Becoming Chris Kamalski

"There's a Writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us" ~Don Miller

Tag: CRM Leaders

Ash Wednesday at 3rd Place.

Lighting tea lights as a form of prayer.

Download the Ash Wednesday Liturgy I edited and helped facilitate for 3rd Place here.

“Ash Wednesday, an echo of the Hebrew Testament’s ancient call to sackcloth and ashes, is a continuing cry across the centuries that life is transient, that change is urgent. We don’t have enough time to waste on nothingness. We need to repent our dillydallying on the road to God. We need to regret the time we’ve spent playing with dangerous distractions and empty diversions along the way. We need to repent of our senseless excesses and our excursions into sin, our breaches of justice, or failures of honesty, our estrangement from God, our savoring of excess, our absorbing self-gratifications, one infantile addiction, one creature craving another. We need to get back in touch with our souls. ‘Remember man that you are dust and unto dust you shall return,’ the old Sacramentary formula warned us from God’s words to Adam and Eve, as the ashes trickled down our foreheads. We hear now, as Jesus proclaimed in Galilee, ‘Turn away from sin and believe the good news’ (Mk 1:15)” (Joan Chittister).

Love the movement in this shot. Kneeling to receive the ashen cross on one's forehead.

Amazing how beautiful barren branches can be. An apt metaphor of the soul's journey of growth.

 

Responding to the question of what we are fasting for the season of Lent.

Maxie Kamalski reading a portion of the Ash Wednesday liturgy.

 

Loved Pierre Du Plessis' comment that at times, we must 'receive' Communion as opposed to 'taking' it.

On the way to 'receive' Communion.

 

We are here (Ash Wednesday).

 

Fasting pride...

 

Ashen crosses all around!

 

A Facebook fast...appropriate! Love the potential of not finding self-worth in what is posted upon Facebook.

 

My favorite Ash Wednesday image, shot by Pierre Du Plessis. "Giving up substance abuse as distraction and a form of numbing" POWERFUL! This is why we are on mission in South Africa!

What NieuCommunities Lives.

Maxie and I spent much of last week with our extended NieuCommunities family in Golden Hill, a neighborhood in San Diego. An inspiring, filling time watching their community multiply and birth fresh expressions of mission!

Rob Yackley, Director of NieuCommunties, is helping Jon Huckins write a book describing the postures of mission that form the common rhythm that make up the heartbeat of missional community together. It’s called Thin Places and is supposed to be out early this coming year! As a part of the story-telling process, they are gathering feedback about NieuCommunities’ impact around the globe. I thought John Hayes’ words were especially powerful, and accurate in describing what we were about:

“There is a ‘come and see’ authenticity about NieuCommunities that is so reminiscent of Jesus calling the disciples out of fishing boats on the shore of Lake Galilee I can almost taste the salt air. At the same time, the “come and see” community is balanced by a “go and do” mission that gives me hope for inside-out change in neighborhoods in the global city. At a time when many are talking about missional communities, NieuCommunities quietly and expertly goes about doing it—forming young men and women and transforming neighborhoods. The vitality of NieuCommunities is less about what is being said than what is being lived.”

[John Hayes, founder of innerCHANGE and author of Submerge, Living Deep in a Shallow World.]

If you are able, will you prayerfully consider partnering with us financially as we end 2011? Our potential transition to Vancouver has caused our financial needs to grow dramatically.

A Little YouTube Love.

My first editing effort. Pretty proud of this (totally imperfect) effort to capture the Life Compass project we are carrying!

Read the full [60* Second Field Stories] here.

Increasingly, Maxie and I have found ourselves facilitating Life Compass training, a holistic developmental tool that uses a narrative story driven process to empower and individual or community to develop a vision for their life. As Donald Miller writes, “A good storyteller speaks something into nothing. Where there is an absence of story, or perhaps a bad story, a good storyteller walks in and changes reality. He doesn’t critique the existing story, or lament about his boredom, like a critic. He just tells something different and invites other people into the new story he is telling.” We hope these short YouTube videos do just that…give you a glimpse into the reality we are living on mission here in South Africa, and a sneak peak at the horizon we are walking towards! Enjoy!

Life Compass Is…(YouTube video explaining our central training)

Welcome to the Chraxie Story! (A little dual interview unpacking the Chraxie love story)

Life Compass Is…

Attempting to describe the unfolding story God is having Maxie and I carry forward in mission right now…Life Compass is increasingly the central tool we are using to help empower others to discover and live into the story of their lives, through an emerging vision that is grounded in a holistic sense of who I am created to be. We couldn’t be more excited to introduce this work to you!

August 2011

God is at work in Cambodia…

Seed Stories [July 2011].

The CRM family, at work in Japan post-tsunami.

Every quarter, CRM, the larger mission organization NieuCommunities is a part of, sends out a newsletter that has a simple aim: To tell stories that highlight brief snapshots of God at work through the larger family that CRM represents worldwide. At last count, CRM has over 450+ missionaries in 25+ countries worldwide. A global family, our organization is truly multi-cultural, with over 25% of our staff being non-American in ethnicity, which is quite remarkable for an American-based organization. Enjoy a few stories from the extended family!

[CRM Seed Stories, July 2011] <–Download Seed Stories PDF here.

The CRM family, at work in Russia.

Imago Christi is an amazing CRM ministry based out of Colorado.

Death–>Life (Project 365, Day 101).

Aperture: f/5.6     Focal Length: 55 mm     ISO: 100     Shutter Speed: 1/320 second

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