stockbridge boiler room

A New Season of Prayer

Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords,
strengthen your stakes.  (Isaiah 54:2)

God has grown family here on the West Side.  And God is showing us that there are many more destinations for prayer in the neighborhood.

In response to what He's been showing us, we have invited friends from all around the West Side to host prayer for the next six weeks.  For this season, we will be praying for each other as well as the West Side.  We're writing to invite our larger family of God to join us. 

Download Westside prayer

Check it out for more information.  A couple of scheduling quirks to which your attention should be drawn. On Sundays, call the Boiler Room number provided to see where the house churches around the neighborhood are meeting.  On Saturdays, join the prayer, worship and teaching at the Bridge Street House of Prayer.  On October 11, we'll be having a special screening of the film Furious Love in the Boiler Room garage starting at 7p.  This documentary focuses on learning about healing and deliverance prayer with discussion to follow. 

We are expectant that God will knit us together even closer as His children while we witness what is unfolding through His Kingdom expansion.  Please join us. 

::tony::

this week,

all over this world people will obey the voice of the Holy Spirit. 

and have nothing tangible to show for it. which is the way it is with many good and true acts.

but this week.

this week you can hold someone's obedience in your hands. 

because this was written in obedience, from first pen strokes on a yellow legal pad to final edits.

because God likes obedience. more than our sacrifices and more than the money we give and more than where we live or how, he wants us to let Him navigate us through our days and months and years and lives, to be sitting so close to Him that we hear every word He whispers to us, and to trust Him that He knows what He's doing, and then to follow Him wherever He leads.

and i have watched this man do that most days for my whole life.

and then one saturday morning at breakfast, he quietly told us he had started to write a book.

because he'd had an impression from the Holy Spirit that morning to do so.

the book, he said, was about obedience. 

and then this little book got bounced around from publisher to publisher, who all loved it and who all said it would not sell because its author is unknown. 

and this man just kept shrugging his shoulders and reminding himself that his job was to be obedient, and if God had told him to write a book, it probably was because it was a message some people needed to hear.

which is how he came to self-publish the book with the humility of someone who knows that the only books that are self-published are the ones that were rejected everywhere else. he knows this, and still he quietly goes about the long and costly process of being obedient. 

and then, just as these books are going to print, curious things happen: advance copies of this little book show up in Africa and Chicago and California and New York City and people who, unlike he, are known, really like this book.

an order is placed for thousands of copies. the owners of bookstores want to carry it in all their stores. publishing houses want to talk. 

and still: his response is to fast and pray with his wife in order to get quiet enough to hear God and then to obey Him. because they would rather walk the sometimes lonely and gravely path of obedience than hop in the first car that pulls over to offer them a ride on the freeway.

so this book is in local Christian bookstores; you should buy it at one if you can. you can also buy it here, and join in the conversations being had about listening to God and obeying Him.

i do wish you'd read it; it might change the way you go about your days and weeks and years. 

and if it doesn't, may you still be edified that you get to hold a brother's obedience in your hands. that kind of thing doesn't just happen every day.

:: jenn ::

 

p.s. thank you for the water you have been for my dry heart this past week. i have some reflections from the bottom of the well that i'll share in another post.

 p.p.s. if you would ever ever like to cook and serve the love feast with a group of jolly interns and whoever else the good Lord brings, we would be so grateful for the help. we will plan the meal and buy the food, you just show up one wednesday or more (!) a month at three p. to help cook and serve. maybe your house church? small group? family? consider. it really is an adventure. email me at jenntendero@gmail.com if you're interested. 

we are here

and after a month-long sabbath, you'd think this well would be filled to the top, brimming right over with rest and goodness, ready to pour itself out again.

except that it's not. 

which, through seasons of ministry, is bound to happen.

and so it has, and i'm not quite sure what to do about it, how to fill that well up again. 

and i wouldn't even be telling you this, if this blog were not partly about the workings of the boiler room and what God is doing in this neighborhood, and partly about our experience of living missionally on the west side of grand rapids and raising both biological and spiritual family here. and if you've been reading these little posts for a while, you know that i have had seasons of action and seasons of contemplation, as richard rohr puts it, and the boiler room has too, i suppose. 

and so i'm wondering what happens when one of the people who is the voice of the boiler room, at least in this space, is running on empty? do i share that with you, or motor on ahead and prattle on about the good that God is doing? 

because you should know this: in this neighborhood of darkness and such need, there are points of light scattered but shining over here. dennis is semi-sober and spent the day whacking the boiler room yard and garden into submission. dave g. has been sober for three months now, and is a different person, of course. we are throwing a block party next weekend. each night this season we'll be praying at a different house in the neighborhood; that's how many brothers and sisters have joined us in this work and started work of their own. love feast this week was lovely; everybody missed being together in august. our church is humming along, the sweetest place to be on a sunday morning.

you should know all that, and join us in thanking God for every bit of it.

and you should also know this: that this work, even the best of it, does not always bring joy. sometimes even a long vacation is not long enough, and it is possible to find yourself at the beginning of a new season with precious little to give, and a rising panic that what you do have will be poured out soon enough and there will be nothing left. and what happens then? meals still need to be made and washing still done and love feasts still served with some grace, and people you love still deserve to be cared for. 

and for those like lynda who have been reading this blog for the past few years, and who have wondered if this missional life is always as good as it appears to be in print, i have always been able to truthfully answer, more or less, yes. we have found great joy in this community God's created, and have been honored to settle here first, which makes the growth of family here all the more remarkable to us, because when we got here there was no. one. and now there's a mission and a church and house churches and small enclaves of Jesus followers who practice quiet kindness to their neighbors. and there's more we're dreaming about too, but that's for a later day. 

and now, just as truthfully, i will tell you this: lynda, i want to move. out. to the country, preferrably. i am weary. i am jealous of those who don't feel called to live in the inner city; i wish i were they. i wish i lived in a new house with furniture that wasn't shabby, that didn't have mice or old carpeting. i barely have time to care well for my children and house, let alone seek out new relationships with my neighbors. and because of that, because this is a season of ministering mostly to my children and supporting the abbot, because the season of running back and forth all day and night to the boiler room is over, my purpose here in this place has eluded me. 

this is not easy to admit. and the abbot says we're not moving. i'm just saying that this kind of thing happens: wells dry up and water levels fluctuate. they do. you should know this in case you think missional living is sublime all the time, because it is not.

and while i can't imagine how this well is going to get filled, i know the one who can and will fill it. because this kind of emptiness cannot be replaced by new stuff or time away from the children or even a move out to the elusive idyllic place in the country. this kind of empty only God can fill. and He will. i just want the fortitude to stay put and on my knees until he does. 

lynda, this is not easy. this is harder than i want it to be. this is not permanent.

::jenn::