11 The Carpenter Who Built an Organism
No one would hire a carpenter to design a global movement.
Unless, of course, the carpenter is Jesus, here to experience what we do, to show us what can be done with the Life He has given us.
Jesus didn’t build systems; He built people.
He didn’t form committees; He formed lives together.
He didn’t establish rituals; He established relationships.
He didn’t construct cathedrals; He constructed character.
He didn’t create a weekly event; He created an everyday Ecosystem.
Yeah, the Twelve and the 3000 were frightened by their freedom, too! Like a salesman on 100% commission, no salary guaranteed, the risk is there but the Reward is unlimited. They wore Jesus Together on the inside, just as He had promised, so, as “partakers of the Divine Nature,” the Possibilities are amazing “for him who believes.”
“I’ll never leave you or forsake you.”
“I won’t leave you as orphans.”
“My Father and I will come to live inside of you.”
“You will be One as the Father and I are One, and We will be One with you on this Journey.”
“The mystery withheld for ages and generations: Christ IN you, the hope of Glory.”
“Greater works than I do, YOU shall do.”
In engineering terms, this is how that plays out when He is not only a thought and teaching and song as our Main Character, but He lives inside of those who have actually made Covenant. That Deal to “die to the world and the world to them,” to be washed, then to “rise up to walk in newness of life” is pretty epic stuff.
Jesus built a self-replicating, adaptive, resilient, anti-fragile Organism and Ecosystem that:
- grows when persecuted,
- strengthens under pressure or stress, like steel or nitinol
- multiplies through open-handed, trusting obedience,
- purifies through suffering,
- stabilizes through daily relationships,
- and cannot be controlled by any institution in this present age, made up of molecules, reptiles and mammals.
“They don’t have anything I want and can’t take from me anything I need.”
He took fishermen, tax collectors, zealots, teenagers, broken people, nobodies—and he built His Kingdom, remarkably, out of that. I can relate. I stink. I’m nothing. Maybe you know that about yourself too.
That’s how it should be! One guy God called “a man after God’s own heart” was AFTER God’s own heart, even though he was a huge fool and historic failure at times, personally. But his heart was way after God’s heart, failure or not. The Physician only comes for those who admit they are sick. I know it about me. You probably know it about you, too. He can work with that. He always has.
He wants to build a living, breathing, dynamic network of human souls saturated with His Life—and tethered to one another by daily love.
How did He train them?
- Not in classrooms.
- Not with lectures or Bible studies, per se.
- Not through programs.
- Not by sermons EVER.
He trained them by living with them and applying Bible truths “as they would rise up, sit down, and walk along the way” and as He would “live and move and have His being in them,” “in the midst as one who served.” While they were together doing life stuff, they would LIVE in the Ecosystem of truth:
- walking
- eating
- praying
- playing
- correcting
- laughing
- crying
- confronting
- modeling
- lifting
- forgiving
- empowering.
Jesus didn’t build a religion.
He built an Ecosystem—a relational habitat where divine Life flows, grows, and transforms. Breathing Heaven’s air takes a bit of time to learn.
And Gen Z—raised amid networks, open worlds, interactivity, and real-time life—recognizes this instantly, if they have the humility to recognize there is more to this planet than their wants and “needs.” “Heaven reigns.”