This has been one of those weeks of seeking calm after the frenzied pace of officially launching IKON… therefore I found myself wandering time and again to the soothing sounds of William Fitzsimmons for audio respite. If you haven’t checked this guy out, you really should. He’s got a highly enjoyable soothing melodic vibe.

(Before you press play, please note that if you’re easily offended, you will probably be offended by this video–you were warned.)

Sarah Silverman, the tremendously sarcastic provocateur has once again given us something profound to ponder as we continually stare at and shed tears but ultimately refuse to respond to the issue of extreme poverty and world hunger. Our refusal, I hope/believe, isn’t so much because we’re a heartless people but rather because of the enormity of the problem standing in front of us. The shear magnitude is enough to render us completely useless as we sit totally overwhelmed by the shadow it casts over us. With that said, I think she’s on to something… let’s sell the Vatican! It’s the perfect solution, isn’t it? It’s really rather useless in the grand scheme of things, so incredibly ornate and enormous in size that it puts everything else around it to shame. It’s the perfect solution to an instant gratification, someone-else-should-take-care-of-the-problem-because-I-have-enough-problems-of-my-own society that we’ve become.

And although therein lies the greatest problem, our “someone else will/should do it” mentality, there is also a large sliver of truth that we should pay careful attention to… as well as a big question for us to ask: Why hasn’t the church taken a greater responsibility in contributing to the end of this problem? Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of what the church has accomplished, the amazing acts of generosity that have gone on all around the world as communities have stepped up to make a difference with what they have, but this is more the exception rather than the rule. And even though I don’t think the point of Silverman’s genius is to get the church to do something, I think we should take it that way.

The shear magnitude of the epidemic of extreme poverty is so great that the “exception churches” won’t be able to make a sizable dent in the near future. That is why the entire church must begin to come together to eradicate poverty together. This should be a movement of unification, of churches far and wide coming together with the single mission to do something like never before. And through this, the greatest act of love, people will know that we are His disciples. But it all starts with unity… of one church coming together with another church, and working with a third and a fourth until a movement is birthed and villages, towns, cities, metropolises, regions, and countries are pulled from the depths of economic despair and senseless deaths from the ravages of extreme poverty are a thing of the past.

So, any churches want to partner with IKON to start something new?

Yesterday was the “official” launch of IKON Christian Community… meaning we took our hopes and our dreams about who we want to be as a community public to the city of San Francisco.

Waking up the morning of proved to be a little bit different than I expected, there wasn’t a sense of “oh no!” or a sense of excitement or even a sense of fear, instead it was simply surreal. Throughout our Beta Gathering phase I had been taking the MUNI train to our location, however sensing a need for reflection I decided to take a walk. The walk was a great time of prayer and reflecting upon the past 14 months of preparation to take this dream public and the whole time I was left with nothing but a sense of amazement at what God had orchestrated. (I’m still in awe, and have a hard time believing that we’ve actually arrived at this point!)

The morning couldn’t have gone any better, from the Kids Community brilliantly executed under the leadership of our Leadership Resident Abby Chew, to the facilitating of our communal art critique by Jarrod Shappell, and the vulnerable and authentic worship led by Duane Chew. It was a tremendous morning with some amazing stories and connections that we’re still trying to process through.

Perhaps what was the most humbling realization of the whole morning was knowing that there was over 10,000 people around the country praying for us this morning as we got started from El Paso to Orlando, San Diego and Chicago, L.A. and seemingly everywhere in between. IKON went public with our hopes and dreams in the midst of a movement of prayer. If anything, that might be what I remember most: the church community from all over the country rallying behind us in prayer. That will certainly be a hard thing to ever forget.

IKON has a mandate, a mandate to listen well to the city and reveal the Kingdom of God in ways both old and new. It’s going to be an amazing ride and I’m looking forward to where God takes us next!

It snuck up on my in a way that I never thought it would. I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal, I thought, “Hey, turning thirty can’t be all that bad, can it? I mean it’s just a number right?” At least that’s what everyone who turns thirty says–it’s just a number. But then so do the people that turn 40…50…60… old people. Old people are the one’s that say “It’s just a number!”

I remember when turning certain ages was a privilege, a milestone, an honor–not a death sentence! Like when I turned 13… it was a big deal to enter into the official realm of my teenage years… and of course turning 16 was even more amazing… there was real freedom that came along with this new number, receiving the long awaited and anticipated drivers license… the ability to drive, to get out of the house and away from your parents whenever you felt like it (or at least whenever you weren’t grounded from the car)… and of course turning 18–a legal adult where buying cigars and lotto tickets was finally legit! Not to mention that twenty was just right around the corner–the age of respectability, the brilliant end to your teenage years… And how could you ever overlook 21, the age of true, legal adulthood where buying booze and getting into clubs was perfectly permissible and fake ID’s were no longer necessary. But what then? What was there to look forward to after 21? Anything at all?

Well, there was hitting 25. Finally given the ability to rent a car and get cheaper car insurance through something other than Geico.

But is that it? Is this all that was left to look forward to? Cheaper car insurance? Rental cars? Is life over? Don’t tell me all I have left to look forward to is Medicare and Social Security!

I’m thirty… what’s left?

It’s been almost a month since life as I knew it ended… a month since the dreadful three-oh snuck up and strangled the life out of my youth. But maybe this is a good thing. Maybe this is what finally needed to take place in order for me to truly move forward and finally seize upon the dreams that have been conjured up over the past 30 years… With the death of my youth comes the birth of life, the birth of opportunity, the birth of achieving things that weren’t even possible until this point.

For thirty years its been about what would I like to do someday, what I would like to achieve, who would I like to become… for thirty years it’s been all about the someday. Well now is someday, now is the chance to finally take hold of those ideas and finally be, to finally live in the here and now. The death of my youth is simply the death of someday, the death of the future tense and the beginning of the now, the beginning of living in the present tense and taking hold of those possibilities.

Hello present tense, it’s nice to meet you! Where have you been all my life?

(ht: Andrew Jones)

Remember when everything was within your reach, when all of your dreams seemed so tangible, so possible and nothing could stop you from achieving that dream… except yourself?

I remember those times. I remember feeling the tension between dreaming and wondering “where have all the dreamers gone?”; the tension between being an idealist and yet wondering “why all the idealists had gone the way of the buffalo?” I used to believe that as the lyrics to the song go: “We’ve shot all our dreamers and there’s no one left to lead us.” I think I have a better grasp on this tension now. I think I have a better understanding why so many dreams go unfulfilled and idealisms pass away… I think we shoot ourselves.

After making my way out to San Francisco full of dreams and ideas, hopes and possibilities, I quickly became overwhelmed with the fear of the unknown which was compounded with unrealistic expectations from both within and outside of myself. It was in this fear that I retreated back to the “safety zone” of safe ideas, traditional methods, the tried & true strategies for planting a church. Although a good place to start, retreating back into this “safety zone” choked the life out of the dreams and ideals that God had been saturating in my heart and mind. Safety led way to the death of experimentation.

How many of our best dreams and the greatest hopes in our idealism have died in the “safety zone”? How often have we chosen the comfortable and the traditional over the hope of possibility and the spark of innovation? This was certainly the road I was walking down… and leading down. Perhaps now after pinging so far into an idealist world and pinging backwards into the safety zone I can begin to find a new ground. A ground that isn’t reckless with idealism or locked into the need for safety. I’m in search of a new tension, searching for a creative idealism that carves a new way of being the church in the city of San Francisco. It’s here that the hopes and dreams are beginning to find new life once again and possibility springs eternal…