Paul Stewart

The Sustantivo (Partnership) Trailer

In March a team of eleven people from Gateway traveled to Anemona, El Salvador to begin an unlikely partnership between two churches. The team worked with ENLACE to help this impoverished community build tilapia fish tanks and home gardens to help improve nutrition and the local economy, but from the very beginning the team was just as focused on building relationships and connecting with the local church and community.

The stories coming out of this trip have been nothing short of remarkable and it just so happens that the people on the team are some amazing storytellers! We are currently producing a 20 - 30 minute short-film documenting our work - you can view the trailer below. We plan on showing the full-length film on Sunday, June 3rd during our worship services.

We believe this trip is only the beginning of a long-term partnership between Gateway, ENLACE and Palabra de Poder and the kingdom of God advancing in Des Moines, El Salvador and around the world.

Art Has Its Own Validity

"Handel with his Messiah, Bach with his Matthew Passion, Rembrandt with his Denial of St. Peter, and the architects of those Cistercian churches were not evangelizing, nor making tools for evangelism; they worked to the glory of God. They did not compromise their art. They were not devising tools for religious propaganda or holy advertisement. And precisely because of that they were deep and important. Their works were not the means to an end, the winning of souls, but they were meaningful and an end in themselves, to God’s glory, and showing forth something of the love that makes things warm and real. Art has too often become insincere and second-rate in its very effort to speak to all people, and to communicate a message that art was not meant to communicate. In short, art has its own validity and meaning, certainly in the Christian framework."

-  Hans Rookmaaker, Art Needs No Justification. (via The Search)

 

Eggs, Eggs Everywhere!

This Spring, in an effort to bring the downtown community together and share the good news of Easter we are putting on the second annual Eggs Eggs Everywhere! event! A unique Easter Egg Hunt located in the heart of our city and open to everyone in the neighborhood. We'll hide over 12,000 candy & prize-filled eggs throughout Western Gateway Park!

Beyond the hunt, family activities will include:

• Kids’ Art Station
• 6 Giant inflatables for jumping play
• Face Painting Station
• Free Family Photos
• Free coffee for the adults

At Gateway our vision is to become a part of the fabric of the city of Des Moines; to join God in the renewal of the city. We can do that through ministry to the homeless, the widow and the orphan, the refugee and the outcasts... and we can do that by organizing a massive, free Easter Egg Hunt in the heart of our city! 

If you are in Des Moines over Easter please join us! Find out more at http://eggseggseverywhere.com

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

This is the last in a series of posts on the Lord's Prayer based on a message I preached at Gateway a couple of weeks ago. You can listen to my message here.

You can’t pray like this every day, you can’t beg for the restoration of the world, for the coming of the Kingdom of God, for the Hallowing of God’s name on earth and not expect to be opposed by the ruler of this present age.

We live in contested space. This world is not neutral.There are competing political regimes and economic regimes and cultural regimes and spiritual regimes. Every inch of this planet is claimed and counter-claimed and reclaimed and counter-claimed.

If you begin to take prayer seriously you will find the spiritual intensity of your life rise up and you will certainly face opposition. So Jesus tells us to pray. To pray for deliverance and protection from, not just evil in general, but from the evil one. Namely Satan. Who has his own rule and reign and authority in earth and is not super exited about giving that up to anyone. As we begin to pray, Jesus teaches that we need to also pray for protection because this will get spiritually intense. 

If you are not on your guard, you could be taken out. One lustful look from a coworker. One word from your boss. One lie you choose to hold on to. We live in contested space.

But the good news is this: We are not fighting for victory, we are fighting from victory.

We are implementing the victory of God that Christ has already won on the cross. Way back in Genesis, right after the Fall, God promises that His son would one day crush the serpent's head!

The starting point of the story of renewal is the victory of God over Satan’s system - sin, hell, death, all of these things. And so we know there will be opposition. We expect it. We prepare for it. We suit up for it. We take it very, very seriously. But we know that ultimately the battle has already been one. The victory is already ours in Christ. 

Which is why we can pray, "For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen!"

Fight Through The Gap

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

What does this mean? Are we are forgiven only as we forgive?

Interestingly this is the only part of the prayer that Jesus feels compelled to amplify upon.

Matthew 6v14
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

We know that the gospel is a free gift - nothing that we could have earned on our own. So this can not mean we have to demonstrate to God how good we are at forgiving other people before he will forgive us.

Jesus is simply describing the very nature of created order - we must give in order to receive. For example, I cannot receive love if I do not give love. Augustine said, “God gives where He finds empty hands”

If our hearts are such that we can only see how others have hurt and offended us, we cannot see how we have offended God and so we find no need to seek forgiveness. If we are always calculating how much this person or that person has violated our rights then we will not, by the very nature of things, be able to pray this prayer.

Forgiveness is the only thing that breaks the cycle of retribution and releases the grace of heaven among human beings. Karl Barth said, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” When we get before God and come to grips with the pain and the tension and the angst of our fallen world and the sinful nature of our own hearts, when we to clasp our hands before our heavenly Father and ask Him to bring it all back into alignment, this is truly the beginning of an uprising!

Give Us This Day

Last week I started writing a series of posts on the Lord's Prayer from a message I preached at Gateway a couple of weeks ago. You can listen to my message here. This prayer is the foundation of all Christian prayer. It provides shape and meaning to our faith. It was taught by Jesus, in part, to show us what the point of Christian spirituality is and how to get to the point in our prayers.

Jesus shows us that point of prayer is seeking to weave the Kingdom of God into a broken and fallen world. The first half of the pryaer is towards God and the second part is towards the earth. The first half is concerned with God’s honor, kingdom, and purpose, and only after that do our own needs find a place.

When Jesus says, “Give us this day our daily bread” that is simply saying “Father I want to be dependent upon you... I know everything I have is coming from your hand.”

This is reminiscent of the way that God provided manna for the  children of Israel as they wandered through the desert. Yet in our world, with all of our stuff, it is difficult to remain dependent on God. We look to therapists and medication and money and vacations.

But God says, “Would you rely on me for your daily rations? Would you remain dependent upon me for the very sustenance of your life? For your daily piece of bread? And would you remember to pray and give to those who do not even have that? For in my Kingdom everyone has just enough to get them through each new day and it all comes from me."

Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done

This week I am writing a series of posts on the Lord's Prayer from a message I preached at Gateway last weekend. You can listen to my message here.

When we pray for God's Kingdom to come we are aligning our hearts and lives around his just and righteous rule and reign in the universe and his authority in our lives. When the Old Testament prophets spoke about this they described God's rule in seven primary ways:

Deliverance
Righteousness & Justice
Peace
Joy
God’s Manifest Presence
Healing
Return from Exile

Jesus is saying, "I want you to pray for the rule and the reign of God to break out into the world around you. In your neighborhoods. In your homes. In your relationships. In all your situations!" And when it does you will see people being set free from that which is enslaving them. You will see righteousness and justice being established. You will see the ceasing of conflict and the restoration of peace. You will see a sense of great joy in life. There will be a sense of God’s manifest presence. You will see healing - souls, emotions, physical bodies. And there will be sense that the people of God have come home. They have finally found their place as God’s people in the world.

These are the things that we are to be praying for and seeking in our world. These are the things that we are to be calling down into our situations

In other words, prayer is not only about conversing with God, prayer is about collaborating with His actions in the world.

The apostle Paul said we are “God’s fellow workers” We are co-laborers with Christ. So when we see poverty and disease, the lack of justice, hostility and hatred we are to bring these things to God and ask that all of these situations would be transformed. That the rule and reign of God would break in.

Prayer is seeking to weave the Kingdom of God into a fallen world. 

Hallowed Be Your Name

Yesterday I began a series on the Lord's Prayer from a message I preached at Gateway last weekend. You can listen to my message here.

We are to pray that God's name is “hallowed” in the world. This is to pray that people may recognize and acknowledge God's holiness give Him the reverence which He is due. This is not because God has some selfish desire to become famous on earth, but flows out of His desire to restore the brokenness of the world.

Consider this: where did the universe begin to unravel? In the garden when humanity decided to "hallow" something other than God and their relationship with Him. In that moment sin enters the world and we can no longer figure out our relationship with Him, with each other, with ourselves and with all created order.

We all “hallow” something in the world. We take something or someone (other than God) and elevate it to first place in our lives and as a result our lives spin out of control.

Jesus knows that when we cry out to our Father we return in some sense to the purity of Eden. That connection is restored, and we are beginning to undo all of the things that disorder the world. When we "hallow" God we are religning our hearts and when we rightly order our hearts, when we let lesser things go, we can then begin to pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Our Father in Heaven

Yesterday I began a series on the Lord's Prayer from a message I preached at Gateway last weekend. You can listen to my message here.

This first time in the Scriptures that a Jewish person cried out to God as a father in prayer. At this point all religion ceased to be equal. At this point, Christianity moves into a new path where it offers you the right to become God’s actual children in the world.

Many people pray to a distant god but here we have God calling us back into relationship. Yesterday I said that prayer is seeking to weave the Kingdom of God into a fallen world, and this is the first step.

Consider the Garden of Eden. What was our relationship like with God in the Garden? In Genesis it says humans walked with God in the cool of the day - without shame or distance.

That is ultimately the greatest longing of our soul. In this prayer, Jesus is saying that through Him you can be reconnected with your Creator. That in your room, on your own it is possible to return back to Eden in your heart.

This is God’s invitation to you in this prayer. He is your Father. You are his son. You are his daughter. He wants to welcome you back home.

The Kingdom of God advances as our hearts find our true home with the Father.

The Lord's Prayer

“Prayer is an expression of who we are... We are living incompleteness.
We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment.” - Thomas Merton

This weekend at Gateway we explored Jesus' instruction on prayer. In one sense, prayer is something that everyone does and it is also something that everyone struggles with. Every faith has some form of prayer. Remote tribes pray for rain & children & victory in battle. The Incas & Aztecs went so far as to sacrifice humans in order to attract their god’s attention. Five times a day Muslims stop whatever they are doing to pray. Even people who think of themselves as atheists or agnostics, when they are surveyed, most of them will actually say, "There are times when I come to the end of my rope and I pray." 

Philip Yancey says, “We pray because we want to thank someone or something for the beauties and the glories of life, and also because we feel small and helpless and sometimes afraid. We pray for forgiveness, for strength, for contact with the One who is, for assurance we are not alone”

We pray because our deepest desire is to know God and yet one of our biggest struggles in Christian spirituality is prayer. So in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus comes along and teaches us how to pray.

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.

This simple yet incredibly profound prayer has shaped Christianity for over two thousand years. It was taught by Jesus, in part, to show us what the point of Christian spirituality really is and how to get to the point in our prayers.

Over the next few days I am going to offer a few mediations on each line of this beautiful prayer, but you could really sum it up this way:

Prayer is seeking to weave the Kingdom of God into a fallen world.

All of us are trying to recover from the effects of the fall. We are all struggling with idolatry, sinfulness, futility, and brokenness. So many things seem unraveled from the way they were supposed to be. What Jesus wants us to do is to join him the the weaving of the Kingdom of God back into a fallen world.

Karl Barth said, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”

This is what the Lord's Prayer is all about. It is a holistic prayer. It embraces the whole world - from the coming of the Kingdom of God to our daily bread. Large things and small things. Spiritual things and material things. Inward things and outward things. Nothing is beyond the scope of this prayer. 

Prayer is a struggle because creation is at war with God but the Lord's Prayer helps align our lives around his Kingdom. Jesus invites his followers to converse and collaborate with Him to accomplish good things on earth and advance his Kingdom purposes through prayer.

The Celebrity Pastor

It was fascinating to watch Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) struggle last night during his acceptance speech at the Grammy’s. He was visibly uncomfortable receiving the award for Best New Artist, wanting to show proper gratitude but at the same time distance himself from the event, presumably, out of fear of being swallowed up by the pop culture machine. Vernon said that when he started writing music he did it not for awards or accolades but for the inherent reward of making songs. Vernon was uncomfortable because he knew that there is a big difference between being a ‘musician’ and a ‘celebrity’ - and the two do not always fit well together.

There has been much written recently about the phenomenon of the ‘celebrity pastor’ - think Rob Bell, Mark Driscoll, Steven Furtick, etc. In many ways this is nothing new. Even in the early church Christians were aligning themselves with famous apostles like Paul, Apollos and Cephas (1 Corinthians 3:21). We all have a natural tendency to make our leaders into idols - and leaders have a natural tendency to turn their “platform” or their personal “brand” into an idol as well.

Bob Hyatt wrote this morning about his own struggle with the pursuit of pastoral fame. “I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a danger to my soul in pursuing more exposure, more name recognition, more money to be made from thinking, writing, and speaking about ministry issues.”

Hyatt argues that we must separate celebrity from pastoral work. “Local church ministry should not be a stepping stone to anything, least of all to fame and fortune. It should not be easier for CNN to get in touch with a pastor than for someone in his own congregation.”

Skye Jethani helps to break down this phenomenon even further. He argues that there is more than a spiritual or psychological reason behind the rise of today’s pastoral pantheon. There is a systemic economic force at work as well. Evangelicalism is a very large business. Some estimate the total evangelical market to be over $7 billion a year. A market, just like any other, that must be sustained. Jethani points out that “This market-driven cycle of megachurches, conferences, and publishers results in an echo chamber where the same voices, espousing the same values, create an atmosphere where ministry success becomes equated with audience aggregation.” Sounds a lot like pop-music to me.

In Matthew 4 we’re told that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to to be tempted by the devil. The tempter came to him three times with three different temptations. “If you are the Son of God... tell these stones to become bread... throw yourself off the temple and have the angels rescue you... worship me and I will give you all the kingdoms and the splendor of this world.” Henri Nouwen points out that these were essentially the temptation to become relevant, to do something spectacular, and to become popular and powerful. These are the same temptations we all face in Christian leadership. Why are these temptations so potent? Because each one offers an easy substitute from the hard task of love.

Christian leadership is about love. It is not about fulfilling our need to be relevant to a market audience, it is about about giving and receiving the life-giving love of our Creator. It is not about becoming popular, it is about being rooted in a community where you can know and be known. It is not about power and control, it is displaying the same kind of mercy, humility and service Jesus showed to the world.

May we minister not for the awards or the accolades, but for the inherent rewards of serving Christ and his Church.

Jesus on Being Single

On Sunday, we looked at Jesus’ words on Marriage, Divorce and Singleness in Matthew 5:31-32 and 19:1-12. You can listen to the message HERE. Unfortunately I did not have time to get to singleness in my message. It is the last thing Jesus says in this passage and it is very puzzling.

Matthew 19v11,12
Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.

What in the world does Jesus mean about this eunuch stuff? Essentially Jesus is saying that just as some people are constitutionally unable to marry, some people are spiritually called not to marry. And the power of the kingdom of God in their life enables them not to be married.

Jesus says this in response to the disciples question. He has been talking about the essence of marriage (vv. 4-6) and divorce (vv. 6-9) and the disciples respond, If this is the situation between a husband and a wife, wouldn’t it be better not to get married at all? 

Jesus says, you don't get it. The only people who can be unmarried are those who accept it as a calling from God.

Now, some people are permanently called to be single. Which means that the power of the Kingdom works in their lives so that they do not want to be married. They are not depressed by loneliness. They are not sexually burning.

Of course, many people who are single know that this is not a permanent calling for them. In that case, singleness is still a temporary calling and the only way you can endure it is if you look at it as a calling from God.

How do you do that? The Apostle Paul puts it this way...

I Corinthians 7v27 
Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife.

Are you married? Do not seek a divorce. 
Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife.
Are you married? Don’t try to become single.
Are you single? Don’t be to eager to get married. 

Marriage is a lot of work. Singleness can be tough. Don’t be too eager to change status.

This was shocking in that day. In ancient society there was no such thing as individual success or achievement. It was about your family becoming successful. You had to be married. You had to have children. Essentially there were no single adults except for widows and prostitutes. But Paul says that singleness, as an adult, was a perfectly acceptable way to be. This was revolutionary!

Stanley Hauwerwas says, “One of the clearest differences between Christianity and all other relgions was Christianity’s idea of singleness as a paradigm way of life for its followers.”

Church historian Rodney Stark recounts how in first century Rome, Caeser Augustus would have widows fined if they didn’t get remarried within two years because single adulthood was absolutely illegitimate. You had no significance if you did not have family. You were nothing if you did not have heirs. There was no future.

But the church took care of widows. Gave them the choice if they wanted to get remarried or not. The church, the family of God, became their significance.

So the New Testament provides the highest view of marriage the world has ever had and then says its quite alright to live your entire life without it. Why?

1 Corinthians 7v29
What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who are married should live as if they were not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep.

We live in the overlap of the two ages. In Christ we have a foretaste of the new age to come. We’ve been brought into the divine community of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  And we can experience that right now! The Church is designed to be a foretaste of our future love, future grace, future family.

“From the beginning we Christians have made singleness as valid a way of life as marriage. What it means to be the church is to be a group of people called out of the world, and back into the world, to embody the hope of the Kingdom of God. Children are not necessary for the growth of the Kingdom, because the church can call the stranger into her midst. That makes both singleness and marriage possible vocations. If everybody has to marry, then marriage is a terrible burden. But the church does not believe that everybody has to marry. Even so, those who do not marry are parents within the church, because the church is now the true family. The church is a family into which children are brought and received. It is only within that context that it makes sense for the church to say, ‘We are always ready to receive children. The people of God know no enemy when it comes to children’” - Stanley Hauwerwas

Therefore singleness is not inferior or superior to marriage. Jesus was a single person and He is the paradigm of true humanity - so it can’t mean to be single is to be subhuman. 

Paige Benton Brown in her article “Singled Out by God for Good” puts it this way: “I am not single because I am too spiritually unstable to possibly deserve a husband, nor because I am too spiritually  mature to possibly need one. I am single because God is so abundantly good to me, because this is his best for me.”

If you are single and you accept it as a calling - either permanently or temporararily - If you say, I am not going to fear or despise marriage. Nor am I going rage against my singleness. Instead I am going to use the freedom I’ve got as a single person to serve people and to serve God.  I’m not going to use my singleness to indulge my desires, I am going to use it for the kingdom... If you die in that way - it will be resurrected and turned into something beautiful.

Brown puts it this way, “Let’s face it: singleness is not an inherently inferior state of affairs... But I want to be married. I pray to that end every day. I may meet someone and walk down the aisle in the next couple of years because God is so good to me. I may never have another date... because God is so good to me.”

Singleness is not an inferior or superior calling - but it is a calling - and it can only be survived if you accept it as a calling and surround yourself with a community of believers who will love and support your calling as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Salt & Light

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." - Matthew 5v13-16

On Sunday we continued our series on the Sermon on the Mount by exploring Jesus’ words about salt & light (you can listen to the entire message HERE). Jesus uses these metaphors to teach about the responsibility of Christians in the world. By saying we are to be salt and light, He is saying there is darkness in the world and we are to be the light; there is decay in the culture and we are to be a preservative. There are four characteristics about salt and light that help us understand what this means.

1. Salt & Light are distinct and influential

Jesus says the salt must retain its saltiness, it must not become contaminated. And the light must retain its brightness; it must not be smothered by the darkness. Christians are to be holy, set-apart and distinct from the world. But unfortunately too many Christians stop there. They are content to cloister themselves away from the world for fear of being contaminated. But at that point what good are they? 

Salt and light are not just different from their environment, they are to have a powerful influence on their environment. Salt must be rubbed into the meat in order to stop the rot and the light is to shine into the darkness. It is to be set upon a lamp stand, and it is to give light to the environment. 

2. Salt & Light expose decay and darkness

If you are light, that means that your life should be so beautiful, that when your life comes into contact with its surrounding environment it reveals it for what it really is.

So for example, if you are a Christian, then just by your very presence your life reveals the dishonesty in your business, the gossip in your office, the racism in your neighborhood, the corruption in your political caucus or the promiscuity at the party. 

Just simply by being a Christian, just by showing up, you reveal things for what they are. It makes the racism look like racism. It makes the gossip look like gossip. It makes the corruption look like corruption. 

If you live like Jesus Christ, the beauty of that is going to reveal the reality of the environment. If you are a Christian, living like Jesus Christ then the beauty of your life is going to expose the decay and darkness around you. It is going to reveal to people what is good and bad.

Is your life so remarkable that it shows the contrast between the beauty of Christ and the world around you... or do you just blend in?

3. Salt & Light bring joy

Jesus says, “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds.” There are two Greek words that can be used for “good” - agothos and kalos. Agothos means good in quality. Kalos means beautiful. Jesus uses Kalos. Your deeds ought to be beautiful.

Salt is, after all, not just a preservative. It’s a seasoning. It brings out the taste. It makes things taste better. And light shows the beauty of all things. In other words, salt and light bring joy to people.

Now, I just said that salt and light can expose racism, promiscuity and corruption. That of course that can get you some persecution. But at the same time you bring joy to your neighbors. You are the stability in your office. You bring beauty into your home.

Because a Christian never looks at a situation and asks, “What can I get out of it?” A Christian acts like salt and asks, "How can I bring the best out of this organization, out of this group, out of these people?"

This is extremely difficult because we live in a consumer driven culture. What started out as just an economic system has radically affected every area of our lives. People go to work, go to school, go to church asking “What can I get out of it?” “What can I take from this job to help me move up the corporate ladder?” “How will this group or these people help enhance my position?”

But a Christian goes into a job or a school or a neighborhood and asks “How can I make this the best possible place?”John Stott says, “Like salt in putrefying meat, Christians help to prevent social decay. Like light in the prevailing darkness, Christians to illumine society and show it a better way.” A Christian brings joy.

4. Salt & Light work together

Salt has to work together - one grain isn’t going to season anything. We have to be a unit. A city is a corporate place - and we are to be a city on a hill. 

In fact, that is what this whole sermon is about. The Sermon on the Mount is not primarily addressed to individuals - because it is precisely as individuals that we are most likely to fail as Christians. These are words for the colonists.

This sermon is not about how to be better individual Christians - it is a picture of what the church should look like. It is an invitation to become citizens of a New Kingdom.

The church is not a club. It is supposed to be a colony. A city. A new humanity. A people who are faithful to their promises, love their enemies, tell the truth, honor the poor, suffer for righteousness, and visibly testify to the amazing community-creating power of God. A place where people can tangibly see what the Kingdom of God looks like.

We are the salt of the earth. We are the light of the world. Together the local church is the most concrete expression we can give to the world of the reality of God’s kingdom.

The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled;
When the kings and the princes are home;
When the shepherds are back with their flocks;
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost;
To feed the hungry;
To release the prisoner;
To rebuild the nations;
To bring peace among the family;
To make music in the heart.

- Howard Thurman