Steve Rusticus

Transition Time

2011-06-29T07:50:00.001-04:00

This is my last week of full-time work at VictoryPoint. No I’m not leaving, I am just reducing my hours to 75% as part of a decision that is both practical and principial as VP continues to move toward becoming a more missional church. In fact four of the six full-time employees at VP are making this transition in 2011, I’m just the first one to do it. My post on May 10 talked about missional church and why we are doing this in more detail so if you are interested you can read that.

The goal for those of us who are transitioning is that with the additional time away from the ministry that each person would find another part-time job where they could interact with people and reflect Jesus in a different environment than the church. I have known about this direction for over six months now and have been thinking about it even longer. In fact, I am the person who has championed this transition within our leadership teams and it was my idea to move into this kind of bi vocational ministry.

So, I should be the person who has had the opportunity to think about what else I would do and put some plans together and be prepared for this transition by having another job all lined up. But I don’t and as of right now I don’t have anything concrete lined up. And I am totally fine with that.

It isn’t that I don’t have ideas or I haven’t been working on things. I do and I have. Primarily I have been focusing on some things that I am passionate about and that match my skill set the best. These revolve around the areas of leadership and coaching and I have been talking to people about coming alongside individuals and organizations, especially smaller ones, to assist them in creating a healthy work culture of trust, help them in the areas of communication and conflict resolution and to walk with them organizations to develop more effective leaders. This is something that I believe we have done together at VictoryPoint and are transferable into other organizations and I am excited about the potential to do this.

I have also been pursuing some opportunities that connect business, education and mission in a global economy and while this is in the very early stages, I am intrigued about where it might all go. I have considered going back to school and working on a degree and training in a field that has always been of interest to me. There are options available, I am just not yet sure which one I will pursue.

Or, maybe it will be something totally different that God has in store for me, and I am totally open to that. I am truly taking my own advice from what I spoke about last Sunday at VP to focus more on preparation and prayer than I am on planning. I am preparing as best I can and getting ready to move in the direction in which God calls me. This doesn’t mean I ’m passive, I am talking to people and enjoying the conversations as I go, but I hold on to all of these things loosely right now.

Based on my life experience I know that the words of Solomon in Proverbs 19:21 are so true, “Many are the plans in a human heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.” I know God makes plans and I want to be prepared to respond to him.

And I pray. I pray for God’s leading and I ask that his will would be done in my life. That I would be wholly available to him in every situation in which I find myself. I pray that becoming a person who loves God and loves people and lives like Jesus in every facet of my life is much more important to me than what I do for a living. I know it is much more important to God!

Everyday when I get up, I remind myself of this truth, “This is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.” ( Ps. 118:24). I desire to see each day as a gift from God in which I am given the opportunity to live for him and reflect him to the people around me, wherever that may be.

Your prayers will be appreciated. I am certain that no matter how good it is, this transition will be a challenge for me and will be used by God to grow me up into the fullness of Christ. While I certainly wonder what it will all look like and I am not immune to moments of anxiousness about it, I look forward to what God has planned and I eagerly anticipate following Him wherever he leads.

I’ll keep you posted as to where that might be!

Changes for VictoryPoint and for me

2011-05-10T07:40:00.001-04:00

There are some really positive changes going on at VictoryPoint right now and some of those changes have a direct impact on me and my job there.   Now, I want to say right from the start that these are positive changes and have been coming for a while as we at VP move from being an attractional church to a missional church.

While it would take way too long here to describe what the differences are between an attractional and a missional church, I do want to give you a sense of what I am talking about when I use these two terms.

The attractional church, which has dominated the American Church landscape for the last 40 years, can best be described with the phrase "come and see".   We invite people to church events, to church programs, to church services so that they can come and see what we are doing and then hopefully decide they want to join in. As a model to bring people into a relationship with Christ or disciple people to follow Him it hasn't worked as well as we had hoped.

The missional church can be described with the phrase "go and be".   This church and the people that are a part of it believe that the best way for us to participate in God's mission in the world is for us to go and be his presence in the world in which he has placed us. We are to love others within our communities, neighborhoods, workplaces, schools and everywhere and when we do that we will be identified as followers of Jesus and others will be attracted to Him.   We will also be living out the Great Commission that Jesus gave in Matt. 28:18-20 and following Jesus' words in John 20:21 in which he says to his disciples, and by extension us, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." The church is called to be a sent people who go not a stay people that just invite.

For a fuller picture of what the missional church is I encourage you to follow this link to a blog post by Brad Briscoe entitled What is Missional Church? http://missionalchurchnetwork.com/what-is-missional-3/ If you are really interested in reading a book that helps frame some of this stuff then read Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay.

Now, this has implications for the way in which the church does ministry; how buildings and financial resources are used, for the development of church programs and the role of paid church staff. In the attractional model of church there needs to be many church programs for those who aren't a part of the church community to "come and see" and the job of developing those programs is the task of the paid church staff. But, in the missional church we are all the church and the programmatic element of the the community of faith is limited to fewer things because we are called to "go and be." The role of the staff is empowering, equipping and releasing people to be the body of Christ in the world. In the traditional sense, there isn't as much work to do for the paid church staff.

So, at VictoryPoint we are making some significant staffing changes.   Over the next six months, four of our full-time staff members are going to be reducing to 75% of their hours and pay and are going to supplement their income through non-church jobs.   Because I really believe in this model and its benefits and believe that I can't ask anyone to do what I am unwilling to do, I will be the first person on our staff to be doing this beginning the first of July this year.

I am excited about what this will do for VictoryPoint. Not only will it release money that will be redirected to externally focused mission partners but I believe it will breathe a new Spirit into our ministry and church.   In fact I have already seen this happening and it is very cool to see followers of Jesus live missional/incarnational lives for Jesus and impact their world in powerful ways.

I am also excited about what this will do for me and the possibilities that God will provide as I step out in this way. I am energized by the desire to do some different things, to meet some new people, to use some skills and abilities that I believe I have and to participate in the Kingdom of God differently than I have the last 14 years. This doesn't mean that I will be leaving professional ministry, just expanding what it looks like for me to "go and be" a follower of Jesus Christ.

You might wonder what kind of work I will be doing as I transition.   Well, I have been working on some things and will share those with you. But, I think since this has already gotten long enough, that will need to be in another post.   Stay tuned.

It's been a while

2011-04-25T20:12:00.000-04:00

I feel compelled, since it has been a while, to post something on my blog. It has been amazingly busy the last month or so-kind of weird considering that I am supposed to be reducing my time here at VP by July 1 to 75%. I am hoping that things will slow down in a week or so and be able to post something of significance and substance next week.

Time to go back to work and get some things done! Blessings to all of you.

No Fear

2011-03-16T09:19:00.000-04:00

I have been reading Psalm 46 everyday for the last week and it has gotten me thinking about a lot of things. But mostly I have been thinking about fear and the fact that so many of us who call ourselves Christians seem to be filled with fear. This shouldn't be so.

Verses 1-3 of Psalm 46 state this,

"God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though it's waters roar with foam and the mountains quake with their surging."

Please read these words again and ask yourself if you, at this point can grab hold of them. Maybe the fear you face is profoundly personal- cancer, loss of job, a child who is far from you and even farther from God. These are the kinds of situations that everyone faces and they are powerfully difficult moments in our life. But no fear.

What I've also noticed lately is that a lot of Christians seem to be afraid of things that are so big picture- "liberal agenda", the government, the middle east, end times (which we have been in ever since Jesus returned to the Father), and all sorts of other things. It's almost as if we believe that God can't handle these things without us.

I'm not saying we shouldn't care about such things, cry about such things, talk about such things, pray about these things- I'm just saying we have no reason for fear. God is still God, he is in charge, he is sovereign and none of that will change. Jesus words in John 16:33 speak to this reality and give us the promise we need to hear about the God we follow, "“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

So, whatever it is in your life- No Fear (that would be a good t-shirt!), for as the Psalmist says, "The Lord Almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress." vs. 11

Let's just slow down a bit

2011-03-01T14:37:00.000-05:00

I can't help but notice that in the last few days there is a proliferation of opinions concerning Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins:A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Most of the stuff that I have read has called into question Bell's commitment to Christ, some calling him a heretic, at best a Universalist and there are video's and posts on websites going after him based on what is allegedly in his book.

I say allegedly because the book hasn't been released yet and won't be until later this month. Most of the opinions have been formed via promotional material by the publisher, excerpts read by people on the web, or other ways in which people have received a part of what the book says. As far as I can tell, no one who is saying these things about Bell, a pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, have read the entire book.

And that's why I want to tell everyone to just slow down a bit. Can we wait to grill this man, pigeon hole him into a category and call him names?   Maybe all of the things that more conservative Christians are calling him are true, but shouldn't we at least read his book, in context, before we come blasting with both barrels? I mean, it seems like the decent thing to do, the compassionate thing, the logical thing, the Jesus thing to do.

If he deserves criticism this will be true in a month after we have read the book, it can wait until then. If it isn't true then all of the words leveled at him, even when we say "it isn't personal", will not be able to be taken back and will have hurt Rob and will have damaged the testimony of Christ in our world.

Maybe that is really my issue here.   We attack each other sometimes in ways that are harsh, premature and we assign motives to people before we even ask or check things out. Those who aren't Christians look at this and wonder, "If they do it to each other, what will they do to me?" Good point! So they have a perception of us that we are judgmental, arrogant, ignorant and speak before we know the whole story. They'd be right.

Let's just all slow down a bit, take a deep breath, show some love.   Just like every other person in the world, Rob Bell deserves this.

I'm really going to do it this time!

2011-02-27T16:31:00.000-05:00

This is my third try at blogging and this time I think I am really going to do it and stick with it.

In the past I have wondered why anyone would either read my blog or pay attention to me in anything that I might say here. I mean, I get to say a lot of things from the stage at VictoryPoint and I have thought that what I say there is pretty much all I have to say. Believe it or not- it isn't!

This may come as a surprise to those of you who listen to me teach on a regular basis on Sunday mornings, but there is a whole lot I leave unsaid.  Things that don't quite fit into our Sunday morning experiences at VP and things that I would like to communicate in some way- and right now it seems like those things can be shared best through this blog.  So, here we go.

I addition, there are some things that are going on in my life- very positive things- that I might be able to talk about here and help those of you who care to understand a bit more.   I know that this is pretty vague, and I mean it to be. You will find out some of those things in the next few weeks. So, if it is important enough to you, just check back later to see what I'm talking about.

I'm guessing that this blog is going to be sort of a hodgepodge (never typed that word before) of all kinds of things.   It'll probably be more for me than anyone else. But, if it at all gets you to think or understand some things better I'll be satisfied with that.