Driving Lessons, Karma, and Drugs

December 4, 2009 at 2:19 pm · Filed under Current Events, Discipleship ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

We were praying on Thursday morning and one of the guys says something that sent seismic shock waves through my soul.  He prayed, “What does the birthday boy want?”  He was talking to God about Christmas.  My mind had a spasm.

Honestly, I don’t think about Christmas and Advent in terms of “birthday boy.”  If it weren’t true it would be sacrilege.  But that “shock to my system” also caused so many puzzle pieces to fall into place for me.

I’m one of those Christians who wallows in ideas and theories like a pig wallows in slop.  I gargle with big ideas and do belly flops into theology.  I love it.  So Advent and Christmas tend toward transcendence (God is above, apart, mystery), ideals & language, theory, candles, music, and atmosphere.  I use words like incarnation, mission, and kingdom as short-hand for ideas that are – for me – pregnant with meaning and significance.

Then I hear “What’s good for the birthday boy?”

When I hear it my grand ideas come crashing to the ground and this season sudden goes from God up and above (transcendence) to God here and now among us (immanence).  It is practical not theoretical.  High flying concepts like incarnation, mission, kingdom; as well as atmosphere and mood give way to people.

Here’s why: my wife was at a community garden meeting at a coffee shop this week, and they just started talking.  When they heard about us (especially Communicycle) they were interested and had questions.  One woman, Jewish I believe, who is very active as an environmentalist asked my wife if Christians have a concept like Karma that explains what is owed to the earth.  She was wondering if there was a word that could be used to try to communicate with them.  Christian Karma?  They talked.

What’s that word we use for sharing God’s perspective on the world and life?  Hmmm, it will come to me in a minute. Some thing about good news, I think.

One of the moms from the elementary school asked my wife this week if she would come along to help her practice her driving because she was going to take her drivers license test.  The woman was nervous and anxious and wanted someone along before she headed off to get tested.  They spent time together.  My wife really loves this woman, who is the chief Spanish translator for the Parent Teacher organization.

There is a name for helping someone settle down before a driving test.  It’s call Shalom.  My wife brought the Kingdom.  BTW, she passed!

Josh and Margaret were picking some kids up for Communicycle on Tuesday.  As they’re driving one of the kids says to the other, “You should tell him, dude.”  The other answers, “Shut up.”  ”No, really you should tell him.”  So Josh being the shy, retiring type says, “Tell me what?”  Turns out one of their friends has started taking drugs.  And they start talking about drugs, why people use them, what they can and can’t do for their friend, etc.

There it is.  In an unexpected, unplanned, unguarded, unprepared for instant a teachable moment that is at the very heart of what we pray for with these kids.  To love them, to stand in the gap against all the forces aligned against them:  violence, gangs, drugs, sex, etc.  It was a teachable moment that no program can ever provide.  It was their friend.  Their moment of intense, personal interest.  And Josh and Margaret were there.

Later that night we had to have several talks with the kids “chipping” at each other. It started to escalate, and Josh had to circle some of them up to reinforce the idea that Communicycle is a place of respect.  I cleaned one part for several minutes too many as Josh talked with one of the boys about helping make friends with one the other boys with whom he had been sparing.  You could tell from the young man’s reaction that being a friend was what he really wanted.  He was sparing because he had to fight for respect.  But the prospect of friendship brought an eager hope to him.  With nations waging war here is a man bringing actual peace.

This is Advent.  Not high flying ideas and religion, but the actual presence of the Lord to bring peace, hope, and life.  Not just age-old songs about God’s goodness, but right here, right now conversations that display God’s goodness and love.  Who’d have ever thought that Advent and Christmas would be about driving lessons, karma, and drugs?

Mission, incarnation, and kingdom are amazing concepts.  But for this Christmas we need practical, “feet on the ground” examples of what they mean.  They mean being in touch with people who don’t yet know the beauty of Christ’s love so that those transcendent, meaningful, gospel moments are possible.  This is what it means to be incarnational, on mission, and bringing the Kingdom.

It’s not complicated.   At the same time, it isn’t accidental.  It is the inevitable result of being present in the lives of other people.  Not artificially, but genuinely.  Not looking for every instance to slip ‘em a tract, but sharing in things that are genuinely meaningful among people.  Being a normal person without a secret agenda, sharing life, and earning the privilege of talking about God and life just because you’re friends.  By definition these moments are occasional, even rare.  They come after hours and hours, weeks, and months of working together, sharing life, drudgery, duty, and regular contact.   They can’t be programmed.  They simply happen because we are simply there when they do.

So I hope that this Advent, this celebration of God’s Presence Among Us, translate into our presence among the people around us.  Not salt among salt, or light among light.  But “out there” where the salt and light are needed most.  Where karma become grace, driving lessons become shalom, drugs become prevention, and taunting leads to peace.

Merry Christmas.

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Heroes of Mine

June 6, 2007 at 1:29 pm · Filed under Musings

There are so many folks that are making major decisions and significant sacrifices in following the Lord in the vision he’s given us.  I would name names, but I don’t want to embarrass or dishonor anyone.  While I’m thinking of three specific guys right now, I can easily add another 6-8 other women and men who are being seriously challenged and encouraged in what it means to be a “follow me” disciple.   When I say “serious” I mean giving up jobs, moving, not taking jobs that would mean moving away, being “downwardly mobile” in income to stay close…  Things that make zero sense in a materialistic, consumer culture.  Things that if we use the American Dream as a standard of judgment are a nightmare. 

 I ran across the following passage from Dallas Willard who explains the significance of what people are doing better than I ever could.  He writes, “…one cannot be a disciple of Christ without forfeiting things normally sought in human life, and that one who pays little in the world’s coinage to bear his name has reason to wonder where he or she stands with God.  But the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater – even when this life alone is considered – than the price paid to walk with Jesus.

“Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil.  In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10).  The cross-shaped yolk of Christ is after all an instrument of liberation and power to those who live in it with him and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul.” (Devotional Classics by Foster and Smith, p.16)

For those of you who are being faithful in midst of discipleship situations that are both perilous and terrifying on the one hand, yet at the same time are full of real life and meaning I just want to say how much I appreciate your example.  It gives me and the rest of our small community a greater strength to follow and an example of courage to emulate. 

You may think no one notices and that you are alone, but you are not.  You may not even feel like you have a choice.  That the Lord has cornered you.  Yet every time you have an easy out you don’t take it.  Every time you an opportunity to duck your head and go an easier way you don’t take the temptation.    The Lord sees.  We see.  He’s doing great things in and through you.  Thanks for being faithful to Him. 

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Chess Moves

June 1, 2007 at 4:54 pm · Filed under Adventures, Musings

In Acts 10 we read about the second Pentecost, how the Lord demonstrates that he is calling the Gentiles and not just the Jews by having the same outpouring as in Acts 2.  In the chapter we see the Lord calling Cornelius the Centurion, then talking with Peter.  Peter is amazed when he puts the timeline together, the vision, and the reality of what is going on (v.34-43). 

In November of 2006 I met a guy named Ray Gonzalez.  In talking about our multicultural vision he put me in touch with Dave Park.  In talking with Dave about needs for help in music ministry he put me in touch with Peter Choi, Jr.  In spending time with Dave and Peter I found friends whose hearts beat in rhythm with our vision.  I could listen and talk with these guys for hours.  I always come away refreshed and challenged. 

Peter shared a story yesterday that made me think of Acts 10 and God’s chess moves. 

Last week Peter and I went to Pearl Lane on the last day of the after-school program.  I wanted to see my guys before summer started, and Peter wanted to see the reality of what he hears me talking about all the time.  We drove into Chamblee.  I was giving directions and pointed out that Pearl Lane was just behind the big building that housed a Realtor and other business.  I talked with Peter about the area and the ministry and my desire to be able to office in or near Pearl lane so that I could really work in the neighborhood. 

Peter told me yesterday (almost a week to the day of going to Pearl Lane) that several months prior the folks he was working with to develop a new ministry had been given office space.  One of their cohort of visionaries had parents who owned a building and were willing to give them office space.  But the office looked out over some pretty unappealing low-income housing in run-down part of the city.  While the aesthetics were unappealing, the price was great – free.  Yet in the past several months they hadn’t taken advantage of the space.  It was sitting empty.  As it turns out the office was the office next door to Pearl Lane.  The office space, if I understood Peter correctly, looks out over Re Kim’s old house (see the post on chemo therapy and vacuum cleaners) and the ministry center. 

Peter said he didn’t say anything at Pearl Lane because he was too busy repenting for complaining about an office that overlooked such an ugly, forsaken place (my words not his).  Peter was amazed at the “slice of heaven” (his words) that he experienced in the chaos of the after-school program.  What we were both amazed about was the fact that the Lord was pulling our lives together before we ever knew each other existed and before we knew what we really wanted in ministry.  The Lord took these amazing visionaries (Peter, Dave, and the dozen other folks they are with) and brought our lives together in the Lord’s work .  They started with a specific vision for ministry only to see the Lord working in their lives without their knowing it or their consent in developing a ministry that was not exactly part of the original plan. 

One of my take-aways is that plans and visions are good and necessary. Just be sure that they have enough flexibility to respond to and follow God when he throws a wrench in the works.  I would have never talked with Ray without the crisis we were in (God changing the church’s direction).  I would have never talked with Dave about music ministry without a separate the crisis of loosing people.  I would have never invited Peter along except for the need for more help in an under-staffed after-school program.  Nowhere in my plans were the recruitment of talented, visionary Korean-Americans to partner with in ministry.  I’m sooo glad that God has better plans than I do! 

Our job is to obey as we go.  His job is to provide the vision, the means, and the resources to do what he is calling us to.  And he does so with abundance, delightful surprises, crisis, and dependence on him. 

Peace

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Taking Time to be Inconvenienced

May 31, 2007 at 10:03 pm · Filed under Adventures

Stan and Cindy called on Memorial Day to check up on my recovery.  Stan called from the truck to share a story that had just occured.  They were doing errands and they saw a guy who looked homeless walking along a busy street.  He was loaded down with large bags, and Stan and Cindy stopped to ask if he needed any help or a ride. 

Isn’t that cool!  Seeing a fellow human being in need, they take the time to be inconvenienced. 

Anyway, what was funny was that this guy was rather reflective.  He said that he didn’t need a ride, that he was on his way to Bruster’s to get a Sundae.  He took up his burdens and headed on down the road. 

What I love about this story is that it makes the point that success in loving isn’t defined just by doing something (giving this guy a ride or help), but is first and foremost the act of becoming involved.  Becoming involved in giving hospitality to a stranger almost always requires being inconvenienced. 

Peace

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Imprinting on Cheryl (success part 2)

May 30, 2007 at 1:49 pm · Filed under Adventures

Dan and Cheryl Burton are the most amazing people you will ever meet.  Dan left a successful business to be a church planter in Snellville, GA.  He went through an amazing 15 years of service to see a lot of good, experience a lot of struggles, and, ultimately, to leave and close-down the work.  In this time, Cheryl developed breast-cancer and through God’s grace survived.  This is a story that is not unique.  What is unique is that they walked through all of this without a drop of bitterness staining their souls.  The longer I am in ministry the more I view this with absolute astonishment.  Working with people means bruises, disagreement, disappointment, even betrayal at times.  To come through with a joyful, Christ-focused heart yet without a moronic/vacuous denial of hard times and deep wounds is stunning. 

As we began our transition as a church, Dan and Cheryl talked with us about our vision, our heart.  Much to my surprise and shock, they decided to come along side and help us.  Well, more than help actually.  They came along side, took our hands, and showed us how to do what we longed to do.  Cheryl took us into mobile home parks to do “Good News Clubs” and vacation bible school.  Cheryl anchors our Sunday school in the gospel message, and has an uncanny knack for talking with kids at their level about spiritual things.  She is a dedicated participant in our after-school program who loves and is devoted to the students in her care. 

A few weeks ago I got to see Cheryl do an amazing thing. 

The after-school program is pretty rough-and-tumble.  The kids are not always polite, nice, nor do they abide by the Marquis of Queensberry’s rules.  Cheryl was cleaning up after the program and was reaching for a rubber-band for some flash cards, but it was gone.  There was a young boy standing there who had a rubber-band around his wrist.  This particular third grader is one of the rougher of our crowd.   He’s a good kid, but lives in tough circumstances and doesn’t always have great self-control.  Anyway, Cheryl asked him for her rubber-band.  He told her the one on his wrist was his.  She didn’t believe him and told him so. 

This kid was crushed.  He dropped is head, slumped his shoulders, and walked dejectedly towards his apartment.  Cheryl felt bad, but also knew that you had to loving confront things and not just let kids get by with bad behavior.  Then she found the rubber band. 

She was crushed. 

She called me to go to this kids apartment.  She went by but no one was home.  She tried a second time, but no one was home.  The next after-school day she asked me to go with her to try again.  So we went to the apartment and saw that they were home.  I watched and prayed as Cheryl walked up the stairs and knocked on the door.  She introduced herself to the mom and asked to talk with the young boy.  He came out, and Cheryl got down and told him what she had learned.  She confessed her sin as sin, and humbly, truly asked for his forgiveness by talking about what it must have felt like to be falsely accused.  The boy looked up, nodded.  Smiled.  And gave her a huge hug.  She brought him a candy bar as a peace offering.  He took it, ran inside and brought her something of his.  I don’t remember what.  A soda I think. 

Here is the cool part.  This kid lights up when Cheryl is around.  She has such an influence in his life and his families life.  Cheryl learned that the mother was also a cancer survivor, but is still struggling with the after-effects of her treatment.  So Cheryl has made another friend. 

I was talking with Cheryl two weeks ago, and she saw the mother walking by the ministry center.  Cheryl dropped me like a hot-potato to run out and catch up with her friend. 

All of this because she had the character to walk the way our Lord requires us to walk (live).  Not perfectly or without error, but in forgiveness and honesty and integrity.  Because she admitted her sin and did the right thing, there is a stronger relationship and gospel witness.  This boy and his family knows more about God’s forgiveness and grace because of Cheryl’s example than from any presentation or explanation of the gospel that I could ever preach. 

This last week Cheryl was re-admitted to the hospital with a brain tumor. 

The prognosis is good.  She and Dan are up-beat.  The doctors are too.  We will go and be with them for the surgery on Thursday.  We – the whole fellowship that is Open Table – will stand with the family and clean, pray, feed, as they walk through this trial. 

But what I realized on Sunday when we got word of the tumor was that Cheryl Burton as a person is who we are praying to be as a congregation.  Our lofty expression of covenantal practices are generosity, hospitality, forgiveness, and risk taking.  Cheryl embodies these.  Our commitment to children and community development are the very things she breaths and longs for and lives out.  She does so with a past that carries a lot of baggage, yet she doesn’t lug them around.  Instead she looks for the hand of grace, the miracle for today, the fullness of life as it comes today.  And she prays.  Man oh man, does this woman pray! 

Cheryl isn’t perfect.  Anyone that knows her knows that she can unload on you with a lot of very particular questions and high standards.  She’s loving and gentle and tough. 

Cheryl teaches us many things, and will continue to do so through the years.  But what she teaches me most importantly right now is that what matters most is character.  Plans, visions, ideas…all these are good.  But God uses people of character.  God develops character in people. 

This is the great challenge, the real challenge, of being “missional.”  It isn’t innovative programs, crowd-pleasing results, best selling books, and having others ask you for advice .  It’s walking humbly with our God in obedience to the small things he puts in front of us.  Any other kind of success is his perrogative, but it should never be our primary goal.  It isn’t Cheryl’s goal.  I don’t think it was Christ’s goal.  And we’re imprinting off of them. 

Pray for Cheryl.  She has radiation after the surgery.  She was great when we took our 4 and 5 year old to the hospital yesterday.  Since they will see her with her head shaved and (eventually) without any hair we wanted them to see her and talk with her beforehand to help them with the transition.  She was great with them. 

To get back to my main point on success in mission:  character in loving, humble obedience in the moment.  Knowing God’s heart, which is clearly revealed in his word, and stepping out to the people he takes you to in loving them.  It isn’t safe.  It isn’t easy.  It doesn’t happen because we are perfect and never make any mistakes.  As Cheryl teaches us, it often results from the opposite of being mistake-free.  But Cheryl also teaches us that this life-style of loving in generosity, hospitality, forgiveness, and risk taking is glorious!

Peace

FYI, Mirriam-Webster defines imprinting as:  (noun): a rapid learning process that takes place early in the life of a social animal and establishes a behavior pattern (as recognition of and attraction to its own kind or a substitute).  Go to www.m-w.com if you need more. 

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The key to success (part 1)

May 30, 2007 at 1:28 pm · Filed under Musings

We talk a lot about being “missional.”  “Missional” means being where God sends us, with the people he is calling us to love, doing what his Word calls us to do to actually love, all for his glory and honor.  From this list one can see that a lot of activity is involved in our conception of “missional.”  Which is cool in the sense that it helps us to be counter-cultural in a world (especially a church world) of “cheap talk” and marketing slogans.  At the same time, it can be deceptive in that it lends itself to the trap of things in the Kingdom of God being boiled down to technique, method, or recipe.  Which it never is.

 This fact has hit me over and over again over the past weeks and months as I see all that the Lord is doing in our midst.  Sure, we sold a building and moved to a poorer part of town, we made whole-sale changes to vision, mission, strategy, structure, etc.  We’re working hard on our weak areas and trying to implement improvements in music and small groups.  We have lost a lot of people and gained different ones.  We have seen miracles and salvation.  The Lord’s work in us includes techniques and methods and organization.  But these are not keys, they are the result of keys.  The keys are people.  People who respond to God and his word with creativity, devotion, and energy. To quote EM Bounds (I don’t remember the source):

“God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than anything else, because men are God’s method.  The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.  The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men.  He does not come on machines, but on men.  He does not anoint plans, but men.  It is not great talents nor great learning that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God.” 

In the case of our journey as a church we would have to say that women (as well as men) are God’s method. 

In the stories that I have posted about our “adventures” you will find that they are mostly about people.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the risks, the generosity, the hospitality, and the forgiveness that is starting to describe who the Lord is making us into all comes about in, through people responding to God-given opportunities. 

I say all this by way of preamble to the next post I want to write.  But I didn’t want to get this next post imbedded in this one.  As you will see it needs to stand alone.  But this post is my slap to the forehead reminder to myself (and to anyone else who ever reads this stuff) about what is most important when it comes to actually following the Lord in obedience (being missional).  It means believing in, listening to, supporting, challenging, learning from other disciples:  people, especially people of character. 

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Real Spiritual Warfare

May 27, 2007 at 6:53 pm · Filed under Adventures

I have been shaped and influenced by motion picture special efffects and speculative fiction.  I have a very fertile imagination when it comes to things spiritual and supernatural.  When I think about things like “spiritual warfare” I have vivid images of confrontations with the hordes of hell, the thundering clash of titanic armies like in “the Return of the King” and “the Lion, the Witch , and the Wardrobe.”  Even lonely prayer vigils become herioic exploits as small groups of the faithful intercede against a great flood of enveloping, stygian darkness.  It’s all quite epic. 

Then things happen to pull me out of my imagination and into the everyday world where good strives to overcome evil. 

 I was waking up from my afternoon coma.  I was listening to the boys play and my wife talking on the phone.  Snatches of my wife’s conversation drifted into my semi-consciousness and pulled me into wakefulness.  Bits and pieces of phrases like “eviction”, “children”, “help”, etc floated into the clearing fog.  When my wife came in to get me up I got the full story of a family whose kids had been visting Open Table that had been evicted from their apartment.  The kids came home from school to find their stuff thrown out of the sidewalk.  Their mother was out of town working. 

Into this nightmare strode a handful of women to take care of the kids, and problem solve what to do with all their worldly possession before folks descended on it to pillage what they wanted.  I was amazed and impressed with the division of labor to look for social services, to get help moving the possessions and storing them at the church. 

What took me to my knees in worship was the unthinking assumptions that we would care for them and that these children would be loved in a hard time.  These women didn’t hesitate to jump into the unknown and face whatever the crisis would bring. 

I stayed home cooking macaroni and cheese for the boys as my wife sped off in the van to jump into the fray.  I prayed and prayed not knowing if we would have extra guests for a while, or if there we enough people to help, or if things would get confrontational.  It was a pecular helplessness. 

My wife called later with stories of how the Lord brought folks with large trucks to help move the stuff, provided a place to stay as the family and the Christian’s in their lives tried to solve the real, long-term issues. 

It wasn’t hordes of Orcs and Minotaurs, dueling dragons, or magic swords.  It was compassion and love and determination in the face of despair.  It was ordinary people stepping into crisis.  Heather talked about how amazing Virginia and Sandee are at ministering in this world of finanical insecurity.  Virginia and Sandee are two of the women with Cross-Cultural Ministries who are teaching us how to live and minister in the area where the Lord has taken us.  I don’t appreciate how much courage and love it takes to minister to people who live on the border of the wastelands of despair in a society of plenty until moments like this happen.  God is good to have brought us along side such faithful servants and teachers. 

No special effects.  No sound track.  No million dollar budgets.  But heroes, regular people stepping into real lives when it matters.  They don’t have to, except for the example of Christ and the love of Christ. 

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Important Questions

May 21, 2007 at 8:40 pm · Filed under Musings

I probably shouldn’t be writing while I’m on pain medication for kidney stones, but here we go…

In my more lucid moments I started reading Radical Hospitality by Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt.   The authors write, “We all have some sort of rule we live by, consciously or otherwise.  Your own rule consists of the little things you do that shape your life.”  They go on to say “Your rule of life is nothing more than what you have determined is most important to seeking and maintaining a meaningful existence.  Your rule is a collection of what you think matters…” 

So what makes life meaningful?  Is it a life you are living now, or something you hope to get too down the road?  What matters? 

As I ask myself these questions I find that the wrestling match begins with the definitions of “meaningful”, “value”, “living”.  Is is money in the bank?  Is it cultural cache?  Is it success as measured by title and compensation?  It is the right schools for my kids and their “above average” achievement? 

But I know this isn’t it.  These are big issues which hide the bigger question.  Then it comes.  The big “ah ha!” that has me really thinking.  It’s a story that Homan and Colllins Pratt share:  

“Go with us to a corner of the sprawling market in Mexico City where an old Indian man named Poto-lamo is selling Onions.  Twenty strings of onions lay in front of him.  A guy from Denver walks up and asks, “How much for the string of onions?”

“Ten cents,” replies Poto-lamo

“How much for two strings?”

Poto-lamo fixes his eyes on him and says, “Twenty cents.”

“What about three?”

“Thirty cents.”

“Not much a reduction for quantity.  Would you take twenty-five cents for three?” 

“No.”

“Well, how much for all of it, the whole twenty strings?” 

“I will not sell you the whole twenty strings.”

“Why not?” asks the American.  “Aren’t you here to sell onions?” 

“No,” replies Poto-lamo, “I am here to live my life.  I love this market.  I love the crowds.  I love the sunlight and smells.  I love the children.  I love to have my friends come by and talk about their babies and their crops.  That is my life and for that reason I sit here with y twenty strings of onions.  If I sell all my onions to one customer, then my day is over and I have lost my life that I love — and that I will not do.” 

So there it is…I think.  The thing that I wrestle with but cannot grasp.  The frustration at the center of my existential angst.  In all the groping and striving and shaping of vision and mission and purpose…in all the “big” things, here is the small thing that I sense that I keep missing – awareness of what is right in front of me (something that speed and urgency always steal).  I’m such a striving person.  I don’t have…what?  Rhythm, I think.  A deep exhalation.  An openness to the people and events right in front of me.  A contentment for small graces and simple gifts. 

At least I think that is what it is.  Any ideas? 

Source:  Radical Hospitality. Benedict’s Way of Love by Father Daniel Homan, OSB, and Lonni Collins Pratt (Paraclete Books: Brewster, MA) pp.233. 

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The point is…

May 18, 2007 at 1:07 pm · Filed under Adventures

A couple of women from the church went to Java Monkey to spend some time together.  While they were there they were approached by a man and his pregnant wife who were asking for help.  They talked.  Because there were two of them, it was late morning in a very busy part of town, and because they discerned the Lord’s will, the women went with the couple to the hotel they were staying at and paid for a night.  They talked about getting more help than just a single night.  But that’s not the point of story…

A woman (not one of the two mentioned above) came up to me after the service Sunday to find out if the Meth addict she talked to the other day at a service station was the same one I worked with a couple of months ago.  They weren’t.  But that’s not the point of the story…

Last week a guy from church was riding home after work.  The person in front of him got a flat and had to pull over.  Instead of doing what all of us normally do he felt a prompting by the Lord to pull over and help.  While the flat was being changed he noticed that something was wrong.  He got the guy out from under the car seconds before it came crashing down.  It’s amazing how these little acts of obedience mean so much afterwards, and have consequences that we never know at the point of obedience.  But that’s not the point of the story…

The point of the story is that they had their eyes and hearts open, they engaged in conversation with a heart to bless, and they were generous with their time, attention, and finances. 

The Lord is giving us opportunities to put him on display every where we go, all the time.  The vision he gave Open Table is his vision, and he is making it a reality in all of our lives. 

Our core practices are generosity, hospitality, forgiveness, and risk taking.  These are love in action, and I so proud of how many are taking the love given to them and are actively sharing it with others as the Lord directs. 

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Sharing Ourselves not Just Serving

May 14, 2007 at 3:52 pm · Filed under Adventures, Musings

John B. Hays writes in his book Sub-merge, “This younger generation seems to be increasingly disenchanted with a faith life that peaks on Sunday and wrestles the remainder of the week in a spiritual crawl space.”  Have you ever felt that kind of claustrophobia?  Like all the promises of God, the glory of the Scriptures, the heart palpitating exaltation of grace is only there as some backdrop to a future-after-you-die hope or – worse – some cruel tease in the face of a 9-5 grind strung together by periods of mind-numbing busyness.   

I think about it a lot.  I pray about it a lot.  Even after selling the building and moving into the warehouse, serving the teachers at Cary Reynolds, working with the kids at Pearl Lane, and all the other blessings we’re encountering.  I think about spritual vitality and quality of life together in all the transitions that we are still involved with like getting the space up to speed, small groups, and the all decisions about ministry and music and worship.  It really hits me when I read Hays’ comment, “As I have listened to young disciples, I sense that they do not want to attend church services that confuse worship and entertainment, joy and enjoy.”  (italics in orginal)  Many of the Open Table folks have shared the same or similar thoughts. 

So what do we do?  Is there any hope?  

John Hays has a remarkable story of coming alive to God’s call for the poor.  It’s one of those stories that really speaks to longings in my own heart.  Longings that I sometimes despair will never happen.  But then I went on a walk today.   

I went to Pearl Lane to talk with one of the kids I work with in the after-school program.  Actually, to talk with his mom and get to know her in order to see if there were ways to work better with her son.  As it turns out Virginia was at the ministry center talking Chin Te Li, one of the Cambodian grandmothers.  We started walking to the apartment down the hot, packed clay paths (there are no sidewalks) strewn with broken glass and debris.  As we passed toddlers and moms and grandmothers sitting outside their duplexes Virginia waved and talked with them.  There was a group of younger kids from the after-school program who saw me and yelled, “Pastor!”   I found my friend playing the equivalent of half-court soccer between some of the units.  Seven or eight sweaty kids laughing and knocking each other down over a ratty old soccer ball with a make-shift goal.  I talked with my friend until his mom came home, and then Virginia and I had the privilege of talking with her.  We learned how to bless her and her son by praying and talking about things going on in their lives.   

On the walk back Virginia talked about a couple of kids about to graduate from high school who had been involved with the ministry center at the beginning.  I realized that I while I have so much more to learn, that I was actually happy.  Aside from the fact that I want to be like Virginia and Sandee when I grow up, I find myself chewing on a more obvious fact – what mattered was being there in time and space. 

Life isn’t shared in the abstract.  Love is not a principle.  A relationship requires time together talking about important things. While none of this is rocket science, it does strike at the heart of many people’s fears (my fears).  Christine D. Pohl in her book “Making Room” asks the question, “Why are we sometimes more willing to help people than to share our lives with them?  Why do we often prefer to serve homeless, elderly, and disabled people rather than to visit or share a meal with them?”  

I don’t have an answer to the question, but I am praying and asking the Lord to show me my heart.  I am talking with my wife and my friends about it.  In our discussion group on Hospitality on Sunday morning we all committed to take this question before the Lord.  I think that this is one of the key answers to getting out of the “spiritual crawlspace” and into the wide-open, terrifyingly wonderful presence of the untamed God. 

It’s not a matter of technique.  It is about letting his hilarious, beautiful grace redefine everything so that fears fall away and we can take hearts full of love to others where they are.  Let’s all talk to God together and ask him to mature us into a people who long to share our lives with other people and not to settle for merely serving them from a distance (geographically, economically, or emotionally). 

I hear and see this in so many of the folks that start working with Cary Reynolds and Pearl Lane.  They (we) fall in love.  In that love people start asking the most amazing question, “How do I move in or closer to be with these people?”  Love is cool.  It’s upclose, personal, and highly addictive.  It makes the Great Commandment to love Him and to love people less a command of obligation and more of a invitation to joy and life.  Peace  Sources:

John B. Hays, “Sub-merge:  Living Deep In A Shallow World – Service, Justice, and Contemplation Among the World’s Poor”

Christine D. Pohl, “Making Room – Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition”

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