Enter Georges Boujakly and the Creative Team. Georges (is it a French/Canadian thing to put an ’s’ on the end of perfectly good words and not pronounce them??) may be the shortest person I know but he is also the deepest. I told him about my stuckness. We had used the battleship vs. cruiseship metaphor in describing the church last week but there is so much more to the church than just this picture. Where to start? How to communicate this?

Georges handed me the book From Eternity To Here by Frank Viola, who I loved on This Old House. (Okay, not that guy.) He said read this…it’s going to help you. He smiled, hugged me and then said something I already knew but apparently needed reminding of –

“Grant…don’t start with the metaphor then go to the text. Start with the text. You’ve done your best teaching when you simply let the text speak and come alive.”

Well, no duh. Thank you, Georges. Creative Team listened to me ramble and was a place for me to think out loud with the ‘new’ information from Georges.

What was the ‘new’ information? Shockingly nothing new but something very ancient.

When speaking of the church, God uses three main metaphors — all them found in — wait for this — EPHESIANS! God has a ridiculous crazy sense of humor.

What are the metaphors? The Bride of Christ, the House of God, and the Body of Christ. All in Ephesians, all have OT roots, all adding a key piece of whyChurch. And that’s the fun that awaits us on Sunday.

But I loved the toys and getting to blow things up. I loved having a mission that focused all of our decisions. Loved the leadership development, having a team focused on an important task where much was at stake. Putting our lives into the effort. It really wasn’t just a job. Loved the process of developing leaders — where the goal was to develop people to be better. And I loved serving my country. It was hard but it was rewarding.

What’s this got to do with whyChurch? Over the next few weeks, we’re going to look at Jesus’ mission for the church, what WH is doing to fulfill that mission. We’ll take a trip down memory lane as well as look at the future of what implications His mission has on us.

Here’s a nugget from my notes so far:

The mission of God can be first seen in Genesis 12 with Abram and gets sharper in focus leading up to the arrival of Jesus. Jesus brought a laser focus to His mission by using simple, powerful stories that captured the heart. These simple – not easy – stories were given to us so that the focus would be on DOING the mission, not defining it, dissecting it, or discussing it.

Go to ecardlets.com. It’s pretty cool, pretty basic. Looks like you can even design your own card and send if you have the time.

Here’s the link for the audio. It’s a bit long to go through all of the questions here but I want to hit a couple of highlights.

It’s always fun to read Song of Songs…always…especially in church. That’s all I’ll say about that.

Amy is a rock star. I mean, she really is. Amy hit it out of the park with her insight and answers. I’m glad Western Hills got a deeper look at the incredible woman she is.

I think the Q&A revealed how important dialogue is in discipleship. It’s why Life Groups are so huge in the maturing process because Life Groups provide the perfect context for asking questions, real questions and getting real answers.