Missional

Yesterday was amazing in that four different sources and a sleepless night have reinvigorated community as a core I need to engage differently, more holistically. It started with Blue Like Jazz. Don Miller was talking about the single life and how he felt he was on the verge of going insane when he lived alone for too long. He had been living a life where he was the center, the main character of a movie, and anything that didn't fit neatly into that picture was suspect or obliterated. He was encouraged to live with other men by his pastor and talked about the process of moving from selfishness to community. It was not easy, perhaps a more formidable enemy than even drugs is the addiction of self. I found his words to be intuitive and describe much of my anxiety. My world is pretty small and I've surrendered much of it to frustration in not being married. So, life is beyond me and my emotion.

The second source was a book from an ultra-liberal Quaker named Parker Palmer. I don't know if he would see himself as ultra-liberal, but it seems to illustrate him somewhat accurately. In his book Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, he had a similar revelation as Miller. He became convinced that his world was tiny, that he was living by "oughts" imposed by others in a vacuum, and wanted to know the work he was formed to do. I'm still early in the book, but his idea of community and vocation really clicked. His definition of vocation is great, "...something I can't not do, for reasons I'm unable to explain to anyone else and don't fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling." So, vocation and community become elements of the mystery God wants to include in my life.

The third source was the gnawing sense that in loosing myself I would gain what I'm looking for. All around me are reminders of how my world is based on me. I think it could be considerably worst, but still my thoughts are almost exclusively on me. So I couldn't get to sleep and at one toss, felt compelled to pick up a book by Roxburgh and Romanuk called The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World. And in the introduction, again God was teaching me:

God is about a big purpose in and for the whole of creation. The church has been called into life to be both the means of this mission and a foretaste of where God is inviting all creation to go. Just as its Lord is a mission-shaped God, so the community of God's people exists, not for themselves but for the sake of the work. Mission is therfore not a program or project some people in the church do from time to time... the church's very nature is to be God's missionary people...

... A missional church is a community of God's people who live into the imagination that they are, by their very nature, God's missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all of creation in Jesus Christ.

This summer I had the privilege of attending a conference Alan Roxburgh led in Idaho and have been changed deeply. When you read the above missional understanding, you have to picture a determined, fit, Canadian spitting these words in intentional cadence and throwing in a few expletives because of his great passion. So, the church's work is fundamentally not self preservation, but dying to itself, to the work that mirrors God's passion for the world. Not much room for me to complain about music or format. And a compulsion to engage strongly.

The forth insight actually came earlier that morning, but I didn't catch it fully them. My pastor was talking about not being able to put church on or turn it off when he gets home at night. The phrase that caught me was, "This is who we are, not just what we do!" So, the realignment of the movie and the main character becomes essential.

None of this was particularly new. As I've gotten older, I find my propensity for selfishness to go up. I find the cycles between realizing that much of my frustration is my perspective and coming to joy to be elongated. With age comes experience in hopelessness that wasn't there before. I always wonder why I keep coming back here. When I'm at the joy side, I can't imagine going back and yet I have. Over and over again. I guess I use marriage as an indication of God's love for me and as the carrot (really mostly stick) that He holds above me to whip me into shape. It seems unattainable, a law of percentages, a game of winners and losers where no one is accountable. But, things shift if that one thing is not the source of identity (or idolatry). Things shift dramatically...

Happy after Thanksgiving

The day after Thanksgiving offers promise. So the holidays are fully upon us, ready or not. I should be able to get a lot of work done today, but don't really feel like it. In some ways I feel spent in my career. I'm relatively young so that's not a good sign. But sometimes I am jazzed. Leading an organization toward something, anything, beyond where it currently is, takes so much energy. The momentum is away from you and it takes concerted perseverance to create minor currents that start to facilitate change. You orchestrate and hope to not manipulate. You have dead weight in some staff that torques you and have to develop emotional discipline. Blood can be smelled by your staff and so there tends to be accumulations of poor behavior that can crescendo. Ironically, you're the only one who feels it because you're the lightening rod that caused it. If you don't keep your list of offenses and frustrations short, you will blow. Your message will be curtailed to everyone to, "This organization is terrible, everywhere I look is brokenness..." In most cases you're not saying a word, but it's spoken loudly.

It's not all bad. Actually, it is very, very good. I think the problem is that the fruit is so esoteric and can take years to see. Perhaps good leadership requires counter-intuitive measures because it is in the negative issues and consequences that the extent of required change becomes visible. It is often the negative issues, the outcroppings of rock in the water, that hurt the most. These outcropping are often under the water and responsible for the odd current patterns you were trying to figure out. I suspect two things happen over time with this outcropping phenomena for a good leader. First, they start to pick up where the outcroppings are by being attentive to the currents and thereby mitigate some pain in change by making wiser choices. They also realize that as the current is renegotiated these outcroppings become much more vulnerable to erosion. It can be possible to outlive even the strongest and hardest detractor if the momentum shifts and their place remains the same.

Road race afterglow

Dear Lord,

Thanks for the Road Race yesterday. Please be with the runners today and provide health after the rain and hypothermia. Please be with those who received nourishment through us. Please move mysteriously in their lives. Thank you for the ones who lingered to talk about their pain. Thank you for the ones who were too proud to take free stuff with little to no strings attached. May the intersection of your Holy Spirit's work and Case Mountain connect strongly in the peoples' lives that we crossed yesterday. Lord, we pray your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. May disciples find themselves in Jesus.


In Jesus' name, amen.

Blah

Though in a spiritual sense today was quite outstanding, personally it has sucked. The same day lived for the better part of 20 years. Do those who have what their hearts' desire feel this way? Doesn't matter, just thinking such a thought is sin. Can the clay call the potter evil? Not a positive course. Perhaps Hebrews is unpacking this phenomena when it's talking about "today" and "Sabbath rest?" For it is in this context that the power of God's word is described as piercing spirit and soul and discerning thoughts and intentions. It is active and sharp. There is no justification for our emotion; no place to stand detached from responsibility. No place to sit and get consolation because your pain just is. There's someone who is always more justified, you're always better off than many. You can never be good enough for God to move, and He always has a card to call if He chooses. Perhaps in this reality, when your chest tightens, you can't stand to see what's in the mirror, and you can taste the bile mixed with desperation, perhaps irrationally peace can be found. Grace in spite of repentance? Or do we always have to work for God's love? I'm so ticked about my circumstances that I seem quite comfortable forfeiting peace. I'm so angry that I view God as the door keeper to my happiness and He's really f-ing up the job. Oh, foolish man... while it is still called "today"...

Gay moral majority

I love the man who preached the sermon at tonight's service. He is genuine, loving, and has lived what he proclaims. He's the real deal as far as I'm concerned. But he said something that illustrates our scitzofrenia. That we need to affirm that homosexuality is wrong in all of society and yet we are compelled to only judge Christians. We preach transformation, but are most comfortable with conformance. Why do we feel so frightened by homosexuality? Just asking the question assumes I'm asserting that I'm pro-gay, but I really am asking as objectively as possible if this is one of the big rallying issues that Jesus or Paul would have spent much energy on?

In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 we are told that homosexuals will not inherit "the Kingdom." And this message is preached forcefully in hundreds or thousands of pulpits every week. But can't all of us who claim to love Jesus find acts that fit the formula of disinheritance in these verses (unrighteous - those living outside of the holiness of God, idolatry - those attributing to anything the worship and love that's supposed to go to God, thieves - those who take what is not theirs or what they haven't legitimately earned, greedy - those who lack contentment and allow consumption to drive them, etc.)?

I guess when gay marriage is put on ballets as an election strategy to get Christians to the polls, or those proclaiming to love life and having power in the Presidency, House, and Senate to initiate change find it advantageous to keep abortion laws as-is; when almost a million people are killed in genocide in a non-oil producing nation and we hear little of it or are essentially reactionless as a nation - I wonder what's happened to the Moral Majority that was just trying to help make America resemble societally the best of the Kingdom? I'm convinced more than ever that I fit much more the person of a Pharisee than the freedom of Christ. I hate this, but hope others will do a little navel-gazing as well. I'm not the only one...

1Cor. 6:9-10 ¶ Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Praise God that this passage is not the end of the story...

Mobile phone and Bono

I can't find my mobile phone. I don't know which is more disturbing: not knowing where it is or not particularly caring that I don't know how long it has been missing?

This week in Newsweek there is an article called the "Evangelical Identity Crisis." I'm definitely in the throes of it. This little quote from a Willow Creek staff member about a conversation between Bill Hybels and Bono illustrates, "...Hybels and Bono hashing over the fate of the world. Bono quoted scripture (Luke Chapter 4); the crowd wept... 'I went in there wondering if Bono was a Christian, and I came out wondering if I was.'"