I’ve been wondering why God has made this unique connection between Lucy and me during study breaks.  For the past several years, a vaguely familiar beach walker has become a good friend.  Why have I connected more and more with this 86-year-old beach dweller from Clarksville, TN?  Why do we talk about everything under the sun for about three miles each morning?  What’s the purpose of this?

This morning Lucy seemed to stop and talk more than usual.  Maybe it was the blustery north wind kicking up the waves that made it harder to hear.  Maybe it was an attempt to prolong our walks with my study break having only a few days left.  I don’t know.  Why do I get so intrigued by the phrases and quips of this seasoned island girl?  I asked Lucy how she maintains her strong health.  She answered, “I don’t talk about it.  You’ll never get an organ recital when you get my Christmas letter.”  (I had to think about that one for a sec.)  She was talking about a former pastor at the local Baptist church she attends.  Lucy remarked, “He was a dynamic speaker, but he had the morality of a small, green pea.”  She was wearing a well-worn t-shirt this morning that said, “We are not good because we are old, we are old because we are good.”

What’s this connection and intrigue about?  Lord, what’s your intent here?  Why has this elderly woman been woven into my annual time of renewal and study?

James 5:13-20 was an intriguing passage for my early morning hunger.  Jesus’ brother seems to be integrating our spiritual walk with our everyday walking about.  If  there’s trouble, pray.  If you’re happy, worship.  If you’re sick, pray with an elder.  Elijah was a normal man like you and me.  He lived, walked about, and God did crazy supernatural things.  The text is so laid back, so everyday life, and yet so very powerful.

It’s exactly what seemed to be missing at Victory church we attended last Saturday night here in Florida.  There was much hype, jumping, money creeds, shoutin’, and Jesus words… but what was life like for these people outside their emotional arena?  I wondered if their gathering affects remained as the individuals scattered throughout the week.

And then it hit me… that’s the point of Lucy.  Integrating my spiritual walk into my everyday walk as I walk along the beach with someone I barely know… is exactly the point.  The “go” of making disciples points to integrated spirituality “as you go.”

I finished “AND – The Gathered and Scattered Church” today.  I blew through this book with great appreciation for the “genius of the and” attached to the Church gathering and scattering as laid out by Halter & Smay.  There is a harmonious tension related to going into the community missionally, and gathering the saints for worship.  So many have taken hard sides on both sides of this coin.  It really has eroded into an either/or argument.  I read a book two study breaks ago (The Shaping Of Things To Come) which believed all established churches must die, and only new, missional church plants will be successful as western Christendom moves forward.  I SO refused to believe that.  It’s a simple matter of serving beyond our walls, and gathering to continue inspiring people to serve and give ourselves away.

We’ve begun this outward push at Cumberland.  We’ve established 4-5 annual F.I.A. Sundays where we make Church not about the church.  We are taking more and more people cross-culturally and around the world as a part of giving themselves away.  We are planting an inner-city, incarnational church plant with Chris & Leah Case.

Some wonder how CCC will sustain all of this giving ourselves away.  Halter and Smay write:  “It’s a known statistic that the churches that give away, that take risks, that send out, and that sacrificially push their people out, create vacuums that God fills with even more.”

And so we gather to bask in the glory of God, and for the purposes and people outside our gatherings where we scatter.  This is our key to moving ahead at CCC.  “The church is beautiful when she is sent, and the sent church will always be beautiful when she gathers in a way that highlights and complements her sending nature.”

How will we lead and motivate the folks of Cumberland to go beyond an F.I.A. Sunday?  How can we keep pushing outward until spirituality is integrated into all we do?  In what ways will we encourage each other to die and live for others?  “AND – The Gathered and Scattered Church” concludes by saying,  “This beautifully sent and gathered church cost Jesus his very life, and it is certainly worth our best efforts.”

Our best Kingdom efforts will be as we go… walking… listening… taking someone, even a stranger, out for a normal, supernatural meal.  We picked Lucy up at 6:30 tonight for dinner.  She gave me the gate code to her gated community.  Amazing.  Longhorn Steak House is just what this S.M.U grad ordered up.  Isn’t this scattering stuff great and adventurous?  I’ll tell you all about it when we gather come Sunday.

I walked the beach very early this morning and saw something I have never seen before.  Bursting out of the still ocean water was a huge, grey and white Manta Ray.  It jumped fully out of the water for a brief couple seconds, and then disappeared.  I took this as a God-gem designed only for my soul.  This day, I began thinking, would bring something new to my heart and thoughts about the church.

The newness and smile of God I was feeling was confirmed when I studied through James 5:7-12.  Jesus’ brother took me back to Job and what God brought about as the difficult chapter of Job’s life came to an end.  The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first.  I locked onto that verse (Job 42:12) like a starving charismatic looking to sew a $5 seed offering at a Steak ‘N Shake.  Could Job’s blessing be mine?  Is that what you’re saying, Lord?  With Gungor’s “We Will Run” and Jesus Culture’s “Revelation Song” rhythmically pounding out some deep thoughts within me, all I could do was smile at what seemed to be God smiling at me.  I took the Manta Ray show, the worship, the thoughts from Job, and began anxiously anticipating my day.

I told Lucy that Sherry and I had watched “The King’s Speech” last night.  This was a GREAT movie recommended by Cumberland’s own Academy hopeful, movie critic, and worship leader, Megan Sullivan.  I was recounting the history of it all to Lucy as we walked.  King George the Sixth was crowned king after his brother Edward abdicated the throne to continue being a playboy.  King George VI had a speech impediment that hampered his leadership.  With the help of a quirky speech therapist, King George conquered his greatest fears and delivered a rally call as England was on the brink of war with Hitler.

One movie and suddenly I was a U.K. history expert.  Lucy stopped dead in her sandy tracks and said, “You know I was alive during all of this?’  I asked her how old she was around the time of King George the Sixth coming to power.  Lucy was a teenager who read the papers and listened to radio broadcasts of the real deal going down.  I moved our conversation on to the next topic, but smiled inside.  When God begins tying little threads of things together on study break, I know the day is going to be good.

Today I shifted my focus onto the church… the Bride of Christ at Cumberland.  I love the church.  I love what God has been doing at CCC.  We have shifted, and, as Halter and Smay writes (“AND – The Gathered and Scattered Church”),  are being consumed about fighting consumerism within our walls.  It has been a slow, steady process to turn hearts from being consumers to contributors.  The pendulum has swung from being a seeker-targeted, Sunday morning attractional church, to a beyond our walls missional church.  At Cumberland, many have taken up the challenge to stop being receivers only and have grabbed onto becoming Luke 8:15 reproducers.  That is a very cool thing to watch.

Just a couple years ago, I was reading study break books suggesting existing churches will never be able to make the shift from “How do we keep people coming to our church,” to “How do we help every person become more like Jesus?”  Far from having arrived, we have begun that kind of impossible shift at Cumberland.

Part of the shift has come from our 4-5 annual Faith In Action Sundays where we exponentially serve our community.  CCC’ers know we’re adding value to our community.  They know our building is not JUST for gathering on Sundays, but also to bless our community.  We’re healthier, spiritually, than we were just a few short years ago.  God has brought CCC to a place where we now believe the Smyrna community would miss the Bride at Cumberland if she were no longer here.  In recent years, this hasn’t always been the case.

But… there’s more.  There are jumping Manta Rays we’ve never seen, heart pounding worship ready to stir us, and the smile of God saying Cumberland’s next 20 years will be better than the first.  Is that what you’re saying, Lord?  What will be next?  I’m getting glimpses of God’s vision as I work through my study break and read things like:  “AND – The Gathered And Scattered Church.”  Halter and Smay don’t necessarily give a step-by-step action plan, but they sure are triggering my thinking exactly like Lucy does with her historical prowess.

Next for Cumberland must be taking what we’ve learned inside and outside our walls, how we’ve grown through our F.I.A.’s — and now making it personal.  Gary Swabe is quoted in “AND”:  “We need to live as salt and light so as to add value and blessing to our streets, to our neighborhoods, so that if one of our families were to move, the street would miss us and grieve when we left.”

Bringing the heart of God, the dance of the Trinity, the ways of Jesus, and the Kingdom into our normal, everyday lives is what’s next.  It the spiritual formation path forward for CCC and for her individuals.

There are details and specifics coming to the surface, but those kinds of things are not for blogs.  The specifics of vision and where God is leading will come face to face as we gather before we scatter.  In the mean time, look for leaping Manta Rays of your own!

We finally succumbed to the hedonistic ways of the heathen island dwellers.  We gave in, and I must say it was marvelous.  The experience was dripping with delight, while a handful of bashful onlookers could only blush with envy.  I still display a devilish smile just thinking about it.

We shamelessly bowed at the shrine of Big Olaf.   For my family, Big Olaf’s ice cream shop is worth the nine hour drive for it’s special brand of decadence.  In 90 degree heat, our single dip cones lasted all of about 15 indulgent minutes.  Afterwards, most of the family was caught doing that familiar, selfish dance called “I want more.”

Soaking in the dawn and an uncrowded coastline, it hit me this morning how selfishly indulgent theology can become.  What’s designed to point us to God, can fall short and point only to ourselves, our knowledge, and perhaps our dripping rightness over other lesser people.  Timothy Keller aptly muses that so many only want things from God and not God.  Our motives, even when it comes to theology and God, can often point to merely “spending what we get on our own pleasures” (James 4:3).

With coffee, a Bible, and a prayer for God to speak, I was also prompted this morning about God’s glory.  For some time, there’s been a dull something rattling around in my head about God’s glory.  Why does God want glory, and why is His glory my purpose for being created?  Does God’s Spirit live intensely envious inside of me because of the glory thing?    David Platt and his book, Radical, gave me a glory morsel to chew on.  Some wonder if God is an ego-maniac for wanting glory, but Platt quips that we need and want a glorified God.  We need a God who gets the Glory.  We want a God who is mighty to save and receives glory.  I was somewhat content with that thought until today’s a-ha moment.

Timothy Keller eloquently writes  (The Reason For God) about God’s glory in a way I’ve never heard.  God, unlike any other god, has always operated in the wonderful, dancing community of the Trinity.  The circling boogie between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit elicits submission, serving, and putting each other first.  It’s in this incredible dance that joy lives and breathes.  Infinite, eternal happiness is found at the center of this cosmic ballet, and it’s not through self-centeredness, but rather through a shared other-love.  THIS is the glory of God!  THIS is what makes the kavod (glory) of God heavy, significant, and weighty.

We are created to bring God glory.  We are created to join the dance.  God wants glory because we receive joy and eternal happiness in the deal.  Now we see why God wants glory.  He’s doing the dance with us!  This is why we feel so much joy when we serve and give.  This is why sacrificial people return from a mission trip to Kenya and believe they were the ones who benefitted the most.  They had entered the Trinitarian dance, brought God glory, and found His joy.  We were made to bring Him glory.  We were made for the dance.  God can’t wait for us to have His joy!

And God gives us grace every day to see and get this.  The ocean separates the sky, the sky contrasts the sand, and the sand gives borders to the ocean.  They serve each other and dance.   A snare drum drives the guitars, the guitars give melody for the bass, and the bass gives punch back to the snare. The dance can be seen in our music.  Are you seeing this?  Atoms and molecules… a mother and her baby… planets and stars… and on it goes.  Keller writes, “The love of the inner life of the Trinity is written all through it (universe).   Creation is a dance!”

Wasn’t Jesus dancing with us as he came to earth to serve and die for us?  And then he said, “I have given them the glory that You gave me.”  He was dancing with us in the same way He had danced with the Father and Spirit.  THIS is the glory of God.

This also explains my life when I’m focused on my own goodness or my finding my own path for salvation.  My self-indulgent ways in the end, are dripping with frustration and leave me very discontent and poised to bust out the “I want more” dance at the shrine of Big Olaf.

Thanks, Timothy Keller.  “The Reason For God” is a great read.  It’s a new, fresh, practical apologetic unlike the standards that have been on my shelves for years.  I finished Keller’s work today, and was left hungry for more.  Considering my heavy hesitation in the first ten pages, how it all ended for me was very cool.

The weekend is here, and I will change my pace a bit for the family.  I will sleep in.  I will begin reading George W. Bush’s autobiography.  I’m going to snorkel with Michael and Morgan.  I love my study break.  Thanks, God.