Advent Conspiracy

This Sunday is the beginning of the Advent season - the time that we get our minds and hearts ready for the birth of Jesus.

It's a mixed season for me as a pastor. On one hand I love Christmas, remembering the purpose and mission of Christ, how God worked all through history fulfilling pre-told events to bring the birth. I love it when scripture comes true, like the birth of Christ. I love Christmas time, family get togethers, kids are out of school, snowboarding, gaining about 5 lbs, and reading all the Christmas letters from our friends.

But over the years the Christmas season has also bothered me -- all the extra spending, all the extra eating, all the consuming seems misguided. I brace myself for late November when stores begin to launch their Christmas advertising monster. It seems that it is just accepted that you spend money, lots of money on the ones you love. Never mind you don't have the money, never mind that most of world's population has desperate need.

Since Jesus gave us the gift of salvation, we should celebrate Christmas by giving each other gifts, right? So starts the name exchanges, white elephant gifts, office parties, sales at the mall, and the executives at the big boxes start watching the spending and their grins just get bigger as they take more and more market share. As they see the conspiracy of the financial empire working - more people exposed to more advertising, advertising becoming more effective, more people buying cause they feel the need to, more money spent and the consuming ability of individual's keeps going up.

The financial empire is teaching and wooing us to spend more, to throw away more and to desire more. Christmas is the season to promote that global empire in strength, savy, and increasing depth and influence.

I'm not against advertising, nor gift giving. It just seems that the enormous effort exherted during this time is misguided as it's done because the Savior of the world was born. Why not celebrate Jesus birth in a way that is in alignment with what He stood for?

So, this Christmas, we are going to try something a little diffferent. We are going to join in with others who are doing the advent conspiracy. We are going to try and spend the same, but on different priorities. Instead of sweaters, socks and ties, we are going to try help other people. We are going to help local needy kids by contributing to a literacy program by giving books for kids in partnership with Chilliwack Community Services. We are going to help needy overseas families by buying them gifts of a farm tool or bike or goat - check out the cool catalog we'll be shopping from this Christmas. We'll also be one part of many who will be launching the CRWRC's EmbraceAids multi year campaign this Sunday.

Life To Life Relationships

About 15 years ago, I heard a series of sermons that changed how I viewed my life as a Christ follower. John Poortenga, at New Life Church in Abbotsford, did a series that has stuck with me all this time. It was about being a disciplemaker. The idea is that Jesus made disciples and then told them to go make disciples themselves using the methodology and message He gave. Robert Coleman's book, "The Master Plan of Evangelism" was the text. It was a popular topic at the time. Swindoll did some teaching on it, Bill Hull wrote some books on it, and many of us tried to live it out. But the Christian voice has been quiet on the topic since.

At Heartland, we have picked up the topic again. It has brought us back to the some of the values that Heartland was founded on - primarily the value of individual responsibility of living out the life Jesus calls us to. It's not the job of a team, a denominational agency, or the pastor, it's all of our responsibilities. You can't defer it to a program, a committe, or another person - it's up to you. We are all invited to live this life that Jesus laid out for us.

As foundational as this is, in the past we have programmed many of the things that Jesus asked us to be about. Helping another person grow in their faith, challenging a person to step forward in giving his life further to Jesus, caring for a person in a broken time of her life, helping a person develop their unique gift and talent, keeping us focused on relationships rather than building empires. These priorities have been programmed in the local church and it's a good day when we look each other in the eye and speak to each other's heart's when we say, it's up to us to live this life that Jesus calls us to. We won't stand by when an administrator overfunctions by creating another program that attempts to do in a program what was intended for your or my life. Jesus intended it to be about one life to another life. Let's get on with this.

(rant off)