There are some messages that preach themselves for whatever reason. People get it; you feel the flow. “The Shape of Jesus”, this last weekend’s message at Journey, was not one of them.

It was concept heavy in some respects and the point of the message goes against the grain of our cultural “zeitgeist” (cool sounding word, huh?). From day 1 of His life people wanted Jesus to fit into certain categories. They had ideas of what “Messiah” is supposed to look like, how he’s supposed to role and who’s side he would be on (especially the last one). Jesus didn’t fit these! He still doesn’t.

So we looked at what we called a “Paradigm Verse” and a story to get our heads around this idea: one of the main reasons we read the scriptures is that it defines for us the “Shape of Jesus”.

We have the idea that I get to have my “Personal Jesus”. We see this in the way that we “Invoke” Jesus. “I don’t think Jesus would…” Of course this is always to show that Jesus is on our side, shares our opinion, fits our portrait of “Ultimate Dude! My man J.C.!”

But Jesus keeps saying disturbing things to mess with this idea. For example our Paradigm Verse:

Matthew 21:42 Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone; THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD, & IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES’? 44 “And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”

He said this in front of the Temple in view of some MAMBO STONES.

The point: we conform to the shape of the stone… not the other way around. “Is Jesus relevant to my life?” Well maybe a better question is, “Am I relevant to His?”

The story that epitomizes it for me is the so-called “Transfiguration story” which we looked at.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: Our friend and colleague Peter Thomas, who has been at Journey almost from it’s very beginning, feels led to start a church in the South bay area and we are behind him. We are sending prayer, money and people and would encourage you to be a part of starting this exciting new church – by one of those 3 means! Check out Explore Community Church here!

The Bible: it’s the best-selling and most widely distributed book of all time. But just because people own it doesn’t mean they read it, understand it or know what’s in it. And even those who know the content can sometimes miss the spirit of the inspiring God behind the words. Reading the Bible isn’t the same as meeting the Living God found within its pages. This series is about experiencing the God of the Bible, in the Bible.

Speaker: Ed Noble.

Journey is exploring opportunities to provide English As A Second Language training to various groups and people. Unfortunately, the Journey Serves crew doesn’t have any idea what’s involved in this! So, we are looking for people who have expertise in this area to give us guidance. This is NOT a request for a commitment to teach (although we wouldn’t turn this down). It IS a request that you allow us to buy you a coffee and probe your mind. We promise that it won’t hurt! Fill out the form on this page for more information.

This was a big week at Journey. This was the week that our newly formed small groups launched all over the San Diego area! It’s also the week that our existing groups dove into the Community Bible Experience. Believe me when I say it makes a difference in the “sermon” part of the service when you are preaching into that in our community life. In one week we basically doubled the number of people in home groups and every one of our campus groups has seen an influx of people there for this season. Plus of course people come to church having read at least some of the Scripture through the week.

Now, to be clear this is a short term, 8-week thing. But I think it’s giving us a taste of “New Testament, Vintage Us, Ekklesia, New Normal.” The idea of the Jesus movement was highly communal, and centered around the person of Jesus and His Lordship in each life as revealed in the Teaching of the Apostles (a.k.a. the New Testament).

Worship was amazing as usual.

The message had a really clear aim: “DELIGHT”. It’s not enough to choke down, a dutifully plow through the Words from God’s mouth, but we keep pressing in to God till they are a “delight to them”.

SELAH – The weekend ended with the 1^st SELAH of 2012. It seems that in the life of a church there needs to be some space in which we gather without much of an agenda or plan and just receive from the Holy Spirit. It was a pretty amazing night of God moving in a deep place. After a run of worship songs we went to “intercessory prayer” (i.e. pray for others) praying for our founding pastor Mike Burns who’s health has hit a new low. God met us in some pretty amazing ways. It’s always fun to see how God answers the simple prayer, “COME, HOLY SPIRIT!”

The Bible: it’s the best-selling and most widely distributed book of all time. But just because people own it doesn’t mean they read it, understand it or know what’s in it. And even those who know the content can sometimes miss the spirit of the inspiring God behind the words. Reading the Bible isn’t the same as meeting the Living God found within its pages. This series is about experiencing the God of the Bible, in the Bible.

Lead Pastor Ed Noble unpacks how we are to delight in the scriptures.

Journey’s Twice Treasured Thrift Store is a community affair. The goods and clothing which we donate are used to benefit those in need both locally and abroad. Most importantly, the Thrift Store is built on the time donated by the volunteers who serve there.  We Love our volunteers and we would Love for you to volunteer!  When and for how long you serve is entirely up to you! Fill out the form on this page for more information.

Sometimes life is tough when we think about the topic of friendship.  It can stir up all sorts of emotions because they begin and end for all sorts of reasons.  Sometimes friends move away. Sometimes friends make other friends.  Sometimes, we know exactly why a friendship ended.  Sometimes we don’t have any  idea on why we no longer hang out with someone.

For the next few weeks we are going to look at some ways that are guaranteed to ruin friendships.  We will learn how to be stay clear of being a friendship wrecker and in the process learn how to be the great friend that God calls us to be.

February 5: Be Selfish

February 12: Be a ‘Backstabber’

February 19: Be an Excluder

We weren’t smart enough to plan this out, but I guess you’d have to say we were sharp enough to recognize it when we fell into it! A couple times a year, we hone our focus as a church around something we sense is a spiritual direction God has for us as a church and then we take all the main or regular stuff we do and turn our attention to that initiative.

So this year, all of our on campus groups, all of our home groups, our weekend services and then we as individuals are diving into the COMMUNITY BIBLE EXPERIENCE!

We had almost 400 NEW PEOPLE JOIN a small group last Wednesday all of which will be Experiencing the scripture together. We’ve sold out of “The Books of the Bible” New Testaments (I think we’ve sold almost 2k).

Last weekend we launched the teaching series EAT THIS BOOK. So as we read the New Testament together, as we wrestle with it in our small groups, we’ll be teaching on it in a series called that helps us to “experience the God OF the Bible, IN the Bible!” So think of it like a 3-legged stool – we’re reading personally, we’re meeting in our small groups around that reading and then we’ll be teaching on all this every weekend for the next few weeks!

Sarah Merk-Benitez cast some vision for what our reading is all about and what it’s not about.

Worship was great but different! Our friend Lindsay Love and her team led us in worship. She is amazingly anointed to bring people into God’s presence in Worship!

Our team thought that it was important as we launched into this season to address the question: Why THIS book?  A lot of people at Journey are fairly new to the whole church thing. So it’s a legit question to ask. Is this a reliable document and how does this ancient text relate to my spiritual life or my life life in 2012. Frankly, lots of us have questions like these regardless of how long we’ve been around church.

According the people that put together the New Testament we are using for this series [click here for their website], 4 of 5 people surveyed have NEVER heard God speak to them in the pages of Scripture. We are taking direct aim at that! You really can’t follow Jesus without being immersed in His words and You won’t get very far in your journey with God if you don’t know how to hear Him speak to You in the pages of Scripture.