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The Journey Today

While I want to share much of our journey, the place to start is probably the place we are at.

As I write, I'm sitting with Anne (my daughter) and Jay (my brother-in-law) watching the olympics in the basement of Jay and Grace's. Grace is Veronica's sister. We've been staying here since about the second week of January. Jay, Grace and their nine-year-old son, Justin, have been incredibly gracious to receive us and allow us to not just hide in their basement and bedroom, but to be family together. We share most meals, work out schedules together, go to Evansville Aces Basketball games, churches, and split and deliver firewood together (a fun little side-job Jay does with his dad). In the mornings, after Justin heads to school and Jay to work, Anne, Sam, Jed, Veronica and I start our day off with a morning devotion and then start homeschooling. We've been going through history in the middle ages with the two older ones, then math and writing and a bunch of fun reading. Homeschooling has been both fun to go through this material and a challenge. The kids are free to let us silly parents know how they feel about what we're asking them to do. I think it's going to be a good process to work through. And, after lunch and finishing schoolwork, just about every day we either head to the library, the YMCA to swim (Veronica runs on the treadmill), or both. Then we see what the night has.

As to the search, we wait. Contact with churches is sporadic by the nature of the process. We work with committees of lay volunteers who are working with many candidates. We've visited a number of churches and are still in process with some and aren't with others. It's a hard process with the sole purpose of discerning if we are led by God to be in the pastoral leadership of a congregation of believers. Churches, rightly, are very deliberate about such a process.

One of the things we've experienced in this journey is a renewed sense of call to pastoral ministry. I believe I'm called to be a pastor. It's been wonderful for this sense of call to be affirmed by many along the way. Still, where?, when?, how?, what Kind of position?, that is not clear. I simply have been confident that where God guides, He provides. (I'll write more about this later)

But a significant circumstance to all of this is that we only have so much money, so graciously provided by loving people. And we are also sensitive to our kids' needs. We're simply running out of time to search. We're facing tough decisions. It would be just like God to do miracles - and this whole journey has been a miracle. But it's a funny thing to be in the middle of a miracle in progress. It's a cliffhanger. The cliff looms large. The stories have piled up through all of this. But we're anxious for this chapter's end to be written.

This is enough for now. I have much more to say, more of the story to write. Today, we'd ask for your prayers - prayers for search committees, prayers for our discernment, and for our peace. I can't tell you how grateful for our friends. You mean more to us than we can express.

 

decision-making and community

We are in the process of making big decisions and, as sensitively as possible, following God's leading.  To this point, the Lord has been very gracious and giving Veronica and I together a sense of clarity at each step.  But we've never had a strong sense of where on this will end (more on that later).  Rather than getting easier, it seems to be getting harder.  And one of the senses we've had lately is to let our "community" in on the decision-making process itself.  We need you. 

Today, I read this blog by a Baptist pastor, Darryl Dash (dashhouse.com) about exactly what we're feeling.  It was about the remarkable case of Jonathan Edwards making the decision to move from ministry to become the President of what is now Princeton University.  He didn't want to do it.  He called a "counsel" of his friends and trusted advisors.  They prayed and told him they thought he should.  This is the blog:

When they published their judgment and advice to Mr. Edwards and his people, he appeared uncommonly moved and affected with it, and fell into tears on the occasion, which was very unusual for him, in the presence of others; and soon after, he said to the gentlemen who had given their advice, that it was matter of wonder to him, that they could so easily, as they appeared to do, get over the objections he had made against his removal. But, as he thought it his duty to be directed by their advice, he should now endeavour cheerfully to undertake it, believing he was in the way of his duty. (The Works of Jonathan Edwards )

He didn’t ask for their advice and make the decision himself. He even spoke against accepting the position. Yet he entrusted himself to the wisdom of others, submitting himself to their final decision.

It makes me realize how individualistic we’ve become in decision making.

Earlier this week, Justin Taylor wrote: 

As it applies to Christians discerning calling, it's important to remember that our callings (whether to marriage, to job, in a new life direction) should not be discerned by the individual alone (autonomy) or everyone (democracy) but rather by good counselors (a trusted community).

Good and radical advice.

http://www.dashhouse.com/2010/02/making-decisions-in-community/

I'll write in coming days about the decisions we face.  I'd love your prayers and thoughts.  As has been the case throughout, we're open to the Lord's leading in any direction.  We're listening for the Lord, and we know He often speaks through our friends.  We have never felt alone in this - not abandoned by the Lord, and certainly not by our friends.  We're listening. 

For Family and Friends - our journeys

 
We've been on the road now for almost three months, and we're still not sure where or when it will all end.  It's time to share our journey with others.  The one thing that we have been focusing on throughout - the question we've been asking ourselves more than ever - is, "what is God doing?"  Our circumstances beg the question, but it has become the question itself that has become perhaps the greatest blessing of this whole experience.  We don't yet have the answer that we've been looking for the whole time (as to where and when), but we've been blessed with many other answers.  God is moving.  He's been blessing and loving us.  And that is what has been growing our faith in the midst of fears and loss.  In it all, we've found we have much more than we knew - more of our friends, of each other, and of our God than we ever knew.  All that being said, we are still scared.  But it's different now, and I don't think it will ever be the same. 

I'll start writing more.  I need to for myself.  And for those of you who read this, I've come to know my need for you in a whole new way.  Thank you for your prayers.  They work.  God listens and moves.  He has, and we're trusting He will.  Thank you for your prayers. 

Qualities of a Post-Modern Mission

I'm reading through Stetzer, Planting Missional Churches.  He has a great list of the qualities of a culturally sensitive church in the post-modern world:

• Being unashamedly spiritual
• Promoting incarnational ministry 
• Engaging in service 
• Valuing experiential praise 
• Preaching narrative expository messages 
• Appreciating and participating in ancient patterns 
• Visualizing worship 
• Connecting with technology 
• Living community 
• Leading by transparency and team  

It's the best list I've seen in a good-long while.   I've had long roads to end up at each one of these places, and here they are, all together.  Volumes are written on each one.  They are each vital (some moreso than others).  I think this is a good place to start with a list of essential qualities of a church in the post-modern world.  
  

The Church I Want

  The hardest challenge as a pastor has been to lead a church that I would be excited about bringing people to and that I'm excited to be a part of.  This sounds crazy, doesn't it?  It's easy to be pulled into a sense of trying to create something - programs or services - that would satisfy some unidentified requirement/expectation.  Most of that time, I'm wondering if this is something I could really be enthusiastic about bringing people to as something that would be welcoming and redemptive, particularly to the unchurched. 

Internet Monk referred to and connected to Scot McKnight thoughts about the church and community:

 Scot Mcknight astutely points out that we have a lot of people taking the church very seriously these days, but ironically, many of them can’t find the church they need. Not because of a lack of entertaining programs and preaching, but because they are looking for a community where they can faithfully struggle alongside other strugglers in the discipleship journey.

McKnight, in the article to which imonk refers, goes on to say:

 "If reading the Bible as Story teaches us anything, and we need to emphasize this one more time, it teaches us that God's work in this world is to form communities that visibly demonstrate the power of God at work in this world."

I think people, myself included, are longing to be part of a community that is focused, not on attractional activity and preaching, but on being the visible demonstration of the power of God at work in this world and in our lives.  That's a group I want to be a part of.  And it happens when a group of people actively love, care, support, edify, challenge, and love each other (I know I said 'love' twice).  That's attraction enough.  And that's the power of God at work. 

The Tangible Kingdom "Talk"

The authors of The Tangible Kingdom have a 'talk' for those interested in their community who are coming from other churches.  It summarizes what is different and demanding about their community for Christendom church-goers.  It speaks volumes of the consumer and rugged-individual orientation of the churches from which we stem.  

"'I just want you to know that we're not a church, we're a mission to Denver.  I don't feel any compulsion to feed you spiritually, but I will look after your spiritual formation.  I believe you won't grow unless you live like Jesus lived and try to do what he did with people.  This mission probably has nothing to offer you.  However, I'm interested in finding out if God brought you to us, and what your part in serving this city might be.'  I go on to suggest that they won't fit with us unless they are willing to open up their homes and lives to Sojourners and participate in a missional community within the city." (p. 54)

The Goal of the Gospel

Halter and Smay write provocatively in The Tangible Kingdom:

"Church must not be the goal of the gospel anymore.  Church should not be the focus of our efforts or the banner we hold up to explain what we're about.  Church should be what ends up happening as a natural response to people wanting to follow us, be with us, and be like us as we are following the way of Christ." (p. 30).  

Church should be a venue to express and live our love for Jesus.  Sometimes, though, it becomes an idol and takes the place for our love for Christ.  When that happens, it actually inhibits that which it is supposed to enable.  As the church separates further from our culture and develops a culture of its own, we need to find other means to express and model our love for Jesus to the world.  The world looks into the church and doesn't necessarily see Jesus.  Frankly, they've stopped looking.  Now, individuals can be invited to look into the lives of individual and small groups of Jesus followers and be introduced to the love of Christ.  People will fall in love with Jesus through deep, sacrificial, gentle, loving relationships.  

Jesus - the point of it all

I read a great article tonight from the internet monk blog. Way too often, the church gets in the way of Jesus.  Even though we're his body, we get so wrapped up in ourselves, we forget the point of being his body is that we're the temple where He dwells by the power of the Spirit.  imonk writes about a time when he forgot about Jesus and focused on the church.  Yikes.  Ouch.  Hmmm.  Especially now, when I'm grieving church, re-imagining church, looking for church, re-discovering church, alternating between excitement and disgust of church, it's easy - too easy - to forget about Jesus.  

The Joy of the Lord is my/our strength.    Lord, you are good - so good.

The Tangible Kingdom

A couple of weeks ago, I finished The Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay.  It's the clearest book I've read on church being "missional".  While it's such a catch-phrase these days, I believe this reaches past the fads into the heart of historic Christianity and articulates where God is leading the church today.  I'd describe it as biblical, incarnational, missional, orthodox orthopraxy and a bunch of other good stuff.  I think most evangelical Christians and churches are coming to a place of understanding the necessity of being missional, and are trying to plug it into their life and practices.  This book paints a picture of beginning with being missional and incarnational and life happening there. 

I would love this to provide the missional heartbeat of the church.  I marked the book all up, and I'm going to go back and take notes.  I'll meditate over some of the thoughts in the book in future blogs.  And I just ordered the workbook off their website Tangible Kingdom and will look to gathering some folks with whom to delve in.   Look for more in coming days.