About the Regnare Project

 

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Hi, I’m Jason R. E. Campbell, the lead editor and author here at the Regnare Project.

I write about the good life.

Growing up in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains outside Salem, Oregon, I thought that the good life was doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to do it. I was pretty self-absorbed as a kid: shirking chores, glued to the latest video game, book, or movie, somehow managing to get half-decent grades without really applying myself. I never had a real job until after six years of a four-year college degree. But somewhere along the way, I started paying attention to the lessons my parents had tried to teach me, to the traditions handed down by my hard-working grandparents, and to the God that had been pursuing me long before I paid any attention to him at all.

I got my first taste of the truly good life among a fellowship of Christians in whom I saw glimpses of what living the good life looked like. I’m not sure what the phrase “the good life” conjures up in your mind, but I’m talking about the good life, the kind of life that each of us longs for. I’m talking about a life where:

  • We belong among people who “get” us and like us in spite of our flaws, people whom we love deeply and who love and treasure us
  • We know our true value and worth all the way down to our bones
  • We are working together to make something of the world, to bring lasting change where it matters most
  • We spend our time, money, attention, and energy on things that matter—things that stand the test of time
  • We understand what we were made to do and get to actually do it
  • We see the wonder, beauty, and magic of the world again with new eyes
  • We know what real, down-in-our-guts joy feels like and experience it regularly
  • We are whole in ourselves, leaving broken hearts and dreams behind, forgetting our past failures and mistakes
  • We are becoming the people we wish we could be
  • We have the energy, resilience, and rock-solid, unshakable peace to weather anything that comes our way
  • We are certain of a glorious future that is secure no matter what the current situation looks like in our own lives or the world around us

I was surprised as anyone when I discovered that Jesus was concerned with what we would call “the good life”. But every aspect of his life and work revolved around opening up the way for people to live the truly good life—life with God and with others, not in some future version of the world to come, but beginning now in the midst of whatever life we are already living. The coming of Jesus represented the in-breaking of a different kind of life, under the direction and power of something he called the kingdom (or reign) of God, where God’s good purposes for the world actually come to pass, where we get a taste of that good life God has always meant for us to have.

According to Jesus, whoever received and entered this kingdom of God would be truly alive, brimming with peace, at play in God’s wide world, finding purpose and meaning with each act of love, caught up even in the very life of God himself (John 17:20-23, 2 Pet 1:4).

Among this group of Christians, I began to pursue this kingdom of God and my sense of what was possible began to change. I began to see the beautiful mysteries of life that had always been right in front of my face. I started to think about what kind of life I was being called to live and what it would take to obey that call. The call I was starting to hear was not to the foreign mission field or to full time ministry, but rather to a full apprenticeship to Jesus right in the midst of my ordinary home-and-work-and-play life.

Little by little, I began to grasp what Jesus was talking about when he referred to the kingdom of God. And the more I learned, the more I realized how ill-prepared I was to actually put into practice the way of life Jesus talked about. That’s when wise teachers in the church began to point me toward the spiritual disciplines. I discovered a world of teaching long treasured by the church, breadcrumbs left by those who had taken Jesus at his word and had lived under the peace, play, and purpose of God’s kingdom.

Early on, in my zeal for this practical wisdom, I would upend my life completely, trying everything at once, impatiently wanting all aspects of the good life now. This would predictably end with exhaustion and discouragement with only little incremental changes to show for it. I learned that the good life grows naturally out of small changes repeated over time. I learned that these small changes could be built upon, that my long-standing habits and ways of thinking could be re-ordered as I yielded to the patterns of transformation I was learning.

Without really intending to, I was discovering what the Christian tradition has long called a “rule of life”, an ordered approach to applying a framework of spiritual disciplines within a supportive community. A little bit at a time, I adjusted the rule as I went, adapting it to what was going on in my life at the time, all while staying engaged with the life of the church.

As I walked under this rule of life week by week, I could see real difference where it mattered most—in the deep places of my heart, in the things I loved and desired, in the quality of my relationships, in my willingness to serve, in the real impact I had on the people around me. Here was the kingdom of God breaking out in my midst.

These days I am living near Portland, Oregon with my amazing wife and our two beautiful girls. For my “day job”, I work as a development manager for a digital marketing agency serving non-profits around the world. While raising these girls, my wife and I are seeking this sometimes-elusive kingdom of God that is at work around us all the time. We are determined to hear the voice of God over the confusing noise of our current culture, to learn from Jesus how to love the people in our world well, and to order our little kingdom toward the glorious good life of God’s kingdom.

If this sort of thing interests you, then you’re invited into the conversation. The first thing to do is to subscribe to our newsletter (and our Facebook or Twitter feeds if that’s your thing), and that will make sure you don’t miss out on anything.

Then, dig a little deeper into what Regnare means and what it has to do with us.