Only Jesus

At the beginning of this journey all that I really knew was that it seemed to me that it would take us until the Fall of 2014 before we would be able to actually, publically, be meeting regularly as a gathering and worshipping group in a dedicated space to call home.  I had no idea what that meant or what it would look like.  The only strategy that I felt confident in was to, in the model of Jesus recorded in John chapter 1, "move into the neighborhood" (see The Message version). So move we did and began, along with a dozen others, to meet and pray and meet and eat and meet and serve in this Seattle neighborhood known as South Lake Union. 
Its been a long and winding road.  Friends have come and friends have gone.  Leads have appeared and disappeared.  Promising space to gather seemed always to be just out of reach.  For those who have just begun to follow or those who have lost track over the months, good news came to us just as Summer was ending.  A home materialized through a relationship born from a years worth of "in the neighborhood" and we have a place to gather in a space that belongs to a wonderful non-profit known as Redeeming Soles.  I don't know about you, but it seems like a bit of Jesus playfulness on words that a church, ultimately concerned about redeemed people (souls), would be welcomed by an organization dedicated to serving people through redeemed shoes (soles). 
So here we stand now, at the dawning of another November, and only 3 Sundays until we hold our first truly public gathering.  There is so much left to do in the 21 days left, and to be sure we may not be the 100% ready that our human nature causes us to think that we need to be ... but ready or not, we will be there.  Between now and then we will be heads up and following the only one who could have led us to this point and the only one who matters in all of this.

Risk management and the adventure of following

There is an interesting passage in the book of John that, in my opinion, is a pretty good insight into a challenging application for those who claim a desire to be committed followers of Jesus.  Towards the end of chapter 6 we get to witness a watershed moment in his earthly ministry.  We often focus so much on the abandonment of the twelve at his arrest that we overlook this greater abandonment occurring much earlier on, separating them from the "convenience" crowd.  The passage begins with Jesus and the miraculous outdoor fish dinner for 5000.  Not surprising is the reaction of the crowd who, upon thinking that they've found a source of a perpetual labor-less catering service, is more than willing to follow him ... as long as the needs are met.  In a moment of spiritually "diving deep", which by the way is what most who claim the name of Christian will tell you is a priority in their faith journey, Jesus offers teaching and a level of commitment which quickly divides the proverbial sheep from the goats.  He is quick to point out, in his annoying Jesus way, that what they think that they desire is fleeting and time bound.  What he is offering is not only eternal, but attainable.  However, it is going to take something far too costly than most will be willing to invest.  It is uncomfortable, to the point of being offensive.  If you read closely you can see that the deep allegorical teaching is hard to grasp for those seeking a comfortable and consumer oriented faith.  What they want is getting in the way of what they need.  The twelve, on the other hand, reveal their allegiance and commitment to the rest of the journey by the simple recognition that within this difficult, elusive and somewhat offensive teaching are contained the "words of life".  The crowd decides that the "risk" needs to be managed and is ultimately deemed too high to pursue.
It is not so much different for us today.  The number of those who would desire to be considered followers of Jesus exists in the same tension as those so long ago.  All claim to want to "dive deep" yet are still divided along the lines of the crowd and the committed.  It is hard now, as it was then, to identify by appearance alone.  It becomes readily apparent though when comfort is eliminated and the element of risk is introduced.
Planting a church can indeed be an exercise in risk taking for the one called to plant it.  However, I would like to recognize those of you who take a much greater risk than anyone who has planted a church, myself included.  I would like to recognize those of you who join a church being planted in its earliest form.  There is little comfort.  There is little convenience.  There is little certainty.  There is plenty of risk.  There is certainly Jesus.  Thank you for weighing it and finding it all worth it.  You and the kingdom will be forever changed.

Arriving and high anxiety

So many emotions, conversations real and imagined, relational in's and out's, and second guessing has transpired over these past several months.  All of them, for good or bad, have combined to place us at this moment in time.  We  find ourselves at the end of Summer, leaning expectantly into the promise of Fall.  The question pressing on me right this moment, at a cafe in Madrona, is whether or not we are in a better place than we were earlier in this journey.  As the year began, it was apparent that we were entering in to the 9 month birthing process that would lead us to the Fall emergence that had been pressed on our hearts from the beginning.  Usually, in the birth process, it takes 9 months for a life to strengthen and prepare itself for life outside of the womb.  Ironically, as the time draws near, there is a tendency to feel more protective of and less secure about the life contained within.  There is also a tendency to just want the process over and the life to arrive.  I used to not appreciate the "birth" terminology in the context of beginning a new church.  This experience has changed me...in ways I am sure that I have still not realized and may not be aware of.  I have to admit that I have found these birth parallels in the process of "birthing" a church to be painfully true.
So I worry.  I worry about the fragility of something that could be gone like a vapor.  I worry about the people who are part of this ... For the sacrifices that they make, for the expectations that may or not be met, for being willing to follow a vision without necessarily having the first hand encounter with it. (Think Noah's wife).  I worry about people who have wandered off, and I worry about whether we can encourage more to join us.  Will we be strong enough without them... The numbers I mean, at least the numbers that I feel we must have for a "healthy" delivery.  I look out about 6 weeks and I worry that we are not strong enough for the rest of the journey...but then I remember, so do all who have parented before me.  There is nothing left to do now but trust in the one who has led us here to this point.  There is nothing left to do now but pray for and through these last few weeks.

desperate awareness of need

Last week, during my reading of our study passage dealing with the sisters Mary and Martha, I was struck by the reality that Jesus is the whole point.  Probably not a great deal of wisdom coming from someone of my profession, but its worth noting all the same.  I have always thought that we as humanity have always made things more complicated than they needed to be.  We always strive for more than we need.  We constantly look for the next best thing.  Even within the realm of Christian community, it would be blasphemy for us to get rid of programs and instead simply invite people to take the time that they would have invested in setting up, pulling off, and soaking in these programs and just simply use it to "be" with Jesus.  Even the story of the fall of mankind is centered on not having enough of what God provided (a relational arrangement), and the felt need to have the next best thing (knowledge of good and evil). 
These few verses in Luke that look in on an otherwise less than interesting vignette of Jesus ministry are so profound though because its the one thing that we can't seem to get a grasp on ... simply time with Jesus.  That's why we began this Summer working on the disciplines of solitude and also the practice of Lectio Divina.  I would argue that these are the most difficult of all the disciplines.  I'd much rather fast than be silent and still for an extended period...and that's saying a great deal.  That's also why we will continue to focus on those two for as long as it takes for us to develop some sense of what I'll call "the desperate awareness of need".  When we long for these times to simply sit at the feet of Jesus, to soak it in, to dump our "to do" list of church stuff, only then will we really be ready for the journey.

Summer

Let's face it ... Summer is absolutely the most difficult time to encourage people to go to church.  It can be a monumental challenge to an established place of ministry with a building, an address, and a pastor waiting to proclaim Gods word to the masses.
Fortunately for us, we are not trying to encourage people to "go to church".  We have neither an address or a building for them to go to.   What we do have, regardless of the season, is the ability to "be the church"... to take Jesus where the people are.  Sharing Jesus, being Jesus, doesn't need a location or a season.  Need doesn't take a break for the Summer.  Brokenness doesn't wait for a more suitable season and neither should the church.

Here are a few opportunities that I believe we can take advantage of that are specific to Summer:

Loving God .... Enjoying some outdoor time in prayer/contemplation/silence
Living Well .... Celebrating with friends at a festival, a local park BBQ, the beach, a hike
Doing Good .... Yard work for a neighbor in need, feeding those who are hungry, a yard sale, a race, or a walk to benefit a local non-profit

Let's not wait until we have an address to invite someone to ... Let's just go and live as we were called

Why Church?

Recently, upon reading through Henry Nouwen's great book "Making All Things New", it was reinforced to me just how critical the idea of "gathering together" is to developing a spiritual life.  In fact, his claim is that it is the combination of the disciplines of solitude and community that makes space for the Spirit of God to work in and through the lives of Jesus followers.  Our culture seems to think that it has the idea of solitude down, if by solitude you mean that there is no need to join together as a "church" in order to really follow Jesus.  As our group has wandered through the discipline of solitude and understood the tremendous difficulty in trying to pry that into our oversaturated lives, I have begun to see the idea of disciplining ourselves for community to be at least as much or possibly even more daunting a task. 
Don't believe me? ... Try establishing a new gathering of people who are already following Jesus during a Seattle Summer and you'll understand a bit more of what I'm referring to.  Here's the thing that we're hitting up against, and by "we" I mean the universal "we" of the Western world version of the Christian faith .... we've not gone about this idea of gathering together as a spiritual discipline.  We've not seen it as ultimately strengthening our movement forward along a path that leads ever closer to Christ.  We see it more as a task, an option, an "if nothing better comes along" event.  Within that framework, just about anything that comes along can be seen as "better"
I will offer that I believe a decent amount of this mentality arrived as a consumer culture collided with the lost mission of too many churches.  Right about the time that it became more about being "right" than offering good news to those who really needed to hear some, people who had consistently gathered began to become inconsistent and then cease altogether.  
We've lost our way ... and this could be seen as totally tragic, except that losing ones way implies that there was once a way that was considered "the way" ... and we could once again be heading that way.   I will insert some pastoral honesty here ... for most of my 20+ years leading churches I would have attributed the inconsistency of my people in their gathering together as their own personal spiritual lacking.  In recent years, with some painful self awareness and evaluation, I have come to the conclusion that I, and others like me, need to own a decent amount of this lacking.  I, as a leader of a gathering of Jesus followers, at this point in the history of the church, have to believe that a decent piece of this just may come from my failure to excite people about the real mission that God has invited us to which can only be accomplished through the gathering known as the church.  We can be on mission with the God of all creativity, and yet we are infected with infighting about how creativity can be expressed.  We can be on mission with the God who owns everything, and yet we sit wringing our hands lamenting how little resources we have.  Is there a wonder that, even among those already trying to follow Jesus that there are always "better" things going on?
We, as these gatherings, have been tasked as well as enabled, to turn our piece of the world, our cities and all of our represented neighborhoods, upside down.   Instead of cowering in the corner of comfort until we have "figured it out", we could run into the wake of the God who has already been there and be filled with the awe and wonder that the Old Testament prophets were able to experience and we have resigned ourselves to merely reading about.  What could be "better" than that?

Does it matter

Yesterday we had the privilege of "Doing Good" along side a local non-profit that we have chosen to partner with.  The group is called "Free Food For All" and literally, their name says it all.  I will tell you considerably more about them along the course of our journey, but for now I will leave you with the simple truth that they are one of the most unassuming, unseen, and yet remarkable groups that I have encountered in over 20 years of pastoral artistry ... and they are right here, in our neighborhood.  Unseen yet literally immeasurable in their care of innumerable people (especially school children) in need in the city of Seattle.
As we prepared lunches for city school children and other food for a neighborhood food bank, I was struck by the enormity of their influence and the passion.  They do so much with so little while operating far out of the mainstream and spotlight.  They struggle, as do so many other groups, connecting people to the idea of "doing good".  In 20 years of leading established churches, and for these past 8 months leading a new church, I know the struggle too well.  In fact, if I could offer a moment of honesty and vulnerability, I would say that there is nothing as crushing to me as apathy to the cause of "doing good" especially when it comes to doing it in the name of Jesus.  If anything would cause me to quit this life and go do something else, it would be an inability to inspire, lead, and help engage people in caring enough about the living out of their own faith proclamation that the natural outflow would be to give a rip about the world that they've been called to live into.  
Last week we began a discussion about spiritual disciplines ... beginning with solitude.  We will continue to learn about and live into these.  They may be tough to master, but oh so worth it.  This week I was reminded that there is a discipline to "doing good".   There is an illusion about the "social consciousness" of Seattle... that we are all out for a cause ... that volunteering is our second language.  Sadly, and it may not be a popular opinion, but I fear it is just that ... its a language.  It's a great deal more talking than walking.  The bright side of this, for the church, especially a new one, is that we could, with discipline, rise far above the crowd and demonstrate once and for all the truth of Jesus 2nd response to the question of "the greatest commandment" ... loving your neighbor as yourself.  It's our message to own and live ... but it is going to take discipline.  It is going to have to be a priority. 
Last night, I looked long and hard at the reality of a relatively small, in numbers, presence.  I witnessed the passion of a group flying somewhat under the radar.  I considered that great cause that we were partnered in, and I asked myself "does it matter"?  Then I watched as a 3 1/2 year old enthusiastically packed lunches for over and hour to be given to hungry children while she repeatedly exclaimed how much they would "just love the yummy fruit".... and I knew that yes, it does in fact matter a great deal.