How slow I am to thank and how swift I am to grumble.”

“That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works.” Psalm 26:7  

The Lord is my strength and shield.I trust him with all my heart.He helps me, and my heart is filled with joy.  I burst out in songs of thanksgiving.  Psalm 28:2

He who brings an offering of praise and thanksgiving honors and glorifies Me; and he who orders his way aright  to him I will demonstrate the salvation of God.  Psalm 50:23

“Perhaps it takes a purer faith to praise God for unrealized blessings than for those we once enjoyed
or those we enjoy now.”  A. W. Tozer

Thankfulness is the “chief exercise of godliness” in which we ought to engage during the whole of our life. “Gratitude is the heart … of the Christian life.”

This Thanksgiving I am Humbled.   Thank you Lord Jesus for the blessings you have ‘breathed’ into my life.   AND…thank you for the refining ‘fires’ that you have allowed to identify the rough edges and impurities in my life.  May you continue to mold me into the humble and grateful vessel that in that moment you can begin to use.

Many spiritual leaders, teachers and communicators face a challenge each year as they forecast their goals and each week as they craft their message.   Will they be biblical or bublical?

We find ourselves in a level of comfort believing that we must be students of the WORD and exegete the pages of Scripture rightly.   Often that comfort lives with our predetermined ‘BOX’ that is defined clearly by ‘my’ understanding of God.   Often we call that ‘systematic theology.’…like God can be systematized….IF He can, then I would propose your God is too small, because He is bigger than your current box.

Great that you exegete the Word.  But do you give equal time to exegeting your culture?   Do you know the people outside of the walls of your church?   A church that lives within its 4 walls is no church at all.   God has told us to live ‘in’ the world and yet not be a part ‘of’ the world.  HOW can we do that?  Some thoughts:

1. It’s important to not only study Scripture, but also to be a student of popular culture
2. Examine those pieces in light of the Truth of Scripture and teach that to your church.
3. It’s important that we’re not only Biblical, but also practical. Too many of us are “Bublical” – too many of us live in the Christian “bubble” speaking only to Christians – closed off from the outside world.