Neighborhood Church

We live in a culture that values winning at any cost.

Pyrrhic Victory
"Another such victory, and we are undone."

ROY COHN'S THREE RULES
Attack. Attack. Attack.
Admit nothing. Deny everything.
No matter what happens, claim victory and never admit defeat.

“You have to be willing to do anything to anyone to win.” - Roy Cohn

Zero-sum Game
For someone to win, someone else has to lose.

We have been moving toward an individualistic, dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest, ‘no-we’re-not-in-this-together’ world for over five decades.
ROBERT PUTNAM

In America, the land of competition, the language of success is aggressive and filled with violent images. Here we might describe another’s successes by saying things like “He is killing it” or “She is crushing it” or “He is slaying the competition.” There is truth embedded in that language. To win, we sometimes have to crush those underneath us. And this can move from language to reality…
JON TYSON

Our capacity for greatness is tied to our capacity to serve others.

Far too often, in the modern church, we confuse winning with faithfulness to Jesus.

Any ambition that declares we must rule should be checked with the immediate reminder that Christ did not. It is the cross—not the boardroom, not the Oval Office, not the box office—that is the absolute center of the kingdom of God.
DAVID FRENCH

We live for the good of others.

KENOSIS

How many of the wins we’re chasing are based on an illusion?

Under God’s gaze, we are delivered from the constraint of having to be “the best” or perpetually having to be “winners.” We have a deep sense of release, because we don’t have to make constant efforts to show ourselves in a favorable light or waste energy pretending to be what we are not. We can quite simply be what we are. There is no better form of “relaxation” than to rest like little children in the tenderness of a Father who loves us just as we are.
Jacques Phillipe