Day 3 "Living Out of the Core"

I am so glad we have the tools to grow as humans that are out here today. I feel like our grandparents generation and before lived in the dark ages when it came to issues of the heart and character. We have progressed so far forward in knowing how to get healed, knowing how to get balanced, knowing how to recover, etc. Also we have taken quantum leaps in character building.

I am constantly growing in heart skills and my core values and I make mistakes all the time, but the cool thing is that I live in an environment with God and friends that bring me back to the core of who I am which is defined by what I believe. I have watched countless numbers of people leave churches, businesses, relationships, etc and not be able to recover because they left unresolved and had nothing in their lives to help resolve them...and frankly just normal relationships aren't going to fix a heart problem. You need a heart specialist. If your friends tell you to go to a urologist when you have a heart attack, you wouldn't take their advice then.

Its funny because we were making jokes as ministers about some of our friends assistants who are reading books like "The Bondage Breaker and "Boundaries" because they don't know how to have a normal relationship with such high powered ministry professionals who don't usually live lives centered around relationships. Almost every high powered person I have ever met from any sphere of society whether ministry, business, politics, etc has learned to be self sufficient, to fix their own problems or hide them, and they don't usually slow down until there is a break down. It doesn't mean they are bad people it just means that they have learned a survival type of accomplishing their goals....not a thriving way that God intended us to walk in.

When you don't have a balance between relationship and purpose  you will kill relationship around you which is the reason why we are on this Earth in the first place. Its funny that so many ministries have a Messiah complex, that they want to save the whole world and feel the weight of responsibility for their gifts and ministries but they usually have very imbalanced families and children. A lot of this is changing right now culturally as groups like Bethel in Redding hold leadership summits and retrain the way we prioritize and impart a new culture.

The reality is I want to be and create a safe place for people to fail. I hate that the church kills her wounded in most circles. We should have counseling, healing, and pastoring to build a process of safe relationships.

Basically there are two types of authority that we need to balance between: 1) Authority given out of respect for position and accomplishment  2) Authority given out of relationship.

This generation is longing for relationship and is weary of the authority that is positional or accomplishment based because of some of the hypocrisy of the lack of the relational balance. Some of the fundamental break downs in Evangelical Christianity are the issues that we are so passionate about but have very little relational authority in our culture to change. These become extremism to people who don't think like we do because we have isolated our lives from them but force our perspective onto them.

I was called several years ago by a pastor on a conference call who was going to go after a Culture Armageddon and fight homosexuality. I had just started my church and told them that I couldn't be part of their fight because I didn't have anything installed in my church to help heal sexual identity problems, so how could I have authority to fight against something that I wasn't using kingdom power to heal first? Then I asked how many of the other pastors had programs to help people with sexual identity problems that were successful who were fighting this battle and none of them did. This made me realize that we need to change quickly and become a source of kingdom power on the earth and install what is missing before we point out the results of those missing pieces. In other words everyone can see when there is a puzzle piece that is a gap in the puzzle but who is forming the piece or looking for the piece that fits and placing it in to complete the picture?

This is also why the prolife movement sucks right now in its impact. I am completely pro life, but very few organizations deal with the 800,000 kids who come into foster care just in America every year not to mention the countless orphans in many countries. How is a poor inner city teen not going to get an abortion when her alternatives only look good on paper? I think when we bring the kingdom of life, we start to steward the lives that are here and now and it creates a culture of life stewardship where abortion just doesn't make sense anymore because of the amount of loving families available to care for those babies. Its easy to see fetus's as not real people when you are not loved well and don't feel like a real person yourself.

So I guess my blog has come down to the fact that we need a love revolution steeped in a culture of honor.

Over the past two years I have been installing Danny Silks message on "Culture of Honor" which kills control and victimization. You can't hold people responsible for your neediness or for your rejection, or for your bad character or for controlling you when you understand his message that I think is revolutionary. It also reprioritizes you life around having safe boundaries and healthy relationship dynamics. I am including it in this blog.

Link to Culture of Honor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFxM9xn3-4Y

So my question of the day is:

What issues are you extremely passionate about that you don't have a balance of position and relationship to be an authority in to our culture yet?  

Blog day 2 "Weren't you dating some girl?"....

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So today max the wonder dog woke me up with a desperate need to go to the bathroom. He usually sleeps longer then me but there he was staring in hopes I would take him down the 2 flights of stairs so he could be delivered of who knows what he ate. No one could appreciate the intensity of a dog who has to go to the bathroom when you are trying to sleep unless they witness it. As I went to let him out I remembered my dream.....

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In it a bunch of people were asking me about the relationship I had this summer....

that ended in august. I realized two things: 1) I released the fact that I was dating publically but never followed up with what happened and 2) I realized that in the dream people assumed the worst which made me want to make sure that it didn't happen in my real woken up land.....

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So let me tell you a nutshell version of what happened. I won't mention her name for her sake in case you are coming in late on our story. I am so grateful for the dating experience this summer with her. I haven't announced a girlfriend in years and she definitely was the center of my attention for a while. It was hard in the end, not because there was drama, but because it just wasn't it. She is such an amazing heart person so it of course was disappointing but we like each other and how we developed the relationship was around friendship first so we are ok now. Plus it was only 5 weeks of relationship....the lack of time invested helps it to be only disappointing and not devastating. So we are friends still and she still lives in LA and goes to our church. I think that's amazing that we can maintain that level of ok-ness.....

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I am so happy with the way my life is turning out without someone so I am in no hurry but if the right woman comes along believe you me, no one will have to point her out. ....

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Well I didn't want this to sound like I had a summer fling, I wanted to make sure that this amazing woman was covered because there really wasn't a down side in our relationship, it just didn't work on a deeper level and she was the one to point it out first so there was nothing wrong with her...or me. Just wrong fit....hard for all the moms in my life to believe me they don't believe in a wrong fit they want drama! Haha except real mom she is amazing and understood. I wanted to fight for it when we were breaking up but I couldn't and I had to follow my heart just as she followed hers in initiating the break up.....

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I think the hardest part was that I so enjoyed doing life with someone on that level. Plus she is an amazing person. So with an open heart to God I pursue life.....

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On a side note I was able to really be creative this weekend which felt amazing. It was mostly in writing but I had other creative ideas for projects. I am the type of person who for the most part commits to my creativity and sees it through unless its all conceptual. This is so real though and I can't wait for my personal creative projects to take more shape. Maybe I will be bold and show them here. ....

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So every day I am going to include a question to demand back from you, my readers, to participate. Here is today's:....

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 my question of the day for you is can you think about a relationship/friendship that you had to end for whatever reason that is joyful to recall now? Like you suffer no pain or reminder of pain as much as you reminisce on the joy you had in it?....

30 Days of Blogging

I am going to try and do the impossible and I am going to try and journal/blog for 30 consecutive days to kick start my life back into some consistency. Probably the hardest thing since I have been in LA is having anything that is "normal" that I do from day to day.

Maybe that's why  Max the wonder dog plays such a crucial role in my life...no matter what I am doing that feels amazing or important or overwhelming or draining, I have to come home to let him out, to spend time with him, to feed him. That shows you how ungrounded a single person can get when they don't have their home life dictating their work or creative life. I am not complaining but its a different reality then many of you live out of.

So I am going to try and blog and maybe through it you will look into my life and process and have fun, or you will get bored and stop reading after just one (haha) either way I am doing this to share the journey.

During the next 30 days I am going to take radical steps in my:

1) Diet - I am doing a Susan Summers kind of low carb thing and I will update you how it goes. The only thing I won't give up is my coffee....she wants me to drink decaf with no milk or sweetener so I am going to compromise that and let it be my daily treat. (I love vanilla and I have it in every cup somehow..but there is sugerfree!)

2) Ministry related writing - I am writing a lot this month. Not just a blog, but working on pressing out 2 writing projects in the next few months. They are basically done but have to be restructured (Like my life) so that they flow correctly. They used to be different books and I completely changed them but thank God I had several hundred pages to work with. One is a book that I hope life coaches the reader into loving on purpose (thanks for the term goes to Danny Silk but I won't steal it) and the other is about creativity and the renaissance that is coming.

3) Creative Projects - many of you don't know that I love creative writing because I have never released anything to the world as far as stories, novels, etc. but its one of my passions. I love when a story and its characters live whole lives in your imagination and I have been having my first full living world alive inside of me that I want to construct but the first book might be a long process (hopefully years not decades). I need to get back into a writers club or group but again the way I am scheduled between itinerate ministry and church ministry right now is not allowing for the time so I have bought some books to kick start me including: "Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook" by Donald Maass which is amazing if you have other tools along with it & "How to write Science Fiction & Fantasy" by Orson Scott Card which isn't that helpful.

4) Restructuring my leadership team at the church - we have a lady who is fast becoming a real asset who is consulting us about info structure. Grab a group of mostly young adults, throw them into LA where they all go through constant personal transitions and survival mode through recession in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and you are bound to need help building structure. We also have some Bethel guys from Redding coming down to help us. We have vision up the wazoo and we have some management, but we need an admin backbone and clear vision. Two of the books I just read that were AMAZING were :  Who Moved the Cheese (thanks Stephanie Taylor from Facebook) because it sounded so unusual, and it was amazing. I also just read Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People again with my team but did a refresher last week...hence why I am blogging. I ordered "Primal Leadership" from Borders at the recommendation of lots of facebook friends saying its amazing. I will report about it soon.

5) Restructuring my itinerate ministry - for years I taught and imparted on the prophetic and healing, but more so lately I have been empowering people with our ministry (my life) themes of LOVE CREATIVITY & JUSTICE. My traveling ministry has the old in it but its shaping up to be much broader and more building then my past season of traveling. We are rebuilding all of my resources (CD's, DVDs, ETC) to be really easy to access these themes and I have about 20 new products built and ready to come out. We just transferred the Dating DVD series onto audio format (finally!) and it will be a book soon as well its in final edits...kind of (right Sally the editor? I promise to give you final copy back after your edits).

So, I am going to blog about these things and unimportant things over the next 30 days. Stay tuned, and I will try and be faithful to upload my blogs to all my blogging sites every day but they will for sure be on MySpace and Facebook.

Shawn

iBethel.TV // Bethel Church // Shawn Bolz Prophetic Ministry : Aug 16 '09

Was at Bethel for a minute Sunday night

I love that we get to celebrate Jesus and His ressurection. Its one of the most disputed facts in history, and yet definately the most empowering if you believe.

I pray that you enter into the fullness of what easter means this day!

Lots of love to you on Easter

We wanted to write a short but sweet letter asking you to pray for our finances and if you can, be a part of them. We need a miracle this month at Expression58. You have been amazing prayers and givers, but because of being a start-up church and because of the recession, our support has been majorly under-budget for months now. Our reserves are gone.

So much good is happening every day and we are not afraid of where we are at. It is so normal for new ministries to go through financial crunches and we want to ask our friends and families to help us through this time. A gift of ten dollars, one hundred dollars, or one thousand dollars can give us the grace we need to continue in our mission in Los Angeles. As Nehemiah was called to awaken the inhabitants of Jerusalem to retake the inheritance God had given them in the land, we know we are called in this season to activate people all over L.A into their destiny, that they would claim their God-given inheritance in the land- That Jesus would have His kingdom established.

We have been experiencing breakthrough in amazing ways in almost every area. In our community we are seeing more and more miraculous healings, job promotions and contracts given, creative breakthroughs, relationship dynamics healed, and breakthroughs in almost every arena except in finances. It has been the hardest part but the most amazing as we watch how God miraculously provides every time! Normally we wouldn’t write and give the public a sense of our need, but I feel like we need to give people an opportunity to sow into this area of breakthrough for our mission in Los Angeles.

Please pray that we get the right strategies on how to cooperate with breakthrough and to build our financial base along with our hundreds of people that we have that are part of our Expression58 family.

You can give in all the normal ways: Checks, debit/credit cards, cash, through our website www.expression58.org, via Paypal to office@expression58.org, or via mail to: 11271 Ventura Blvd #500, Studio City, CA 91604. You can also call us at 310-913-3933

Thanks so much for your love, prayers and support!

Shawn Bolz

And Expression58 Team