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!
