Closing a Church, Appendix

Here are the sermon's I preached on the closing Sunday of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church.  The first was the regular morning service, the second was the official closing service in the afternoon.

I AM the Resurrection and the Life

          Jesus wept.  The shortest verse in the whole bible, but I also think one of the most profound.  God knows our pain.  God has felt loss, sadness and grief.  God has seen death and even with the knowledge that death has no victory, he still saw the pain of his friends, felt the loss of Lazarus and wept.

          I think sometimes we set pain in opposition to faith.  We assume that if we’re truly faithful we won’t experience pain.  We comfort each other and are comforted with phrases like, “Everything happens for a reason” and “It’s all part of God’s plan” as if true faith means denying death, loss, and grief.

          Often times we are our own worst critics, convincing ourselves that we should feel a certain way or that some feelings are okay and other are not.  Today we may feel sadness and loss, we may feel pride and joy, we may feel relief, or we may feel anger and resentment.  All of these feelings are okay.

          In the passage, Jesus encounters all kinds of emotions in his journey to Lazarus’ tomb.  Both sisters remind him that if he had been there, Lazarus would not have died.  Martha approaches him with confidence in his rising on the last day.  Mary approaches him with desperation, kneeling at his feet.  The Jews are sorrowful but some of them are confused – “Couldn’t he have prevented this?”  And maybe we ask Jesus the same question this morning – “Why did God let it get to this point?  Couldn’t he have done something?  Couldn’t he have come and prevented the closure of our church?”

          Jesus’ response to the question is “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"  which is theologically accurate, but not emotionally satisfying.  Why did Jesus chose to let Lazarus die and whereas he healed so many other people, sparing them and their families the pain and grief of loss.  In the same way, why did God choose to bring Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, Fort Worth, TX to a close on October 28^th, 2012 and yet seems to have performed miraculous revitalizations in other churches.  Of course it’s for the glory of God as Jesus said, but why does our church have to glorify God by dying while other churches get to glorify God by growing and expanding?  Sadly, we will never know.  We cannot understand the mysteries of God’s wisdom and providence and really have no answer but to trust God.

          We do however, know one thing: when we grieve, God grieves with us.  When we lament, God laments with us.  When we weep, God weeps with us.  God is not an impassive, impersonal, inhuman entity.  God is not arbitrary or detached or aloof.  God sees, God feels, God knows, and God cares.  One of the most profound differences between the triune God of the Christian religion and the God of other world faiths is that our God suffers – not just when we hurt others, but when we hurt.

          But even in the midst of that hurt, even as God grieves with us, he does not leave us without hope.  God offers us hope of what might be, visions of what could be and promises of what will be, not to deny our grief, but to offer us comfort during our grief.  Jesus reminds us, saying “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”  Jesus himself is the resurrection of all things, in all times, and all places.  Not only did he raise Lazarus, not only did he raise the little girl, not only was he himself raised, but he has raised all of us.  Jesus has raised each of us out of broken lives of fear, regret, hopelessness, and despair.  Jesus has raised each of us out of our shame, our inadequacy, and our loneliness.  We know Jesus is the resurrection because we have been resurrected.  We know Jesus is the life because of the life he has given us.  We know that even though we die, we will live because we have already died to our old selves and been born again as new creations.  We have been raised and we live, so we know that Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

          And so as we bid farewell to Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, we know that it too will live.  We know that Jesus’ promise of resurrection and eternal life are not just for individuals and not just for after we die, but are for organizations, churches, relationships, traditions, and legacies.  Jesus reminds us that he is the resurrection and the life, not to deny our grief, but to give us a hope, a vision, and a promise in the midst of our grief.  To remind us that he is here weeping with us and also that things aren’t over until he says they’re over and that he always gets the last word.  Jesus reminds us this morning that he could not be stopped with a whip, he could not be stopped with a cross, he could not be stopped with a rock, he could not be stopped with a tomb, he could not be stopped by death, he could not be stopped by sin, he could not be stopped by Satan himself – no, nothing in all creation can stop him.  Jesus lives and so we live and so our church will live.  Our church will live on in the relationships we maintain, in the experiences that formed us, in the knowledge we carry from Sunday School lessons, in the joy we shared in fellowship events, in the comfort we offered each other at funerals, in the humility we learned when we messed up and the grace we experienced when we were forgiven.  Our church will live on in the $350,000 dollars we gave away to the Night Shelter and Children’s Home and Union Gospel Mission and the Presbytery and Mo Ranch.  Our church will live on in Templo as they reach this neighborhood and bring the good news, and our church will live on in the congregation that buys this building and continues to use it to do God’s work and serve God’s people.

          Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is the hope, the vision, and the promise of Jesus Christ.  Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, Fort Worth, TX, even though it dies, will live and Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, Fort Worth, because it believes, will never die.  Because Jesus is light of the world.  Jesus is the bread of life.  Jesus is the good shepherd. Jesus is the gate.  Jesus is the vine.  Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.  And above all because Jesus is the resurrection and the life.  Brothers and sisters in Christ, members of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church…friends…In the name of Jesus Christ, the risen son – live.  Amen.

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To Be Continued…

          Here’s how you know you’re a dyed in the wool Presbyterian – you have favorite lines in the Book of Order.  One of my favorites was taken out when the new Book of Order was approved, but I think it still applies.  In the section on the mission of the church, the old Book of Order details all the different things the church exists to do, all the ways it can help people, all the goals and reasons that we believe God has for the church and then it ended with this paragraph:

The Church is called to undertake this mission even at the

risk of losing its life, trusting in God alone as the author and

giver of life, sharing the gospel, and doing those deeds in the

world that point beyond themselves to the new reality in Christ.

          What a challenge!  The church is called to do God’s work in the world, even at the risk of losing its own life.

          Now I know your relationship with the presbytery in the past has been shaky.  You are a, shall I say “unique” church.  Sometimes there has been distrust, sometimes resentment, sometimes frustration.  And maybe I only speak for myself, but I don’t think I do when I say that we can also add admiration.  Members and friends of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, you are to be commended and admired for taking the challenge in the Book of Order seriously.  This time you are unique in the Presbytery for your outstanding faith and courage: the faith and courage to dissolve a financially solvent congregation in order to follow a vision from God in which this building, your financial assets, and the time and talent of your people can be put to further use in other ways and in other places.  The Book of Order called you to serve God’s mission even at the risk of the life of the church and you have responded.  At the last supper Christ said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” and you have shown such love.  You are to be commended.

Now, of course Christ was speaking about the coming crucifixion when he too would give his life to answer God’s call.  He too had to die in order for God’s will to be done through him.  On Good Friday he was betrayed, arrested, tried, sentenced and executed and in the gospel of Mark in the passage we just read, we hear the story of what happened on Sunday.  The women came to the tomb and found the stone had already been rolled back.  A young man in a white robe was sitting in the tomb and told them that he had been raised and had gone ahead to Galilee.  And the last line of the gospel’s original ending reads: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  That’s it.  No resurrection appearances, no ascension into heaven, no great commission.  Mark does not have a happy ending, no “fade to black and roll credits”, no “happily ever after.”  Instead, Mark ends his gospel with a “To be continued…”  He is challenging us, the reader, the disciple, the Christian to finish the story with our own lives.  Mark is asking us, “Do you believe Christ lives on?”  “Do you believe the story continues?”  “Do you believe the work of Christ is still being done today?”  “Do you believe we are forever called to proclaim in word and deed the legacy of Jesus Christ?”  And so as we say goodbye to Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, I, like Mark, do not see today as an ending, happy or sad, but as a “to be continued...” and I challenge us all with the same questions: “Do you believe the Oakhurst Presbyterian Church lives on?”  “Do you believe that the story continues?”  “Do you believe the work of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church is still being done today and will still be done tomorrow and next week and as long as we are all still serving God?”  “Do you believe that we are forever called to proclaim in word and deed the legacy of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church?”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, friends and members of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church – the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were only the beginning of the story.  We know that Christ was raised, we know that the Holy Spirit descended, we know that the Body of Christ has grown and spread and proclaimed and ministered and we know that God lives and God’s mission goes on.  Rome could not stop it, Judas could not stop it, a cross could not stop it, a tomb could not stop it, a stone could not stop, death could not stop it, sin could not stop it, and hell itself could not stop it.  God’s mission lives.

As we go forward and grieve the loss of our beloved congregation and plug into new congregations, we will be faced with a choice.  Like the women at the tomb, we have the choice to say nothing to anyone because we are afraid – afraid of change, afraid of new people, afraid of abandonment, afraid of rejection.  We can let this be the end of the Oakhurst story and we can say “They lived sadly ever after.”  Or we have the choice to proclaim the good things God has done in our lives and in our world through the legacy of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church.  We can take what makes Oakhurst, Oakhurst and we can carry it into new places with new people to serve in new ways and make lives new.  We have the choice to make today a “to be continued…” and to write the rest of the story with the way that we, the member of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, Fort Worth, TX continue to serve the living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  So, just as the young man in white challenged the women at the tomb, I challenge you today: “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, which has been dissolved.  It is not here but it has been raised.  This is the place it used to be, but go and tell everyone that it has gone on to Hurst and Arlington and downtown and Jacksboro and Ridgelea and to Texas and the United States and the world.  There you will see Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, just as you have been told.  It is not here.  It has been raised.”  In the name of the risen Lord, Jesus Christ, Amen.  To be continued…

Closing a Church

Yesterday (10/28/12) I led the closing worship service for Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, Fort Worth, TX ending 84 years of ministry.  I am still a bit raw, so my thoughts will also be so.  I am in no position to write a polished piece that ends with a nice bow tie, but perhaps this will make a more interesting read anyway.

Just for background information, I've served on staff at OPC for 7 years: 2 as the youth director and 5 as the called and installed solo pastor.  The church closed because we realized our assets, time, talent, and treasure could all be used to better use for God's kingdom if we moved on than if we continued to slowly but inevitably dwindle while our expenses and required time commitment increased.

Some assorted observations:

• My key ring is a lot lighter.  I've been carrying around the keys to the church in my pocket everyday for the past 7 years.  I turned them in today and there is an actual physical sense of lightness, now that they are gone.
• I don't have to think about my next sermon.  For 7 years (I was preaching regularly, even as the youth director) I've always been looking for the next sermon idea.  Even when I was on vacation, I was always percolating the next sermon idea or two because coming up with something worth saying every week is just hard to do.  I get the feeling that I when I hear someone say something wise, I will instinctively think "That would make a good sermon.  I should preach that." before I realize that I no longer have a pulpit.
• The things I miss are not the things I thought I would.  I spent a lot of the last 7 years dreading visiting old ladies in nursing homes.  The visits were very nice, and I did them because I knew it was important, but it's just not a part of ministry that really blows my hair back.  Strangely, I think this will be one of the things I miss most. There's just something sacred about sitting down with a 90 year old lady, listening to her stories and praying with and for her.
• The church is not the building, but the building still has meaning.  I found it just as hard to drop my keys off to an empty building as I did to say goodbye to all the people yesterday.  There's something much more final about saying goodbye to the building, because I know for a fact that I will never have the same relationship to that building.  I can kind of convince myself that my relationship with the people won't change, but I can't do the same for the building.
• 84 years is a long time.  Not only was I not alive 84 years ago; my parents weren't alive 84 years ago.  As a bright eyed idealistic first call pastor fresh out of seminary, it was easy to discount "tradition" and inertia and to constantly wonder why change was so hard, but to see all the people who had been impacted by OPC over the years gathered in one place yesterday was a reminder that all the things I discounted had served OPC and its members very well in the past.
• 7 years is a long time.  I have never stayed anywhere in my life for 7 years.  Elementary school was 6, middle school was 3, high school was 4 (broken up into 2 schools for 2 years each), college was 5, seminary was 3.  I have been a Christian for 12 years and I spent 7 of them at OPC.  It is the closest thing to a home church I've had.  Though I haven't spend 50 or 60 or 70 years there, it is a significant part of my journey of faith.
• The pastor is always the pastor.  For better or worse, I will never be just friends with the people of OPC.  Even if I happen to bump into them 10 or 20 years down the line, I will still be their former pastor and not just their friend.
• Grief sneaks up on you.  In all the busyness and anxiety of closing and in dealing with all the relief after years of confusion and sometimes frustration, I did not notice that I was grieving until about 3 weeks before the closing.  I just assumed that I was feeling fine (in large part because of denial) until I started feeling really depressed and couldn't understand why.  Then my wife was like, "Um...you're closing your church" and it dawned on me that I was grieving.
• Grief is a funny thing.  I realized yesterday morning that I was looking to pick a fight with my wife.  I was moping around the house, resenting the dirty laundry on the floor and the kids toys everywhere and thinking all about how my wife was such a slacker.  Thankfully, before I did anything stupid, I recognized that this was also part of the grief process and I was looking for a scapegoat and a conflict to take my mind off the pain.  Acknowledging and naming it took its power away.
  
  Also, the weirdest memories came back to me.  Memories from years ago of just random stuff like playing Dance Dance Revolution with the kids of the church and funerals of people I hadn't thought about in quite a few years.  I guess endings tend to do that.
• I cannot not proclaim the gospel.  Whether the church I serve is doing fine or closing, or whether I'm serving a church at all, I cannot help but proclaim the goodness of God.  In Luke, when Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem "some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, 'Teacher, order your disciples to stop.'  He answered, 'I tell you, if these were silent, even the stones would shout out.'"  I am one of the stones.

To all those who have supported and prayed for me and Oakhurst Presbyterian Church over the years, "thank you."  To all the members and friends of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, "Well done good and faithful servants.  You have been trustworthy in a few things.  I will put you in charge of many things.  Enter into the joy of your master."  God is up to something new and I can't wait to see what it is.

Overdramatic title about Higgs-Boson and how science killed God

With all the hoopla about the discovery of the Higgs-Boson, the unfortunately nicknamed "God particle", the question of the relationship between science and religion is once again brought to the fore.  An interesting and helpful dicussion of the Higgs-Boson in particular can be found at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-clayton-phd/relationship-between-scie_b_1653976.html

But more generally, as someone who grew up atheist/agnostic and who came to faith doing a Masters in Computer Science at MIT of all places, I've often struggled with that interaction between faith and science.  Hopefully, I can put some of my thoughts to words and maybe even put forth a reasonable conclusion.

To start, a quote from the above article which in turn quotes a conversation on the Colbert Report:

The perfect example of this debate was played out in a Colbert interview with Lawrence Krauss recently; it's worth re-watching in the wake of the Higgs. Krauss, the New Atheist, touts his new book, "A Universe from Nothing." There are three kinds of nothing, he insists, and according to the laws of quantum mechanics, each one left to itself will produce the something that we see around us. "It sounds like the ultimate free lunch," Krauss admits, but there you have it; it's just science. "The universe is more remarkable than the fairy tales that were talked about by Bronze Age illiterate peasants."

"Why does it have to be an attack on my God?" Colbert asks. "There's just no evidence for God," replies Krauss, "All I've said is that you don't need Him."

For starters, I actually completely agree about the part about Bronze Age illiterate peasants.  Religious texts in general and the bible in particular were never meant to describe the unimaginably complex and beautifully elegant scientific realities which we have since discovered.  There's a reason that the bible doesn't say "On the first day, God created the quark, the neutrino, the lepton, and finally smashed them all together and made an atom."  It's because the authors of the texts (and to be quite frank, most of us, even with strong scientific backgrounds) couldn't begin to fathom what that meant.  When the bible says, "God said 'let there be light'" it is not speaking in opposition to the idea that "some number of nano-seconds after the big bang, some quantum electro-dynamic wave collapsed to form the first photon."  (Note: I know just enough about this stuff to write sentences like the above which sound like they describe the creation of light, when in fact, I just stuck a bunch of words together.)  Instead, the bible is positing that God is the creator of light.

Now of course, Krauss would argue that we don't need God to create light - that light creates itself out of nothingness (and if I understand correctly, so does matter, which is whole point of the Higgs-Boson) which I think brings us to the crux of the matter:

When a child asks, "Why does a tiger have stripes?" there are many possible answers to this question:

Baby tigers are cute and have stripes

1) The tiger parents have DNA which they passed down, which creates proteins which create pigments in the skin of a baby tiger in a particular pattern.

2) Years of evolution have culled all the tigers that didn't have stripes, leaving only those that do have stripes.

3) So they can effectively hide while stalking prey.

4) Because God made them that way.

Note that these answers do not necessarily preclude each other.  All four of them may or may not be true, somewhat independently of the others.  In particular, the fourth answer addresses a question that none of the other three even approach - "is there a greater purpose or design behind the tiger's stripes?"  Science doesn't need God to answer its questions, but similarly, regardless of the genetic, biological, and evolutionary understandings of  how tiger got its stripes, science doesn't even claim to have insight into a greater purpose or design.  Many scientists (Krauss and Dawkins among them) claim that such a question is meaningless; because it cannot be answered by science, it is not a useful question to ask.  And yet, as human beings, we find ourselves asking that very question, not just about the tiger's stripes, the higgs-boson, or evolution, but about the universe itself.  Is there a greater purpose to quantum mechanics?  To the vast expanse of space?  To whether I rob a bank or give to charity?

For all science's wonderful advances, it has never made me feel less alone in the universe, it has never given me peace in times of anxiety, and it has never assured me that what I do matters.  Perhaps Krauss doesn't need God to answer the questions that he asks, but I certainly need God to answer the questions that I ask.

Postscript:  I have no idea what to do with supernatural miracles in the bible like the virgin birth or the resurrection of Christ from a scientific perspective.  It seems pretty important that these things happened or else God has no power in the world, but it also seems highly unlikely that the physical laws of the universe were suspended for brief moments in time 2000 years ago but not since then.

Pittsburgh NCD Tour - House of Manna

Met with Eugene “Freedom” Blackwell and his wife “Free” at House of Manna and Homewood Rennaisance.   (A missional faith community and a non-profit – the describe it as two buildings with a bridge across).  They do super intentional relational ministry in a poor African-American neighborhood called Homewood.

Rev. Blackwell started as the pastor of a church which had been in the neighborhood for a long time, but as the members became more financially well off, it became a commuter church which didn’t serve the neighborhood any more.  Rev. Blackwell decided to start a ministry which would  really be of, for, and in the neighborhood.   They worship out on a street corner during the summer and have a building but are really intentional about merging their service work with their spiritual work and in particular about building trust and relationships in the community.  They started out by doing a ton of service work in the neighborhood and by going door to door, doing food and toy drives, and just hanging out at bus stops, street corners, etc.

Their worship is very participatory and very fitting for the community.  They use spoken word, hip hop, a DJ, and sometimes Rev. Blackwell preaches, but he has a team that rotates. They were really hard on discipleship and leadership development.   He develops 3 or 4 people at a time and sends them to develop other leaders themselves.

They said that one of the things they were the most proud of about their church is that when people come into the neighborhood and ask on the street “Where is House of Manna?” their members say “How can I help you?” rather than pointing them to a building or giving them Rev. Blackwell’s phone number.

They also said one of the things they believe in is not judging suburban churches who just want to give money to their project or who maybe send mission trip but don’t really commit to the neighborhood.  Everyone is where they are and they want to serve however they can and God uses that to further everyone’s ministry.  That said, they did have to turn down an offer for $100,000 one time because the restrictions that were on it did not match the identity of their ministry.

Because they serve an economically depressed neighborhood, most of their funding comes from other churches, grants, the Presbytery, etc. and they don’t necessarily see that changing in the near future.

They also really talked about their own personal spiritual journeys and how they really felt like the way they started the church put them through a spiritual refinement process where they were forced into relying on God because it was too overwhelming and too scary to think they could do it on their own.  They emphasized being spiritually centered and remembering that God is ultimately the only one that the church obeys and being faithful and taking leaps of faith is how God’s work gets done and how we get to see God’s glory revealed.  I felt like it was an appropriate last visit in that it was humbling, encouraging, and challenging.

They also had to launch multiple times with different groups and different parts of the community, so they said not to get discouraged if there were false starts.

Pittsburgh NCD Tour - Vera White: Presbytery Director of NCDs

Met with Vera White who is the Presbytery Director of NCD's.  She suggested that the core team of our church plant use the PCUSA "Starting New Churches" discernment guide to give us more direction in our discernment process.  It's 17 sessions and some churches have done retreats at the beginning, middle, and/or end to get a couple of the session done in one shot.  She said it would help us get to a more concrete idea of what we believe, who we wanted to serve, and what we would need to do to serve them.  She also mentioned that the GA offered some grants for NCD starts even if the Presbytery didn't.

I think possibly the most interesting thing she said was that she sees her role as the left tackle (in football) for the NCD pastor who is the quarterback.  She sees her role as advocating for the NCD and in particular explaining why the Presbytery needs another church when it already has so many (and when many of them are struggling).  She said that she takes a lot of flak on behalf of the NCD's (from established churches) but she gives them the space they need to do what they need to do.

We also talked a bit about the balance between living in ambiguity and structure and of all the potential dangers that ego can play.

Our visit was really encouraging.  Please pray for Vera as she discerns what's next for her after she leaves her position in July.

Pittsburgh NCD Tour - Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community

Met with Jeff from Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community and Jen, their intern.  Hot Metal Bridge is named after the bridge on Hot Metal Street which was named after the steel mills that used to be there.  It wasn’t a theological move or anything like that.  Hot Metal Bridge is PCUSA and Methodist and does a homeless ministry twice a week where they open their doors and serve whoever comes in.  They do communion every Sunday and have a meal every Sunday after worship.  Food is a big part of their community.

Jeff said that when they started, they (he and Jim, the other pastor) did a “vision lunch” where he invited everyone who might be even remotely interested and pitched them the idea of doing a non-traditional community centered church plant.  They got an 18 month grant from the Presbytery and started doing worship once a month in an old Goodwill store.  Jeff said he spent a lot of time hanging out in the community in coffee shops and prayer walking the neighborhood because he didn’t know what else to do.   They did monthly worship for 2 years before they started doing weekly worship.  Eventually they did discipleship classes and part of that was doing a thanksgiving meal for the homeless, which eventually became their twice a week homeless meal.

One big takeaway was that they were constantly evaluating what they did and even when things worked well, they didn’t feel the need to repeat them.  Jen said she really appreciated the flexibility at Hot Metal Bridge, where they could try all kinds of stuff and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, and it was all okay.  They were comfortable throwing things up and seeing what stuck and not feeling too bad if it didn’t.

The other interesting thing was that he said they had arrived at a place where a lot of the things they said they weren’t going to be about (having and maintaining a building, hiring staff etc.) were the things they needed to think about now.  With 250 people they could support it, but they had to start thinking again for a different perspective what it meant to be “non-traditional church” in almost the opposite way of thinking about what it meant to be church when they first started.   That said, they turned their upstairs area into lofts that were just available to people who were visiting the community and needed a place to stay, so the space is still very non-traditional in its usage.

Pittsburgh NCD Tour - The Open Door

Met with BJ from The Open Door.  It's a church of about 90 people which rents space in an old church building that is a combined use space: there's also a pottery studio, an acupuncture/yoga studio, a consulting firm, and 3 other tenants.  They're really focused on spiritual practice and discernment individually, as a church, and for their community.  They take seriously the idea that the individual's spiritual health will directly affect the spiritual health of the church which will directly affect the spiritual health of the community.  They make it a point to engage their community in dialog (sometimes doing listening meetings, sometimes doing prayer walks and hanging out in local establishments, sometimes just going door to door and asking people what they thought of the neighborhood they lived in and what it needed).  They take seriously the idea of the church outside the walls and have started an urban garden in a poorer neighborhood.  They also try to be very permission giving and also recognize that most of their "programs" (bible studies, small groups, etc.) are short lived - maybe 2 months.  People gather around different topics or areas of life and meet for a while and when things run out of gas, they are free to let them go and try something.  They try to partner with other Presbyterian and other churches in the neighborhood, realizing that they can't do it all.  For instance, they send their kids to one of the established Presbyterian Church's youth group and they all go to the midweek Holy Week services and Ash Wednesday services of an established Presbyterian Church.

They started as a second worship of an established church, but after they started growing, they realized that the character of the people who were coming to the second worship service (which was called the Open Door) was not at all like the character of the people so they discerned together that they should be their own church.  The space that they became a part of kind of fell into their lap.  Some people had bought an old church building and said they wanted it to be a mixed use space, but they wanted one of the tenants to be a church, and so they became that church.

BJ mentioned that he wished they hadn't started with worship as a focal point.  In particular, because they already had "their way" of doing worship from the original setting as a second service of the established church, when they moved into their own space in a different neighborhood it was much harder to adapt their worship to the community they were in.  He almost cautioned against making worship too big a part early on, because it had the potential to suck up a lot of time and energy that should be spent on missional engagement.

Pittsburgh NCD Tour - The Upper Room

I met with Mike and Chris from The Upper Room in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.  They started in 2008 right out of Presbytery and are both bi-vocational.  They received a grant and were both ordained into the NCD.  Upper Room's mission is calling, equipping and sending and their core values are multicultural, sacramental, and missional.  (Mike described a mission as "why you exist", a vision as "what will happen because you exist", and a core values as "how will you get there.")  They serve a lot of students and focus on international students in particular.  Their mission is done formally in some ways: they partner with an organization that helps welcome international students and they partner with an organization that helps people bring houses up to code, but they put more emphasis on mission as part of the culture of the church and part of the lives of the people, rather than a "church event."  When people moved away from the church, they would commission them to be missionaries wherever they were going.  In church, Chris talked about the people he encountered in his other job (a barista at local cafe) and how he was trying to be a presence for Christ in that environment.

They started first by prayer walking the different neighborhoods of Pittsburgh and finding a neighborhood that they really felt needed the kind of mission that they were passionate about.  They gathered a core team of some people who had been praying for their discernment and friends of friends into Chris' living room to pray.  They started on Sunday nights (and eventually moved to Sunday morning because of all the grad students who wanted to study on Sunday nights) and began adding elements of worship into their meetings - communion, preaching, etc.  Eventually that become Upper Room.

I think the biggest take away for me in my meeting with Mike and Chris was a reassurance that this stuff is actually possible.  Their story and the story of Upper Room isn't remarkably different from the path that I've begun to journey and some of the similarities (starting in the living room) gave me a lot of reassurance.  I do know that I need to be praying more and in particular, be more intentional about praying for the people I encounter and for God to lead me/us with some more structure.  I sort of have this idea that a voice will boom from the heavens and I'll know what I'm supposed to do, but perhaps I need to be listening for a still, small voice.

Keep Upper Room in your prayers as it's on the verge of outgrowing the space it's in and as they are one of the stops on the General Assembly tour of NCD's in Pittsburgh.

Unconvincing arguments for and against homosexual marriage and/or ordination

Homosexuality and its place in civil and religious life has been beat to death and I don't feel like I have any special insight to offer that hasn't been offered before.  However, as I continue to hear the debate, either in the context of same sex marriage or ordination of homosexuals, I have encountered a number of arguments which I find wholly unconvincing.  These points are cited at times as if they are the only necessary data point to draw a conclusion and the conclusion that follows is obvious and unassailable.  However, I find the points lacking in many respects.

I will attempt to portray the points fairly and avoid creating straw men, but I admit that the reason these points are listed here is that I think they are much more complex and subtle than they are often presented to be.  I do not intend to take either side in this post, but simply want to push back against some points from each side that I think are oversimplifications.

Unconvincing points from the "left":

1) Homosexuality is natural.  Other animals engage in homosexual behavior and that homosexual desire is not chosen but is something a person is born with.  The assumption is then that God created it and it must therefore be good.  

Counter point:  There are lots of things that are natural and not chosen but innate and that are exhibited in the animal kingdom but are decidedly bad and we would hesitate to say God created them.  When someone does wrong to me, I have the desire to do wrong to them, but society, morals, faith, and a whole host of other forces say that it's not okay to act on that desire.

2) This is like the civil rights movement and in 50 years everyone will look back and think those who opposed gay rights were all ignorant bigots.  Among younger generations, there is overwhelming support for gay rights and as those younger generations grow up, their views will be the social norm.

Counter point: So?  Seriously though, comparing gay rights and civil rights is helpful to a certain point, but there are distinct differences in the issues at hand (i.e. one is a behavior, one is not).  More importantly, I hope nobody changes their position on an important issue because of what people 50 years from now will think of them.  I have a number of views which younger generations probably think are outdated, misguided, and ignorant but I still think are right.  Should I change them just because 50 years from now, people will think I'm ignorant?

3) The reason the church is dying is because we don't support gay rights.

Counter point: There are many reasons the church is dying, but this is not one of them.  There are growing churches in all different parts of the country that unequivocally do not support gay rights and still bring people to Christ.

Unconvincing points from the "right":

1) The bible says it's an abomination.  Leviticus, etc. etc.

Counter point: The bible says a lot of things.  It tells us to stone people.  It tells us not to eat pork.  It tells women not to go to church with braided hair.  Taking passages and especially commandments out of their historical context or even out of the context within scripture is troublesome.  Now don't get me wrong; I'm not saying we can ignore what the bible says, nor am I saying that we can just hand wave away parts of the bible we don't like.  My point is that everyone interprets the bible when they read it.  Even the most staunch literalist is not going around stoning adulterers because it's a) against the law b) clearly against Christ's broader teaching.  We interpret the bible because it was written thousands of years ago, thousands of miles away and things might not all apply exactly the same way now as they did back then.  That's not to say "the bible says so" isn't a valid argument, just that it isn't the be all and end all of arguments.  There is room for interpretation in every passage.

As a side note, I still don't understand from a strictly biblical perspective, why we're okay without blanket rules about ordaining divorcees, adulterers, addicts, and even murderers, but we need a blanket rule about ordaining homosexuals.

2) "Next they'll want to marry animals."

Counterpoint: One of two things is going on in this argument.  Either it's comparing living, thinking, feeling, loving human beings to animals, in which case it doesn't deserve any consideration at all or, much like the "50 years from now" argument from the "left," it's dealing with something that isn't a reality, may never be a reality, and probably shouldn't influence us anyway.  If we think it's wrong for human beings to marry animals, what does that have to do with human beings of the same gender marrying each other.  We should treat the issue on its own merit, not on some imagined, possible extension of it that may or may not occur 50 years from now and may or may not have anything to do with the current issue at hand.

3) The founding fathers <or other historical figures> believed <whatever>

Counterpoint: This is one that has always puzzled me a little bit, even in politics, but especially in moral and religious realms.  I would hope that in the last 200+ years we've learned something which might make us better informed than our founding fathers.  Even setting aside the discussion of the religiosity of the founding fathers (and Jefferson in particular), what does their understanding of marriage 200+ years ago have to do with us today?  Isn't the whole point of the system of government that they created that it can change to adapt to the times and to the will of the people, rather than being set in stone once and for all?

4) The reason the church is dying is because we don't condemn homosexuality and we've lost sight of God.

Counter point: There are many reasons the church is dying, but this is not one of them.  There are growing churches in all different parts of the country that unequivocally support gay rights and still bring people to Christ.

Conclusion

This question is not a "one liner."  There is no simple argument which opens and shuts the case in one sentence.  It's tempting to assume that people who disagree with us are not "really" Christian or are ignorant, brainwashed, unfaithful, or "don't really believe in God."  That last one in particular strikes me as the last resort of arrogance.  Is it really not possible that someone else with a whole life of different experiences and teachings could love God and come to a different conclusion?  Have we really never changed our mind or position about anything and felt like we were faithful through the process?

This question is complex, subtle, important, and difficult.  Even tried and true patterns of compromise like "Agree to disagree" and "love the sinner, hate the sin" don't really work when passions are so high.  For a while I took the position "Why are we spending so much time and money arguing about this when there are much more important issues to deal with?" but even that position makes an assumption about the relative importance of different issues.  There are definitely faithful Christians on both sides for whom this issue is THE top priority in the ongoing faithfulness of the church.

I wish I had something more useful to say about what we should do instead of just refuting a bunch of points and then not adding anything positive to the conversation, but I don't.  I guess my approach at this point is to speak my voice and vote my conscience when given the opportunity, but generally not to go looking for a fight.  I fully understand that for some, this is a matter of justice and for others it is a matter of purity and both require more urgency than I have expressed.  I hope that whatever your position and whatever your level of urgency, you can see my approach as a faithful one rooted in my love of God and my desire to love my neighbor as myself and I hope that I can see your position in the same light.

Evangelism: Putting the "Good" back in "Good News"

Evangelism has become a dirty word in a lot of circles.  I just spent 3 days at the Church Planters Academy in Minneapolis and none of the presenters used the word "evangelism."  That's not to say that the church plants or the post-modern/emergent/missional church doesn't do evangelism, but we don't like to talk about it much.

Evangelism in Greek literally means, "preaching the good news."  (Angel in Greek simply means messenger or one who is sent).  James Choung, author of "True Story," (from which I stole a lot of the ideas in this post) in his presentation at the Big Tent Conference last year started by saying that we are naturally wired to share things that we think are good news.  When we see a great movie, the first thing we want to do is run out and tell everyone how great it is.  And yet, when it comes to the best news in all creation, we hesitate to share.  He claims that this is the case becausewe don't think it will be perceived as good news by people we share it with.

I think there are a number of reasons for this, but at the top of the list is the abusive, manipulative, and often just downright mean ways that people have claimed to be sharing "good news," all the while making it (and any sign of them) very bad news.  I think the majority of Christians know the gospel is good news, but don't know how to articulate the gospel in clear way that makes it good.

While in Minneapolis, I got into a conversation over dinner with some other church planters about evangelism and a guy asked me, "So then do you think there is truth outside of Jesus?"  I hesitated for a moment (and actually never got to answer his question, since he got a phone call) but I thought about that question and here's my answer:

The truth-iness of Jesus Christ is not relevant to the goodness of Jesus Christ.  I don't think "truth" is the right question for me or for most of the people who are far away from God.  I've never practiced any other religion so I can't speak to the truth of other religions compared with the truth of Jesus Christ.  (Notice the particularly post-modern move of allowing behavior and experience to define truth rather than vice-versa.)



However, as an adult convert to Christianity, I have a very clear understanding of the goodness of the gospel and, for me, it basically involves three moves:

a) The world is full of suffering on the global and individual levels.
The global level of suffering is hard to argue.  Pick up a newspaper and you will see suffering.  The individual level of suffering is a little bit less public, but no less real.  My life was full of shame, guilt, and pain and I really didn't like what I saw when I looked in the mirror.  I felt inadequate, alone, afraid, and hopeless.

b) The God of the bible is good.
In spite of things like the problem of suffering and the wraths in the Old Testament, the overwhelming message of Jesus Christ is grace and love, as well as justice and empowerment.  (For many post-moderns, this move may actually come third.)

c) A life connected to God's goodness alleviates individual and global suffering.
As I struggle to turn my life more and more towards God, I continue to find that I have a much greater ability to live in a way that I can be at peace.  I like what I see in the mirror.  The more connected I become to God, the more I am able to be at peace with my own faults, the faults of other people, and the faults of the world AND the more able I am to change my faults and the faults of the world.  (The faults of other people are pretty much between them and God).

So that's the good news to me and that's the good news that I have committed my life to sharing.  Whether it's true, exclusively true, kind of true, or possibly even not true (another post for another time), I have found goodness in Jesus Christ and when I think that there are still people who feel inadequate, alone, afraid, and hopeless, then I feel ever more motivated to share the goodness that I have found in Jesus Christ.

So how about you?  What about the gospel is good news (or bad news) to you?

(Maybe I'll make this into a series and post about ways to share that goodness, but I think articulating the goodness itself is probably a good start.  Plus, nobody wants to read 8 pages.)

Church Planters Academy Diary - Day 3

Session 0.5 Q&A with Tim and Tim

This was a continuation from the session last night.  We didn’t get to do Q&A with Tim and Tim because of time, so we picked it up again this morning.

The Tims talked more about distribution of leadership and clarified the I and We facets of leadership.  The fact is, just like Jesus had, there are always the 3, the 12, the 70 and the crowd.  Different circles of people with different levels of buy in, commitments, and levels of experience with the church plant.  It’s also okay to NOT do thing which are legitimate and good because they aren’t within the resource pool of the plant or within the ideology or vision of the church.  There are a lot of things that just aren’t at the right time.  (Many people come to a new church plant because all the other churches in town say no and they come to you hoping you’ll say yes.)

Tim Keel also said one of the most important functions of a leader is to name the things that you see going on in your community.  If something is not feeling right, if people seem tired, if something seems like it's running out of gas, if there’s a lot of energy in a particular direction, whatever…

Session 1 – Structures and Organization

Mike Stavlund – Common Table, Washington DC

Bruce Reyes-Chow – Mission Bay Community Church, San Francisco, CA (Former moderator of PCUSA)

Mike made an analogy to Walking Dead which I didn’t quite get.  The conclusion from the analogy was: “Beware of working for the people of the church instead of working with the people of the church.”  He also proposed a similar question: “Think about what will happen if you succeed?  What if you survive?  What kind of person will you become in the process?  What kind of community will you build in the process.”  He highly encouraged leaving gaps in the leadership structure of the church for other people to fill in.  Not a role where you tell them what to do, but a space for them to be creative and express their own gifts within a task.  Build a church that you love, not a church that only loves you for what you do for it.

Bruce did a powerpoint presentation on structures (slideshare.com/breyeschow).  He prefaced by saying he was working in and through the PCUSA and had had a positive experience of the mainline.  He just knew that there were other niches that the PCUSA wasn’t reaching, so he dreamed up a church that might reach some of those people.

Bruce first talked about why structures are often feared – they are most often not built for adaptability or flexibility.  They don’t inspire innovation.  The have been used to control and marginalize people.  Often times they codify one learning from one place and one time as if it will be applicable forever and ever.  He also pointed out that when we as pastors put things into a structure, we are necessarily giving away our power over them which requires trust.

He also pointed out that as people gather, some structure will take root.  We can be intentional about creating a structure which fosters innovation or we can just let the structure solidify on its own however it’s going to.

He talked about how reflective structures (structures which evaluate themselves regularly) avoid institutional marginalization and how healthy structures equip communities to manage polarities and maintain cultural continuity.  (I wrote that in my notes, but now I have no idea what it means.  I think basically he was saying healthy structures that allow adaptivity can give safe space for conflict, disagreement, and different visions, while also binding people together instead of being a wedge or a weapon that divides them.)

He advocated “institutional fluidity” (he chuckled at the almost oxymoronic quality of that phrase).

There are specific boundaries and assets – it’s not a free-for-all.  It embodies visions and culture, unleashes creativity and innovation, and it can mediate the ebb and flow of life.  Basically, a good structure is a healthy thing that creates stability in a good way.

A good structure can incarnate the ideals and values of the ministry.  It can administer and support the things about the church that are meaningful and it can help guide what are the things about the church which are meaningful.  It can nurture the church’s pastoral, prophetic, priestly, and poetic expressions, and it can be an individual person’s way of showing commitment to a church plant.

Bruce advocated using flexibility in structure like having 3 year terms for members of session but with permission to leave.  Mission Bay used face to face contact for the real life giving things – meaningful study, relationship building, organizational thinking and then used technology and online tools for business – votes, nuts and bolts decisions

They built in evaluation cycles for everything so that after 6 months, they’d take a look at a thing and decide if they still wanted to do it or if it had run its course.

Session 2 – Navigating the phases of a church plant

Panel

Doug identified (with some help) the following phases of a church plant:

1)      The church in your brain

2)      The initial core team meetings

3)      The first year before the crisis of change (honeymoon)

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4)      The traditions and history of the church being to compete with the present (That’s the way we’ve always done it)

There was also special mention of the 7 year itch in which everything seems to get deconstructed and a lot of things fall apart.  Bob’s advice was to endure, endure, endure.

I guess there’s a common issue of the core team leaving after 3 years?  Maybe from moving, boredom, burnout?  Tim Keel said that organizations are far more resilient than we give them credit for.  New people will take ownership and it doesn’t always have to be about you.

He said he went from a “trust me” phase where he was trying to build credibility with his core team and church participants to a “how can I help phase?” when people started taking the initiative and he just needed to serve as resource or consultant.

Doug asked about what the rites of passage in the life of church were to mark transitions and whether they were explicitly celebrated or marked.

Tim said sometimes you see them coming, sometimes you get caught flat footed, and sometimes you only see them in retrospect.  Any way the transitions happen, it’s important to name them, sit with them, experience them and celebrate or lament them.  Worship experiences are a great way to allow such moments to “be.”

Often the pastor has to go through a personal transition from approaching things through a “how do I solve this?” lens to a “What is God doing in this?” lens.

Doug asked “How do you balance looking back to reflect with looking forward to innovate?”  Some of the planters mentioned different ways they celebrated anniversaries, looking back at numbers and trends.  The conversation started veering towards numbers in general and the notion of “what you count is what you’ll get.”  Tim said if he counted anything, it was the number of people who were in discipleship relationships (mentor/mentee).

The conversation turned to salary of pastor and there were a couple of different models for paying the pastor.  I think the common thread was that no matter what you’re being paid, it has to make sense within the context of your church.  If you’re a small plant, don’t expect to get paid like a mega church pastor.  Another common thread was to look forward regarding salary.  If you take a small or no salary, what will happen when you leave?  Will anyone be willing to lead the church?  Will it need someone paid to lead it?

Session 3

Doug talked about some future opportunities for church planters.  He’s planning to do annual or more than annual events for church planters.  The Church Planters Academy sessions were all recorded and Doug will distill the knowledge and put it in book form.  Coaching will also be available from the presenters on an ongoing basis for approx. $3000 a year.  I’m hoping to find or raise the money, as I think that would be helpful for me.

Conclusions

Overall I got a lot out of the conference.  It was helpful to see a lot of models, to know that there are a lot of people trying this stuff, and to get some good practical and abstract ideas about church planting.  I’m not sure I related *that* much to a lot of the models that were being examined.  In particular, I have a very positive experience of the traditional, institutional mainline and I’m not that interested in creating something for people to come to.  One of the themes of the presenters was “I wanted to create a church that I would want to go to” but someone (Justin) asked/commented at one point “I don’t want to create a church that I want to go to.  I want to create a church that people far away from God would go to.“ My heart is in creating something where people far away from God might experience God or maybe even creating something where people close to God can go to be filled by the Spirit so they can reach out to people far away from God.  I still find it odd that none of the presenters mentioned the word evangelism.

Church Planters Diary Day 2

Session 1

Rachel Swan and Ann Kim – Pizzeria Lola

Rachel and Ann (in particular) talked about how they started a pizzeria with no experience in the restaurant business.  Ann said they threw caution to the wind financially and put all their life savings plus maxed out their credit cards because they couldn’t find any investors to give them capital.  Their staff is very much a community and every day before work they check in (“preshift huddle”) with each other about their personal lives for 15 minutes.  Ann said the key to making the staff a community was to make them feel valued.  Not that you’ll listen to or do everything they say, but they you’ll hear them.  She said the people were way more important than the building or the stuff and it took time to create a team which worked.  They had to fire people (amicably) whose strengths did not match the vision or expectations of the pizzeria.

Take away idea: “You have to listen to your gut.  The DNA of the organization is in you.  Let it guide you.”

Session 2

Context is Everything

Russel Rathbun & Debbie Blue – House of Mercy St. Paul

Russel and Debbie started a church basically by becoming a part of the St. Paul music scene.  They invited (and somehow got) famous musicians to come play at some of their events and then started doing a Saturday Night / Sunday morning thing where local bands would play at their church on Saturday Night and then during the Sunday morning worship gathering the next day.  They publicized their church the way local artists would publicize a gallery opening or a band would publicize a gig they were playing (send out postcards to friends).  They publically engaged the artists at artists events.  For example, bringing blank canvases to art festivals and just letting people paint on them.  Russel had a feeling that the “post-modern” church was plateauing and whatever was next would be different.  He proposed an idea of a church with an expiration date – what if at the founding of a church, you said in 5 years we hope to plant some new Christian communities and then we’ll be done.  The positives would be it would give permission for the thing to run its course and people wouldn’t feel like they had to hang on to something just for the sake or longevity or survival.  Paul (the apostle) planted a lot of churches and they don’t all exist and none of them look like what they did back then.  I agree with the idea of constant evaluation and the freedom to let a thing go when it’s run its course, but I hesitate to set the expiration date so early in the process.  I would maybe suggest doing annual mission reviews that included the question “Does God still want us to be a ‘thing’?” So that the Holy Spirit can tell us when it’s time to let go, rather than just semi-arbitrarily deciding at the start.

Session 3 – The First Two Years

This was a panel of presenters and other church planters (some who were attendees of the conference) who just got up and gave one liners about mistakes they made and advice for the first two years.  I’m basically just going to give the list:

-When you say you’re going to pray for someone, pray for them.

-If you plant a church, you may get disciples.  If you make disciples, you will get a church.

-Get to know Jesus more, treat yourself well, cook for your people.

-Do things that give you life and energy.

-Just because you do something that works once, doesn’t mean you have to do it again.

-Try not to take yourself too seriously.

-Recognize times when you’re intentionally creating chaos so you can ride in on a white horse to save everybody.

-Do not neglect your own spiritual care.

-Early on, I didn’t want it to be “the Tim show” so I used the pronoun “we” too early.  There wasn’t a “we” yet so language like “we believe…” and “we do…” made people think there was a “we” they weren’t a part of.  For the first few years, it was really about what I was doing and whether people wanted to join in that.

-If you can’t be the church without money, you aren’t going to be the church with money.

-Divorce the sustainability conversation from the faithfulness conversation.  And have both of them.

-Don’t wait too long to start good financial practices (accountability, budgeting etc).

-Have friends who aren’t a part of the church.

-“People leave.”  It’s not about you.

-Instead of thinking about who to reach, think about who you want to be led by and who you want to learn from.

-Stay crazy.

-Approval seeking is toxic and hopeless.  Be yourself and be comfortable.

-You won’t plant a church with the people you think you’re going to plant with.  There’s no one you need in your church plant except Jesus.

-Don’t believe what the people tell you when they say they’ll show up or call or whatever and don’t take it personally when they don’t.

-Don’t pick people for your team because you want to help them. (Codependency)

Session 4 – “I don’t get what you’re about”

Don and Pam Heatley Skyped in from New York (Vision).  The connection was a bit iffy so the conversation wasn’t easy to understand.  Basically what I got from the conversation was – People may not understand what you’re doing or why you’re doing it.  Sometimes it helps to put it on paper, but more for yourself than anyone else.  Have a clear understanding of why you’re doing it, what you hope to accomplish, who you hope to reach, what you hope to reach them with, and then don’t worry if anyone else gets it.

Bob Hyatt – Evergreen Community, Portland, OR

Bob talked more about the question “What to do with what other people think about my ministry?”

He said the biggest pressure was for him to understand himself.

Two types of people want to plant churches – the narcissist and the codependent.  i.e. The need to succeed and the need to please.  He said narcissism is often confused with vision and leadership charisma.  It’s revealed as narcissism by the long trail of bodies.  Narcissists enjoy conflict to demonstrate how much better they are than other people.  Codependents base their happiness on how happy other people are with them.  They avoid conflict.  Bob suggested that the growth of the codependent shouldn’t be to care less about what other people think, but to know more and be convicted more by what I think.  He also cautioned against preaching the unconditional love of God and then leading as if God’s love depended on our success or accomplishment.  He said differentiation is the ability to remain connected in significant relationship to people, while not allowing our behaviors or actions to be determined by them.  He said that Sabbath from a Christian perspective is the resting of my soul in the finished work of Jesus.

Maggie Mraz – Bull City Vineyard, Durham, NC

Maggie had a really interesting manifesto about her relationship with God and her place as a child of God, but I didn’t get any good notes from it.  Here’s what I have:

“When someone doesn’t get you, you feel rejected.”  We have got to care more about what God thinks than what people think.  Guard the time you have with God.  God knows what he’s doing.

Session 5 – Vision casting and leadership

Tim Keel – Jacob’s Well

Leadership is about seeing possibility and then committing whole heartedly to the path that opens up towards that possibility.  Jesus said, “Behold!  The kingdom of God is at hand!”  He pointed to a future and then through his commitment, helped bring that future into the present.  The biggest problem of leaders is a crisis of imagination i.e. not being able to see beyond the status quo.  Tim talked about the four modes of engagement as a leader:

1)      Knowing – perceiving data

2)      Being – Presence

3)      Doing – Practices

4)      Relating – Postures

He said we traditionally understand leadership as knowing and doing, but it’s really 90% about being and relating.

Tim Conder – Emmaus Way

He said that early on he just had to tell people what the values of the new church were going to be and people could either come along and follow or not.  He didn’t open the values of the church to a discussion.  The values were: missionality, hospitality, egalitarian-ism (all staff were bivocational).

Then once he got some buy in to those core values, then he had to work on giving things away.  He had to let other people become the social hub of the church or the mission hub of the church.  He said, “Look at who you are as a person and figure out how to do thing within your temperament.  Look for other people to do the things that aren’t in your temperament.”

At the end of the day, I still had two questions lingering:

1)      I would guess well over half of the church models presented have music and art as a focal point in the church.  Does this have to be the case?  I know the answer is no, but I’d sure like to see that fleshed out more.

2)      (And my wife reminded me that I have a chip on my shoulder about the “emergent church” so take this with a grain of salt)  Why aren’t we talking about evangelism?  Nobody’s even used the word.  There’s a lot of ground work that has to go on before you can even invite someone to check out a church or Christian community or even a “missional happening” or whatever.  How do we engage people who are far away from God in a way that would make them want to be a part of a Christian community or even understand what a Christian community is for or about, long before we’re ready to invite them to check it out?

Church Planters Academy Dairy – Day 1

We started the day by finishing these three sentences in small groups:

I come from a people who…

I come from a place where…

I bring with me…

Session 1 – Creating Something from Nothing

Maggie Mraz – Bull City Vineyard (Durham, NC)

Nanette Sawyer – Grace Commons PCUSA, (Chicago, IL)

Nadia Bolz-Weber – House for all Sinners and Saints ELCA (?)

This session had a lot of good stories of success, but not too much guidance on what the core values or principles guiding that success were.  I know that transplanting ideas directly to a different context wouldn’t work, but I assume certain principles and values could work in a lot of different contexts.  A couple of common points to highlight: The power of relationships.  All three churches were heavily built around what the community was interested in and what the church might do to be a positive force to people in the community.  All three churches had very distributed leadership.  Nadia said “We are anti-excellence, pro-participation.”  In other words, we’d rather have people feel free to participate poorly than feel like only polished and practiced people can do so.  In a lot of cases, the leadership just let people have ideas and run with them without participating in whatever they were doing.  Very permission giving.

Session 2 Part I - ???

Mike Toy – Netscape employee #7

I’m not really sure what the point of this session was.  It was interesting to hear, but really focused on Mike’s story of different startups and how Netscape was incredibly successful by certain metrics but kind of toxic (100 hour work weeks for months at a time) in a lot of other aspects.

Seesion 2 Part II – Why failure is not an option, it’s a necessity.

Mike Stavlund, Rich McMullen, Mark Scandrette

This session was about failure(!).  The presenters looked at it from a couple of different angles.

1)      Failure from an individual ministry perspective – sometimes you just have to let a program or event go, because it’s run its course.  Either it’s not serving its purpose anymore or its purpose is no longer where the church is headed.  No matter how much you like it, sometimes some things just don’t work and that’s okay.  Using a language of “experiment” and “prototype” rather than “program” will help build a culture where it’s okay to try things that don’t work.

2)      Failure from a community standpoint – we heard a couple of stories of church plants that didn’t get off the ground.  Sometimes that happens too.  Maybe the measure of a “church” is in impact instead of longevity.  We all know of churches that can survive but aren’t making an impact.  But my question which I never really got to ask: how do we know we’re not using ‘impact’ as a cop out for not doing hard things.  Like we could all sit around a camp fire and sing Kum-ba-yah and think we’re having this great impact, but if nobody is being transformed by Christ, then nobody will come, and then we’ll die.

3)      Failure from a personal standpoint – the take home here was “It’s not about you.”  The success and failure of the church are not about your ability as a human being or your worth as a child of God.  It’s easy to go into an emergent/mission church plant with a “I’m going to show all those old people” chip on your shoulder or it’s easy to throw yourself into the church plant because your ego really *needs* (word choice intentional) it to succeed, but none of these are healthy patterns.  Sure, God can use them, but they’re not healthy.  The fact is that God’s goodness and our goodness are not contingent on anything at all and especially not on the success or failure of a church plant.  And the sooner we can acknowledge and embrace that and let God use us for whatever he wants and trust that when we give our best, the rest is completely in his control, the more likely we are to “succeed” (however you want to define it) anyway.

My big conclusions of the day was: church planting is really, really hard.  It will test and stretch your faith and commitment. God will show up but not always in the way you want and not always with the news you want. The trust to hold your plans below God's plans is key.

Joe Paterno and the Good Samaritan

Just to create some content and test some features:
Here's a sermon I preached last fall.

Joe Paterno and the Good Samaritan

( I'm going to assume you're somewhat familiar with the situation at Penn State this week).

Y'all have probably inferred that I am a big Penn State fan and in particular a big Joe Paterno fan.  Lindsay went to Penn State and I started rooting for the Nittany Lions when we started dating in seminary.

I first off want to say that the most important people for us to consider are the victims.  The young boys, now young men, who were scarred and irreparably damaged by the horrible act perpetrated against them.  We should always keep them and all victims of abuse in our prayers.  Especially since statistically 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys is abused before the age of 18, that mens that when we pray for abuse victims we are praying for our families, co-workers, baby sitters, police officers, politicians, friends, pastors, elders, teachers and members of our churches.

Joe Paterno could have and should have done more.  I understand the argument that he was brought up in a time when things like this were handled behind closed doors.  I understand the argument that he was taking the word of a 22 year old graduate assistant who wasn't specific against a friend and colleague whom he had trusted and worked with for decades.  He could have and should have done more.

When we think of the story of the Good Samaritan, we often contrast the roles of the Levite and priest with the Samaritan.  We say that the Samaritan was the neighbor because he helped the victim instead of ignoring the victim and we conclude that we should be like the Samaritan and not like the Levite or the priest.  More often than not, we are the Levite and the priest walking by saying, "At least I'm not the thief."  We demonize others so that we don't have to face our own shortcomings or take responsibility for our inaction.  We point at Paterno and Spanier (the University President) and Curley (the athletic director) because we don't want to face the fact that we are not all that different.  We demonize them because we don't want to admit that we all ignore sin, that we all look the other way, that we all don't protect the innocent and we all turn a blind eye.

This morning there were a group of young men smoking pot on our basketball court at church.  It smelled like it, I could see it, they were rolling it.  I went out and said, "I don't know what you're smoking; I don't care what you're smoking; you can't smoke anything on this property."  I turned a blind eye.  I knew what they were smoking, but I didn't call them on it.  I was a Levite walking by saying "At least I'm not the thief."

How often do we turn a blind eye to the famine and AIDS epidemic in Africa?  How often do we turn a blind eye to the sex slave trade in the United States (the center of the sex slave trade in North America is Kansas City.  Bet you didn't know that.)?  How often do we turn a blind eye to the poor, the addicted, the depressed?  How often do we purposely avoid Lancaster Avenue because it's "the bad part of the town?"  We are all Levites and priests walking by saying, "At least I'm not the thief."

The truth with sexual abuse is that we all turn a blind eye.  Given how prevalent and how rampant it is, especially in churches (almost every church I know of has had some history of sexual abuse in its past), it's incredible how rarely it comes up when we talk about the history of the church.  We can talk about the pastor who stole money, who ran away with the Sunday School teacher, or who showed up to the pulpit drunk, but we, as a society, have gotten into the habit of ignoring sexual abuse, burying it, and keeping it quiet.  How many different people in this particular story had a chance to say something?  The multiple levels of the administration at the university and athletic department, people from the charity, victims, parents, other kids.  We demonize because we don't want to admit that it takes a whole town of people keeping quiet and we are part of that town.  In truth, if a scared 22 year old kid came to us and made a vague reference that our friend of decades was doing something inappropriate with a kid in the shower, we would probably kick it up the chain of command so as to not have to deal with it.  We all keep secrets, we all turn a blind eye, we all fail the innocent...and none of us want to admit it.  We are the Levites walking by saying, "At least I'm not the thief."  We all can and should do more.

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Whenever the topic of sexual abuse, especially against minors, comes up, I am always surprised by the intense anger, hatred, and vitriol spouted against abusers and anyone tangentially associated.  Now don't get me wrong, I have no tolerance for those in power taking advantage of people out of power to their harm.  It is inexcusable, unthinkable, and despicable.  Sandusky, should the allegations be true, should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

However, when I read things like "I hope there's a special circle of hell reserved for these people" published by writers in a national magazine (ESPN.com in this case) I can't believe my eyes.  Is this really how Jesus taught us or showed us how to treat one another?  When Jesus said, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Mat 5:44) is this what he meant?  When Jesus said, "Forgive them father, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34) is this the example he was setting?  That we would rather see someone eternally tortured than see them redeemed by Jesus Christ?

I think we demonize and dehumanize him, saying he is pure evil because we don't want to believe that good people could do such terrible things.  We don't want to believe that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are abused.  We don't want to believe that our friends, and neighbors, and co-workers and even our children are victims of abuse and in many cases perpetrators of sexual impropriety (ranging from pornography use to assualt to prostitution to pedophelia) (and yes, children are often perpetrators).  It's much easier to compartmentalize and imagine that "If we could only lock up all the people who do this or turn a blind eye to this..." than it is to face the reality that sexual impropriety is a systematic problem that pervades every aspect of society.

I think the reason why this is the case is because of the secrecy that surrounds sexual abuse.  SO many of us have been hurt by sexual abuse (as a victim, as a friend of a victim, or even as a perpetrator) but have not found a healthy way to come to terms with it.  The only thing we know how to do is to be angry.  And we bottle that anger up inside for years and decades so that when we finally get a chance to express any feelings on the subject at all (like when it's in the public eye) we take all the anger that we've built up over decades and unleash on the nearest target, in this case Sandusky.  We demonize, dehumanize, and vilify him because he is the stand in for the years of un-dealt with pain, hurt, shame, and anger that we've been carrying around.  We've turned a blind eye to our own pain and the only way we know how to deal with it is to project it onto other situations.  We have never figured out a way to deal with it in a way that brings healing, closure, reconciliation, and ultimately redemption and so the next generation of victims is even more afraid of disclosing what happened, fearing they might be somehow implicated and the next generation of perpetrators is even more afraid of seeking help, fearing our backlash.

In truth, in the story of the Good Samaritan, we are not Levites.  We are not the Good Samaritan.  We are not even the thieves.  In the story of the Good Samaritan, we are the man on the side of the road.  We have been hurt.  We have been hurt by people who should have been there but weren't.  We have been hurt by people we trusted but violated our trust.  We have been hurt by people who took advantage of us and people who turned a blind eye.  We have been hurt by our parents, our teachers, our peers, our pastors, our church leaders, our friends, and we have been hurt by ourselves.  We have been beaten and robbed by thieves and we have watched priests and Levites turn a blind eye.  And we wait...and wait...and wait....for someone to stop and love us.  And while we wait we grow more angry, more bitter, more hateful...and more hurt.  So who is the Good Samaritan?

Jesus.

Jesus is the one who has not turned a blind eye.  Jesus is the one who knows what it is to be beaten, to be robbed, to be mocked, to be betrayed, to be left for dead.  Jesus knows what it is to have a blind eye turned.  Jesus knows what it is to hurt.  And yet, Jesus, knowing the consequence of his actions, still stops for us.  Jesus, knowing the priests and Levites will crucify him for stopping when they would not, still comes and bandages us, sets us on his donkey, takes us to the inn, pays for our room and meal, and promises that he will return and pay for everything that we owe.  And Jesus does the same for the priest, the Levite, and yes, even the thief.

Jesus' promise of justice is not that the evil will be purged from creation.  Jesus' promise is that evil will be redeemed.  Not that the Sandusky's of the world will be punished, but that the Sandusky's of the world will be transformed.  Not that the victims of the world will be avenged, but the the victims of the world will be reconciled.  Jesus' promise is that we will one day find a place or build a place where we can share our secrets and not be shamed, judged, or condemned.  Jesus' promise is not that the thief, the priest, and Levite will be robbed and beaten, but that all four characters - the thief, the priest, the Levite and the man by the road will all be healed.