Six Days

I've officially been gone 6 days. I've got 2 weeks of clothes, a sleeping bag, and a Bible.

We began on Wednesday night. After a 12 hour car ride from Minneapolis to South Bend, IN. I was in a minivan with Mike Stapp from the Hawaii Branch, Matt Brickweig, Ben Reinhardt and John Bowar from my household in Mpls, Mike Coney also from Mpls but he lives in the 1027 household and we picked up Eric Yost from the Portland Branch at Chicago's O'Hare Airport on the way. It got kind of packed.

Upon arrival, we called up Brian Couch who is enrolled at the U of M in Mpls but has been living in Shreveport, LA for the last semester doing Citybuilding with 3 other guys - John Gapp and Thomas Duddy also enrolled in Mpls, and Joe Gleason enrolled at Notre Dame. He said to park at the Art building which is a small workshop just off the side of the old Studibaker mansion (known now as Greenlawn) the People of Praise (POP) has aquired for offices and running Trinity High School in South Bend. It's dark as we pull into the drive way through the old iron gate. The windows spill yellow light out onto the section of concrete next to the Art building designated for parking.

I've been here before. All last summer I spent 40 hours a week on this property working for Gabriel Property Management under John Gapp. I mainly painted and scraped, but I came to know the mansion and much of the two block estate it sits on in the process.

Everyone was already eating. There were about 25 guys stuffed into that room, and a great din of welcome filled the house, when we shuffled our weary selves into the dinning room. We were all here for the Company Convention, which is held once at Christmas and once in August. The Company is a young men's group within the POP, dedicated to Citybuilding. Man, it was great to see those guys, some I hadn't seen since the last convention.

The Company Convention usually only lasts a day or two. We catch up with everyone who's scattered all over the nation and how our responsibilities have been coming, we share stories and plan, and of course there's the Funeral Games which consists of a grueling competition between the Company junctions (different places where Company members are located). However, this Convention will prove different.

Headquaters of the POP has called Citybuilders from around the country to meet in South Bend for the weekend to discuss Citybuilding. There are 100 people confirmed to show up (for my organizing friends, the rule of halves does not apply in the POP - more than 100 showed up), and that meant a lot of food. So, after we had finished dinner, cleaned up, and updated each other we turned in early for a long day of cooking on Thursday after the early morning Funeral Games.

The Games are always held at 5:30AM, because that is when our day begins in the Company. We are up early most days for phyiscal training, personal prayer, group morning prayer and breakfast. On most days we are done with this, dishes and ready for the day by 8AM. We share this day schedule in the Company, eventhough we're all over the US.

Allendale Junction (in Shreveport, LA) has won many Funeral Games, but this time I think South Bend Junction won (I'll get back to you on that). Then at 8:30AM Trish Brewer from the one:ten household (group of men and women who work at one:ten communications who also live together) in South Bend had created a detailed set of instructions for us to make 5 meals for 100 people. It was impressive.

Cooking took up most of the day. But once we had finished we were assigned host families in the South Bend Branch who we would be staying with during the weekend (we slept on the floor of one of the classrooms in Trinity the night before). I stayed at the Behrens and am here until the end of Monday, with Thomas Duddy, David Zimmel from Allendale, Bart Durand and Dan Ficker from Mpls.

The Conference was Fri thorugh Sun, and most of us stayed for a New Year's party. The focus of the Conference was missionary work and how all God's children are called to be missionaries, whether to Mongolia or their department at work. We sang a lot of songs, ate good food, shared a lot of stories, and the Lord really blessed our time together. I really got two words from the Lord that struck me.

It would be important to note at this time that I love God (not as a topic of discussion or a thing but as a friend and mentor). I know that is not the case for all of you, please do not let that stop you from reading. This is me sharing my life, and I hope you all do the same with me.

The first was from a sharing on Firday, given by Brian Couch. He was talking about the city we are building at Allendale (neighborhood in Shreveport). Allendale is beautiful and desperately poor. There are a lot of people stuck in a place where sin, death and decay are killing not just people but their souls too. We've been living there for 5 years now and continue to grow with the neighborhood. Brian and Nathan Barret also from Allendale have been walking the streets day and night praying with folks, and pulling neighbors together who also love Allendale and are looking for change. Couch said, "The Lord is really showing us he's serious about this." As they've baptized more than a few people in the Holy Spirit the last couple weeks.

Really quickly, the Holy Spirit is not the baptism of forgiveness (or the baptism by water) which is what John the Baptist preached. John said, "After me comes one who is more powerful than I am; I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit" (Mark 1:7-8). The baptism of the Holy Spirit is when God's Spirit comes to reside within you (note: not all everyone baptized in the Holy Spirit is receives forgiveness, not everyone baptized for forgiveness has been baptized in the Holy Spirit). The 12 disciples received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2) which gave them the ability to speak in other nations tongues, great wisdom, ability to heal, and work miracles, prophesy and discernment (1 Cor 12:7-11).

Brian mentioned how when they would walk around it was almost as if they had appointments with folks. They would show up and open their mouths and God's great miracles would change hearts, and bring allies together.

The other really strong word I got this last weekend was during Saturday in a talk that Sean Connelly from one:ten household and editor of Vine & Branches (POP newsletter) gave. He talked about Paul, and how history can hide how difficult his missionary life was. When reading the Bible I've found it's hard to imagine how the disciples could doubt as it's laid out so plainly, but life on the road, especially Paul's life was wrought with danger. Almost every city he went to the folks were out to kill him, at one point they actually catch him and stone him. He would be starving a lot of the time, bruised and beaten on the road to the next city or running from the last after starting underground Christian communities. Paul describes his life as being violently taken from him, when Jesus visits him on the road to Damascus (when he stops killing early Christians and becomes one of them - Acts 9). Sean talked about Paul had been chained behind Jesus chariot and was being dragged from town to town living out God's will. I found this greatly encouraging.

Christ is not only our friend but our king. This is admittedly a difficult collection of roles for us as we Americans really hate kings. The idea of one is difficult to understand and I think this is where the fluffy bunny Chrisitans come from. God is love and this is true. He wants us to be be free, liberated from the confines of sin; also true. How then can we be obedient to a king and be free? This is a very good quesiton, one which I won't spend much time on here but probably later.

I was encouraged as I want to do the will of God. He wants my people/His people liberated from the oppressions of the world, the flesh and the enemy to love Him with all their heart, mind, soul and strength. His Kingdom come to earth will be a place where oppression doesn't exist, where community happens, where no one has too much nor too little. This is what I want. I also know I make a lot of mistakes. I say the wrong things. I still sin. I am hardly the right person to help an all powerful God. Yet he'll still use my work if I ask and the image of Paul being draged behind the charriot was not one of death but one of life and love.

Jesus has a plan and I don't know enough to do it myself, nor am I wise enough to execute it, but if I could chain myself to his charriot - I could do His work. I don't have to know how to convert a crowd of 5,000 as Peter and John did after Pentecost, all I have to do is open my mouth. It is a great reasurance that the Lord will provide.

If you have gotten this far you are indeed a very faithful friend, thank you. I will work in the future to make these posts a little shorter, but so much has happened this week. Please feel free to email me rusjlyons@gmail.com or give me a call 612.709.1245 Otherwise, this is what I've got for now. God bless you and I pray I will see you again soon.