core

something central and essential

A team dedicated to the core Gospel truth that confessing “Jesus as Lord” compels us to join him in creating his movement to reach and redeem all creation.

corps

from the French, “a body”

We do this by being the corps — the body of Christ who invest the grace we’ve received by deploy our gifts to build each other up in love and good works.

corps

a fighting unit, as in “Marine corps“

We mobilize the corps of light and love — the Lord of Host’s great army defeating death and darkness through the power and identity of his Son.

What:

Real discipleship community that relentlessly confronts and redeems our rebellious humanity. I’ll be honest — and this applies to me too — I’ve seen movement start and movement fizzle out. The block is never God not showing up and seldom resources. It’s always us. It’s people.

We’ll journey together into spiritual community while building the skills that support and propel the spiritual journey of others. We’ll fiercely engage what we’re hearing from Jesus and empower each other to overcome the key barriers to Kingdom-movement, like:

• Lack of obedience to Jesus’ instructions in personal commitment and also in mission and ministry design
• Trauma that prevents Jesus’ instructions from being heard or taking hold
• Shallowness that treats Jesus’ instructions like a fad and moves on without deep and faithful engagement
• Distraction that entangles and chokes out Jesus’ instructions with human concerns and man-made kingdoms
• Poor contextualization due to limits on our imagination or insight
• Spiritual barriers, strongholds, and entities that set themselves against the Kingdom and the knowledge of YHWH

Each CÔR participant will be applying what they learn in their own community of practice. This will mean our community will have a rich hands-on experience that directly passes on the skills and knowledge we acquire to others.

Who:

For serious practitioners who are ready for Movement. Don’t read this as rock stars. The movement is not build on the extraordinarily talented. It’s built on surrendered intimate obedience. If you’ve been obedient even in small things, you may be a lot closer than you think to God giving you bigger things.

How do you know? There’s a simple principle: A tree is know by it’s fruit. According to scripture and experience, the fruit with movement seed in it is:

1. you have been formed in some way as a disciple
2. you have a track record of obeying the call and using your gifts
3. you have encountered your personal cross that makes you dead to wanting self-service, self-justification, and the status-quo
4. you’re ready to believe — by bold action — that Jesus will manifest his Kingdom movement through your life.

If you can see the fruit of two or three of these then let’s go.

How:

Life-on-life peer discipleship. Information doesn’t change the world. Incarnation does. Person and presence is required for transformation — whether on the scale of a single life or an entire city. If we want Jesus to transform who we are now into his movement, it’s going to take relationship that is deeper and wider and invested for the long term.

No body who knows Jesus would disagree with that, but to many of us that may sound exhausting. It is challenging, but the rule of transitioning is: keep it simple. So, simply put, (1) we’ll listen to Jesus, (2) we’ll help each other overcome barriers to obedience, (3) we’ll artfully support each other in contextualizing what we hear, (4) we’ll join each other with prayer, presence, and resources to boldly execute and live the movement.

This should have both disciplined Jesus-inspired rhythm and Spirit-responsive spontaneity. So right now I’m thinking this may include the following:

• Bi-weekly virtual meetings of the whole team.
• Ad-hoc collaboration meetings and in-person meet-ups to learn skills, cross-pollinate, and overcome barriers
• Three in person 1- or 2-day retreats in the Spring, Early Summer, and Fall

When/Where:

We design this part together. If we’re going to listen to Jesus and do what he says, CÔR has to be included in this. We’ll work as a team to make this work, but we want to start with Jesus’ leading and not our current schedules which can let excuses, convenience, and disbelief dictate what’s possible.

Here’s where I’m coming from: I’ve made three major transitions into movement in my life. All of them were major. I learned a few things from those transitions that I’ve distilled into some guiding principles:

1. You need bite-sized chunks of movement. Let’s start with active commitment to CÔR for 12 weeks (6 meetings) completing one “Cycle”. You can keep going right after that or take a break as needed and as your journey unfolds, but for those 12 weeks we’ll be depending on you to be there.
2. Journey into movement takes time. In my experience, it typically 18 to 36 active months (This is 6-12 CÔR Cycles.) Plan to be active in our community accordingly. Take breaks as led by the Spirit, and according to healthy seasons, but stay diligent to not sacrifice progress or stumble out of faithfulness.
3. Meetings don’t make a movement. While the bi-weekly meeting is critical, growth in relationship and movement advancement usually happens outside the meeting in fierce life-on-life relational engagement. Be ready to seek the Lord for what commitment you should make in the lives of your siblings who need you to fully seek and see their Father’s Kingdom.
4. Movement requires space to grow. I’ve talked a lot about time above, but space is also and important part of nurturing movement. I’m going to place the space I steward at Camp Deerpark at our disposal. You may have a space where you could see the team connecting for meet-ups that build relationship, equip, and allow care. We’ll work together to meet where and when the Lord leads and support each other’s travel and time limitations.

To What Extent:

We’re praying for a movement! Really, we’re praying for a Kingdom-movement of beautiful, localized, God-glorifying movements. We understand that is God’s thing and we’re not the only thing he has going on. But we’re determined to do our part, and we want Jesus to launch us from CÔR, taking what we’ve learned into places we can’t even imagine.

If I could dream a little with you, I’d like to see:

• All churches in our orbit of influence with a culture of every-member mobilization into Gospel mission and ministry. That’s a tall order, but it’s God’s will and the initial vision of the Radical Reformation — the recovery of the New Testament Church and it’s apostolic and prophetic call. If we include Camp Deerpark, that’s 100-200 churches and tens of thousands of Kingdom change-agents. That would be a good start for God’s glory.
• Movement in all generations, classes, cultures, and subcultures. Let’s face it — Christendom has had a bit of an imagination problem when it comes to contextualization. The incarnational Gospel calls us to radically contextualize — two weave the threads of the Kingdom into the manifold fabric of the diversity of human expression.
• More going on outside of walls than in them. Go means go. I dream of a day when Monday-to-Friday is the mission and ministry time of the distributed church through Kingdom economic enterprise, micro-church, and shared projects with neighbors. What life would that then bring into Sunday?
• An army of practitioners mobilizing the church as a community of practice. Jesus said his family was those who do his Father’s will. That’s broad and deep, but undeniably related to his call to movement. For centuries the church has been redefined as an institution of services. We need to recover authentic being-leading-to-doing as what it means for any and every person to follow the Messiah.
• A private social media site as our “love letter to the churches”. Like the initial movement, we need to continue the tradition of spurring one another to love and good works — including exhorting churches across cities and regions. If Paul were writing today, would he use social media to keep up and invest in the churches? I don’t know, but that’s what I want to do with RadicalNow!. I want this to be a place where others can glean from what we’re learning and how Jesus walking with us.

What resounds? What would you add to this list?

Need More Info?

Interest / Introduction Meetings

Find out more about CÔR and whether it’s right for you and meet other candidates for our community.

Wed 7/15 6:30PM Get Zoom Link

Sat 7/18 7PM Get Zoom Link