Surprised by Jesus in a Marketing Meeting
LETTER BY BRIAN MORYKON
I felt tentative before Tuesday’s meeting.
It was, of all things, a meeting with a marketing agency.
If Jesus were me, I wondered, would he hire this marketing firm? Any marketing firm?
I was almost embarrassed to ask him.
But three minutes into the meeting I knew it would be a gift and not a chore.
Twenty-four years ago, one of the guys at the firm and I had attended the same church. On the Zoom call, we chatted about how that church was a place of discovery for each of us. At that time, the pastor had just read The Divine Conspiracy and was teaching — to our astonishment — how the Kingdom of God and eternal life with Jesus are realities not just in the by and by but in the here and now. We learned from books like Celebration of Discipline a grace-worn path of spiritual growth. There, if only for a season, we found a community that met our hearts’ desire for something deeper and more authentic than we had yet experienced.
“Sounds like my dream church,” the other guy commented.
It wasn’t idyllic, to be sure (people are people). But we did at least hear God’s vision of a good life and learned practices that could open us to God working out that vision in and through us.
Our meeting continued with more stories from other seasons.
They shared how one client — a cactus of a Christian — was healed and de-prickled by encountering Jesus and his love in a formational community. They shared their sense that this is a key moment for the local church. We pondered together how the local church might become (at least in pockets) a place where the spiritually hungry find authentic life and substance.
As the Zoom call ended, surprising energy and hope welled within me. (If Jesus can show up in a marketing meeting, he can show up anywhere.) I felt grateful for this work and a fresh awareness of the treasure handed down, and sometimes lost and rediscovered, by Christians through the ages — the treasure of life with Jesus in the Kingdom of God and the Spirit-empowered ways by which you and I, in community, can “take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me” (Phil 3).
Brian Morykon
Director of Communications
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LET’S DIVE IN...
CURATED BY GRACE POUCH
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1.
Earlier this week, 500 people gathered in person and over 3,000 registered virtually for a special Renovaré event with Richard Foster and Mimi Dixon. The topic of their conversation was the remarkable influence that Richard’s book Celebration of Discipline has had on millions of people — a legacy that Mimi writes about in her book biography, Worth Celebrating. Enjoy the webinar replay here.
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2.
New member of the Renovaré Ministry Team, Rebecca DeYoung, spoke with Steve Porter and John Ortberg at a recent conference about “the sanctification gap,” or the persistence in many Christian circles of a watered-down gospel that fails to produce disciples. Read the transcript of their conversation in “Understanding How God Changes Lives.”
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3.
Every form of discipline requires some form of self-denial — some resistance to our misshapen compulsions or desires. In this excerpt from Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster explains how self-denial is different from self-hatred.
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4.
Jen Pollock Michel writes about cultivating holy desire in this essay that ties in with her book Teach Us to Want.
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5.
Carolyn Arends’ song Willing explores desire to change as a prelude to surrendering to disciplined cooperation.
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6.
In this excerpt from Worth Celebrating, Mimi Dixon writes about the swelling influence of Celebration of Discipline—from individual sparks to the kindling of a great, growing, holy fire in the Church.
Grace Pouch
Content Manager
WORTH QUOTING
“I see an obedient, disciplined, freely gathered people who know in our day the life and powers of the Kingdom of God.”
– Richard Foster
Celebration of Discipline
(source)
TO CONTEMPLATE
Flower Clouds
Odilon Redon c. 1905
(source)
Redon’s passengers seem to catch a glimpse of the heavenly realm meeting them in the here and now in this explosion of color and beauty.
TO PONDER
Was there a season or community in the past that sparked your spiritual growth? Are there any treasures from that season that the Spirit may be inviting you to rediscover or give thanks for?