This past Sunday we introduced a new seasonal vision, Incarnate: Moving into our Spaces. (If you're not big on reading, click to listen to the first 5-10 mins of my talk for a similar summary to what is written below.) A lot of us have been feeling the stirrrings of a new season, as some of us move deeper into canvas groups, or begin to move into East Hollywood, or take on new vocations, or start at new schools.

When Jesus Christ fully moved into our space, Jesus experienced the incarnation, or was made flesh. As we are called to be imitators of Jesus (1Cor 11:1, Eph 5:16) we also are called to imitate the way of incarnational living.

In Luke 6:12-20, when Jesus first calls the 12 and gives his most famous sermon, he follows the process that Moses used when he received the ten commandments. It is a pattern that Henri Nouwen describes as solitude, community and ministry. It is the way that both Jesus went up a mountain to God and rested in God's presence and prayed with him, called together his disciples, chose them, and named them, then as a community they descended to a level place, healed others, and spoke the good news.

May this be our pattern, the pattern of Jesus over the next season in the life of kairos hollywood. May we

• Incarnate UP to God as a child of the Father
• Incarnate IN to Community as disciples of the Rabbi
• Incarnate OUT to the City as a church of the Spirit

As we begin this season, it's important to follow the same pattern as Jesus, and be willing to spend a whole night with the Father on the mountaintop, and incarnate into the role of a child of the Father. Two things that hold us back from this role are our self-image (an idea of "me" that is much less than what the Father thinks of me), and our self-idolatry (the things we hold as idols, and most often ourselves, when in control of our lives we put ourselves in the place of "Father" and cease to be the child).

Just as Jesus, in the form of God, emptied himself and took on the form of a slave (Phil 2:7), we too are called to empty ourselves of self-image and self-idolatry, and take on the role of a child of the Father.

The easiest way to do this, although it tends to be one of the hardest practices in life, is to simply be with God. It's not about doing, it's about being, observing, remembering. If we all could spend just five minutes with God a day, and truly hear the ever present voice that whispers to us as it did to Jesus, "You are my child, my beloved, I am well pleased with you." we would incarnate fully into our space as a child of the Father of the universe.

Here is the detailed version of our seasonal vision if you desire to see where we hope to go as we follow Jesus in becoming more incarnational in our spaces.