The Joshua House
a missional community of worship following Jesus...

Interesting arctile here by Alex McManus of Mosaic in Los Angeles.  He shares a little about four turnings that need to happen in the human heart in order to create The Kinds of People the 21st Century Needs.

This time around he shares a little on the fourth one - a turning back to the world on mission.

Also, read the fourth comment down by Richie Merritt.  I found it quite interesting too. 

I’ve been meaning to post our community’s values for sometime now and finally got around to finishing them off.  In between our walking through the gospel of John and now our walk through the book of Acts, we had a chance to discuss in general what we mean by these core values that we hold to as a church.

Over the next few days I’ll be posting our four core values of which I alread did the first one a few weeks ago, missional journey.  Today I wanted to put the second one, authentic community.

Here’s what we believe and value about community: 

We live in a world where we find it necessary to define the kind of community we are seeking to cultivate as "authentic."  Authentic community is hard because it’s messy and strange because it’s full of people who are messy and strange…we all are.  The word "house" in our name signifies our hope to be more than an organization and more than just a gathering of individuals but rather a people from all backgrounds who choose to share life together in meaningful ways as followers of Jesus.  We see ourselves as family and friends, eating, laughing, working, playing, forgiving, serving and supporting one another in the midst of all the peaks and valleys of life.  "Joshua" is the Hebrew name for Jesus who we see as the head of our household and the one who gives us the mercy, grace and peace to be the people God has called us to be.  We see and hear Jesus guiding us to grow roots in our neighbourhoods and cultivate a community that would live in the midst of our city, seeking its well-being from the inside out.

Practically for us this means making interdependent community groups the heart of our church life.  These are safe, accepting environments where people can build authentic relationships, ask questions, laugh, learn, confess, share, serve and worship as we journey together as followers of Jesus.  Moreover, these groups seek to naturally enter into the lives of the neighbourhoods in which they meet through care, involvement and service as a starting point for a movement of grace and peace into all the world.

Scriptures: Genesis 2:18; Psalm 133:1; Matthew 28:19; Mark 3:34-35; John 13:34-35; 17:20-23; Acts 2:42-47; Romans 12:9; Hebrews 10:24-25

A group of us are going to the Salmon Festival in Steveston on Canada Day and we wanted to invite anyone who wanted to join us.  We’re going to pick out a spot in Steveston Park and make a base-camp for the day.  Bring your blankets, chairs, water bottles, sunscreen and frisbees!  From there we can come and go as we please and jump in all the activities going on around Steveston like the children’s festival, concert stage, new water park and of course, if you don’t mind waiting for a couple of hours, the yummy BBQ salmon

(I don’t mind staying behind when needed to look after the stuff)

Info
Date: Sunday, July 1st (That’s Canada Day by the way)
Time: 11am to 2pm (maybe 3pm…depends if I like the bands playing)
Where: Steveston Park (We’ll probably grab a spot in the northwest corner)
For map click here
What: Salmon Festival with BBQ salmon, children’s festival, trade/garden show/ farmer’s market, music/bands, parade, etc.
For Website click here 

If you are planning on coming let us know by Saturday so we can look for you…otherwise just drop by if you get a chance and say hello!

Glenda, Ethan and I are going to go to the parade which starts at 10am if anyone wants to come early and join us…let us know. 

It was great to see you all last night and what a special treat it was to have Brook Hale visit us from Mississippi.  That’s right, she flew all the way in from Mississippi just to visit our group last night!  Well, ok, maybe that’s not entirely true.  She did fly all this way to visit her many friends in Vancouver of which we are happy to consider ourselves a part of.

As most of you know, we started in on our next book of the bible, the book of acts.  Last night we read and discussed chapter 1.

For those who are interested these are some of the questions we discussed:

• v.1 says, "…all that Jesus began to do…" (I put the italics).  Why is it important for us to realize that in the book of Acts and today that Jesus’ story goes on?
• How should the kind of literature Acts was written as inform us as to how we should read the book?  Moreover, why should readers of Acts be careful not to read it as a "how-to" book for church?
• v.1 - Where in your life have you seen Theophilus’s (God-fearers in process)?  How can you become a Luke to them?
• v.3 - What do you think of when you hear the phrase, "Kingdom of God"?
• How does one’s view of life change when you see the Kingdon of God as "the rule of God in men’s hearts" as opposed to a place (i.e. heaven)?
• v.3 - Why do you think the resurrection of Jesus was so important to the early believers and to the concept of the Kingdom of God?
• v.8 - Why is having the Holy Spirit equated with an "Out-There" focus over an "In Here" focus?
• What does this mean for "church" and the way we do it?
• Who is your Jerusalem?  Judea?  Samaria?