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Saturday, September 18, 2010

Camping...Sorta



My boys love the idea of camping. Occasionally we’ll set up the tent behind our house -one of the benefits of living where we do is that the woods and the creek behind our house feel like being in the middle of nowhere to someone under the age of 7. Usually we’ll get a small campfire going with great plans to make smores, roast hotdogs and have untold adventures.

Typically by the time a couple marshmallows are toasted the boys have lost interest in the fire. They are in a rush to get in the tent, where I’ll tell them a couple stories...and then they lose interest in the tent.

Then we end up going back in the house to sleep in our own beds...

I had high hopes of going camping with the boys several times this summer: Conner and I have camped at Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose before and I thought Micah could join us. I like to hike the trails at Cleburne State Park, that could be another option. My parents live on a large ranch outside of College Station - I’ve camped out there MANY times and thought it was time to take the boys out. Camping in the summer can be miserable if you aren’t geared up for it, but with no school to worry about, we wouldn’t have to cram these trips into our short weekends.

Unfortunately I spent the entire summer in Oklahoma City (kinda like camping, only instead of a tent I was in an apartment...not as nice as my tent, but slightly fewer bugs.)

I am not happy that I missed so much this summer, but it was really hot and chances are good that our trips to the woods would have been cut short by sweaty little boys missing the AC.

Now school has started, the heat is finally dipping below the hundred degree mark (it was 94 today) AND Conner has started Cub Scouts. This has greatly increased Conner and Micah’s love of the idea of camping. So, this weekend was going to be different. We decided to camp out at Rachel’s parents’ house - they live out in the country as well. Tents, smores, hotdogs, headlamps, glowsticks, campfire...and two little boys who quickly decided that the ground wasn’t comfortable and they wanted to sleep inside. In Conner’s words, “Dad, I’m not comfortable, it feels like I’m laying down on grass.”

Yep.

So now its eleven o’clock and I’m in my in-laws’ living room writing a blog post. The tent is still set up outside with no one to keep it company - I like camping and all, but its a back yard...I’m not passing up a bed in this situation - and I can’t help but think about how my boys’ camping experience is similar to many people’s church experience.

I am often reminded of the truth in Bonhoeffer’s statement that most people like the idea of community more than the thing itself. Like Conner’s realization in the tent, it seems cool, and there is an undeniable appeal, but it isn’t always the most comfortable place to lay down.

I could have insisted that Conner and Micah stick it out in the tent (I never even considered that Josiah would make it all night). I could have used this as an opportunity to teach them that we follow through with the things we decide to do...but I had to ask myself, “Do I want them camping or do I want them to love camping with me?”

If the goal is simply for them to spend the night in a tent, then I should go wake them up and take them back out there. But that isn’t really my goal. Certainly I want them to go camping with me, and I often think about the possibilities ahead for the four of us guys. But I want them to love it as I do. I want their memories of times spent outdoors to be good ones so that after hurricane puberty hits maybe they’ll still want to do this stuff with their old man.

I have a couple friends right now who are ministers in established churches and really seem to be frustrated with this type of start and stop commitment to community, shared life and missional engagement in their churches. People say they want to be a part of something meaningful and transformative; they want to join God in the amazing work of transforming lives and all of creation...but it isn’t comfortable so they start asking to go back inside.

To those friends - and to anyone else who finds themselves in such a place - I urge you to remember that our goal is not just to get people to participate in a certain way. The goal is for our friends and fellow disciples to get a taste of the amazing life that God has prepared for those who will join in the journey of reconciling all things. Our goal is not just to reach out to our community, but to realize that joining God in this ministry helps us to tap into the essence of what it means to be truly human.

To help people on this path, sometimes we may have to be willing to let them go back inside for a while, knowing that we’ll try it again soon. Allow the memories of the campfire, the marshmallows and the stories told to sink in and call them back. Trust that this experience is captivating and doesn’t need coercion in order to take root.

I know that this is true when it comes to walking with our non-Christian friends and I suspect that it is equally true for our overly-churched friends as well.

Perhaps there comes a time when a stronger approach is needed. If the boys and I end up camping on the side of Mt. Elbert and one of them decides they’d rather be back home, packing up and leaving wouldn’t seem like a profitable decision...of course I don’t plan to be on a mountain in Colorado with a 1st grader and two preschoolers. So maybe the question regarding your church is, “Are we dealing with preschoolers, teenagers or adults?” This question runs the risk of condescension and arrogance, so beware, but it can also shed some light on how to proceed. Maybe the question becomes not only about how to get your church engaged in God’s mission, but how to help the church move out of a pre-adolescent faith.

To those who have been called to serve within established churches, serve faithfully. The grass isn’t greener on this side of the fence. Well, maybe in some ways it is, but there are snakes in the grass, so its a tradeoff! Remember, if life with God can happen anywhere, it can happen here. Even if “here” is a living room one hundred feet from the empty campsite where everyone was so excited to spend the evening.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

What Does it Look Like?

It’s been a year now since I began attempting the life of bi-vocational domestic mission work. I started off last fall as a substitute teacher in Mansfield. Then in February I began working as a roofing contractor - slowly at first, still subbing as I learned the ins and outs of this trade. This summer, after some very heavy storms, I spent five or six days a week doing the roofing thing in Oklahoma City. All throughout this season I’ve wondered what life looks like for the long term.

Working bi-vocationally came about as a necessity, with bills and groceries and whatnot, but it also makes a lot of sense theologically and strategically. The reality that we have slowly come to see is that raising long-term missionary support in the US is difficult (even in a good economy) and the work we’re trying to do is slow...and often among people with few financial resources to support us.

We could go the route that many others have and focus on gathering a large crowd of Christians who are dissatisfied with their current church. However, I did not feel called to leave my job preaching in order to seek out people from other churches. I felt called, and continue to feel called, to go out in search of those who haven’t heard that there is a new kingdom at hand. Mine is a missionary calling. More specifically, I feel called as a missionary to join God in inviting others to live as a community of missionaries under the banner of a new (old) kingdom.

So, I am a missionary with gifts in teaching and discipleship, not merely striving to impart information but to participate in a particular way of life with others. The past couple years in Burleson have been a series of ups and downs, victories and failures. I’ve witnessed miracles I couldn’t have anticipated and watched helplessly as friends decided that this way of life wasn’t for them, and walked away.

I’ve discovered that my struggles aren’t unique, even though I have often felt isolated and at times, even abandoned. There are others who even now are experiencing the same insecurities and confusion.

Today the small part of the church that I am a part of is growing - slowly by “church growth” standards, but often faster than we’re prepared to handle. There are problems and difficult life situations we don’t feel equipped to help people escape. Then there are the logistical issues for which we have no brilliant solutions.

For both practical and theological reasons, we are convinced that “church” should be a community of shared leadership under the reign of God; people on mission together sharing life and the responsibilities of ministry. But what does all that look like?

The reality is that people look for a point person. The slaves in Egypt needed a Moses, the Israelites wanted a king, the disciples followed the man Jesus, the early church looked to the apostles, then later to bishops and elders. We aren’t advocating a leaderless church (and please note that we are not discounting the role of Christ as our head, however, God has always chosen to work through human leaders). We ARE advocating a church that recognizes that we were neither created nor called to a life of passive consumption; deferring the call to make disciples and proclaim the new life to a few chosen “professionals.”

We believe that when God’s people take seriously the call to make disciples, the church will spread through neighborhoods, coffee shops and work places. The church should be at the forefront in standing against injustice and oppression, declaring the hope of life in the face of death’s despair.

The difficulty we face is relearning what it means to be this kind of community. Those of us who grew up in churches have only seen one primary model - that of the professional minister. Now, to be sure, growing up in rural Texas I was acquainted with many congregations who had part-time or volunteer ministers. With no disrespect to those wonderful people, I did not see many of them joined together in a meaningful ministry of transformation. Some of those small town churches were filled with people who’d known each other their whole lives, and unknown and “fringe” members in their little country churches were rare...because strangers in their little country towns were rare. If you were born in the church you were part of the church, if not...

But I also know that often in those congregations, members had little to no contact with each other between services. There were no attempts at service, outreach or ministry to their community. There was little, if any, emphasis on evangelism - even that done by “ministers.” The life of those churches was a couple official meetings each week, and whatever friendships already existed between members.

This isn’t to disparage those congregations, most of them were filled with very good people, doing the best they could. However, the model of the rural church doesn’t seem to offer much help to our current situation. The reality remains however, that if I (and Chris) are working full time jobs and raising families, we simply will not have the time to fill the same rolls that we did when church planting was our sole vocation. We are, in the sense of finances, part-time or volunteer ministers.

When we initially invited Christ Journey to enter into a more intentional shared leadership we witnessed a mass exodus of folks who felt that other, more established ministries would be more beneficial to their families. To quote a relatively unknown person engaged in this same struggle in WWII Germany, “It is not that we who stayed are good, and the others bad...It is just that they saw everything as an experiment, and we know it is a calling.”

As the school year has begun, Chris is now engaged in his first year as a teacher and I am still struggling to string together sufficient pay checks. I am still willing to use my gifts for our community and I’m committed to connecting with unbelievers, but time is in limited supply. The other members of our community have jobs and families as well, so it isn’t just an issue of people not being committed. We have folks who are ready to do what needs to be done, but I think everyone is looking around for someone to take point. We don’t have money to pay someone...and when we do have money, I think we’d rather use it to help people who are struggling anyway.

This is going to need to look different than what we’re used to, and I don’t think it will work if we just tell everyone what we’re going to do. This will need to be something that the community discerns together so that we have a shared investment and firsthand perspective of what’s being described.

So what does it look like? I admit it, I don’t really know.