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Well. Sort of 🙂

We are hosting our first project this week, the barista training program for at-risk youth, then we will officially open sometime next month before the university students return on the first of October.

We have also launched our social media channels, so please follow us if you are interested in watching this place grow, mature, and navigate the coming seasons.

In December of 2023, we assumed leadership of the space and the 5-year lease. Since that time, we’ve seen God provide the materials, and people to rally around this new kingdom, missional space.

When I say kingdom, I mean the loving reign of Jesus’ reality, “as it is in heaven.” Sometimes the word kingdom solicits ideas of the kingdoms of this world, ruled by iron fists and domination systems. Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world.. and he spent his time trying to unpack and help his followers grasp the values and virtues of what he called his Father’s kingdom… Only after Jesus divested his earthly life, in sacrificial loving surrender, did his followers then truly begin to grasp just how different Jesus’ world is from this one.

What kind of a king, what kind of a kingdom could this be where the Ultimate becomes intentionally weak by taking on our nature and laying down his life? Surely this is an upside-down way of being in the world we know as dog-eat-dog and each one out for themselves!

We follow a king who pours his power out upon the believing heart, awakening, and even resurrecting us from the darkness of blind death. We follow a Shepherd who lays down his life for the good of the wandering and wayward sheep. We serve a God that is found most truly in the perfect Life of the Son.

So, when we launch Lighthouse, a missional creative platform in smack in the center of our city in Cluj-Napoca, Romania’s second largest and youngest city… we are embarking on embodying this historical kingdom of love embodied in people of Jesus known as his church.. we are to be community focused on divesting our power and resources, creating opportunity for the culture to experience the welcoming invitation of the Savior of the world to discover who they REALLY are, as they discover who God in Jesus REALLY is.

Jesus kingdom, after all, will know no end – so let’s keep growing into it now!

We are kingdom ambassadors, as we follow Jesus’ example and experience His love toward us.

This week, our first project, investing in the lives of 10 young adults, ages 15-21yrs, from Ukraine and Romania. God provided Justin and his team from Filtered Hope to provide 6 full days of training in the art of Coffee and self-discovery. Many of the youth come from difficult situations, and our team is coming alongside them in an effort to empower them with practical skills for their future, and spiritual truths that we hope will germinate as seeds in their souls.

Thank you everyone that has given to the project! We are now sort of open, and testing out the space. We have many practical decisions to make, from our schedule, which partners will use the space on which days and nights. God is providing us with friends and like-minded believers who are also excited to have this ‘3rd space’ – a neutral, welcoming place to connect with neighbors, co-workers, and cultivate deeper relationships.

We are looking forward to how this place will impact culture, and change lives in Jesus name…. and for his growing Kingdom.

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God – Romans 8:14

According to Thomas Merton¹ (1915-1968), humanity’s purpose in life is to discover meaning and live according to it. We’re each wrestling with the dissonance between what our lives project, and what our inner longings tell us are true.

“The first responsibility of a person of faith is to make their faith really a part of their life, not by rationalizing it but by living it” (1978, XIV). This living into our faith, materializing it in the world, is a participatory experience within God’s own Trinitarian Personhood. The Father, Son, and Spirit united perfectly in holy, divesting love, have created us for fellowship. In this way, says Merton, “We do not exist for ourselves alone”… and by understanding this reality, we can love ourselves and others properly.

Love, as a grand theme, is the key to resolving our inner conflicts. To experience God’s inner realities of perfect acceptance and affirmation invites us into God’s reality, a reality that supersedes the present. “Infinite sharing is the law of god’s inner life,” he says. But he challenges our concepts of love by insisting that the giving of God’s kind of love, is where true liberty and humanity’s contentment are found.

“Happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy…. true happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases as it’s shared.“

In sharing in God’s love, we ultimately satisfy our deepest longings. Many of us love for the results of love, the effects of love that reverberate back to us. This, according to Merton, is a kind of “hidden moral tyranny” and an ultimately self-centered act. This sort of charity for the sake of the giver is far from God’s love. It may look like we’ve performed a loving act, and even be characterized as a loving person, but if we are seeking the effects of the love we’ve given rather than simply expressing the beauty of love from which we have been loved, according to Merton, we’ve failed to participate in God’s inner life.

“In disinterested activity, we best fulfill our capacities to act and be.”

To be disinterested is to have no alternative motives for loving rather than the beautiful expression of love itself. This is the love that God has experienced from all of eternity within His own Personhood and conveyed on Calvary two millennia ago.

God’s love is intended to awaken the recipient’s capacity to think and be. Sometimes people don’t receive God’s love, and therefore can’t truly receive ours. If the reaction toward God’s love isn’t met with an open reception to God’s love, that doesn’t mean the love was a waste, but that the reciprocating nature of God’s inner loving life has been stopped short of its intended purpose.

We love because God has first loved us in Christ, through the Spirit. As we experience this eternal, enduring, and present reality, we, by faith move out into the world of our neighbor and enter the suffering love of God. A love that is often rejected, but doesn’t give up. A love that knocks on the dormant, cold heart of humanity and smiles with an invitation to gather ’round the warm hearth of fellowship. If accepted, if received, the invited are forever changed and begin sharing in the love of God, through the Spirit.

In this way, love is perfected, and the world is healed, one heart, one soul at a time. We are filled with God’s Spirit to participate in God’s love and inner Life.

If you enjoyed this devotion, visit https://sacredformation.com/blog/ for more

When I first started writing about our journey, I would post about the most random things. Everything was new, strange to us, and worthy of posting! Slowly, over the years, and now into year 16, I’m looking back and seeing our posts slowly became a random mix of personal updates, evolving theology, and a definite bent towards spiritual formation.

Life is, well, a mix of everything isn’t it? I used to try and think and live categorically. This no longer seems relevant, or useful. We’re building a new Lighthouse platform, and doing it with some new, and old friends. Our family continues to adapt and grow alongside our missional efforts… or rather, I should say, our missional efforts continue adapting alongside the lives that are being lived.

We are excited to see things come together. I love making beauty out of chaos, order where dysfunction has once dominated. Ugly concrete, uneven flooring is now natural, straight wood. An interior building that was falling apart, the residue of an old dingy bar, now a clean, restored and homey place of welcome. Like a farmer that pulls up the weeds to ensure something live-giving can emerge, I think this is deep within humanity; to renew things in the likeness of our own internal experience in Jesus.

Bricks, mortar, and wood, can be fashioned in ways that promote an eternal reality, where peace and goodness reign. Atmosphere matters, we know this because we breath it. I think the church has more to offer this world than inviting it ‘in’. Our super, other-wordly power lies also in our capacity to introduce our world to the love and goodness of our Creator. We do this ‘out there’, in the world that Jesus loves, not only ‘in here’ in places of gathered community.

Anyway, there I go again. Missiology meets construction, our family and friends integrates with the nature of theology and culture. It’s a wild mess, and a joy to see things come together. This new venture in Romania began with a step of faith, we didn’t have the finances to take this over, or to pay the rent, but God has provided and continues to encourage us forward to trust him for each step.

This August we will host a group of mostly Ukrainian youth for our first project at Lighthouse, called Filtered Hope. We’re also hoping that through area like-minded partners, we can bring in some revenue to pay the bills by renting out the space for various events. We want to hold space for international community, and also be an example for the area local churches how we can together put the kingdom of Jesus first, and unite around shining kingdom values in the center of culture without allowing the slippery political slopes of power and jealousy snuff out the light we are called to shine. Too often, it’s not our unity and love toward one another that defines us before watching world, but our disagreements and divisions. May Lighthouse surprise us in the ways the Spirit broadcasts good things here in Cluj!

Last night we hosted a little goodbye grill on our terrace here in Cluj. Our friend Olena and her daughter Yasya are moving to the US. They, like us, found themselves in Romania at the onset of the war. They, like us, never thought that after two years, they would still be here. It was interesting to process the emotions of more goodbyes, that old familiar pattern of ongoing transition.

Deb and I were talking after everyone left. There have been distinguishable waves of people coming through Cluj from Ukraine during this ongoing destabilization and occupation effort in Ukraine. First, the emergency evacuations from fleeing young people, many families, moms with their one or two kids, a few of the elderly sprinkled in. Then, a few months later, waves of the elderly, those with health issues, the vulnerable, and more moms with kids. The third wave of transition noticeable after about a year, were folks returning to Ukraine at the same pace as those exiting. Visiting family, and loved ones, or just tired of waiting in a foreign country for the war to end, choosing instead a life of continued threat of physical harm over the anguish of continued emotional anxiety.

Over two years now, there’s another transitional period it seems. Individuals and families moving once again from their original landing space to more intentional, purposeful locations. For many, like being repotted as a plant, the initial relocation was essential and pragmatic, they found a place to root for a while and wait for the war to end, they started building networks, and found work, and rhythms, but life just wasn’t feeling permanent enough to commit. This week we’re hosting Ukrainian friends from our hometown who landed in Italy, and another friend who was in Bali of all places! They began exploring new places to reconnect and build a life together in the same place outside of Ukraine, reforging lost friendships that were placed on pause. For others, engagements, marriages, and lifelong commitments of that nature are emerging and forcing new geographical pathways.

I liken what is happening to those under refugee status around the world to the snow globe. The war shook us all from a settled, peaceful, and rather static reality. At least it felt static, predictable, and cozy. The flurry of change as Russia entered Ukraine sent us snowflakes into disarray and chaos. Slowly, over months, and now years, there is less movement within the globe, but there are still some gently finding their way, settling mercifully into new spaces and places.

Anyway, saying goodbye to Olena, and being surrounded simultaneously by new incoming Ukrainian friends was an interesting moment for me. Life is a series of transitions, isn’t it? I look back and recognize seasons that seemed quite stable, and unchanging, but change is a permanent characteristic of this life. We are growing, changing, and dying, continually on a physical level. We are emotionally and spiritually in a formational process throughout our entire life. As my heart longs for the settledness of the snowglobe resting on the mantle, I wonder if that desire represents more of an ideal than a reality.

Thank God for the seasons of rest, of peace, and settledness. These past two years have been the most difficult, distressing and formative moments of our life. I haven’t written in my blog as much, because there’s been too much to unpack inwardly through this season, not too little to write about! I’m also wrestling with the nature of writing, its usefulness, and its purpose in my life. For now, we are grateful for this settled moment, taking deep breaths, and excited to see another Lighthouse space emerge in the center of the beautiful city of Cluj. A place we call home, for now, and hopefully longer. Yet, we continue to trust God, who holds our life and guides us into good places and spaces through each transition.