This is my next chapter. I am really looking forward to this one. We will see how long it has legs.
I once thought if I could only create a certain place wouldn’t that be great and wouldn’t that attract a certain group and wouldn’t that…
Then it all blew up and there was a time that no one new for sure if we would even make it as a fellowship. I was put in a position I would have never dreamed of being in.
In the end, through all of that God was working his plan, not mine, His way, not mine and all the things that were in the books didn’t make any difference. My ability to either counter or copy the latest fad or the old one had no impact.
I finally got back to the place where it was about people, people in ones and twos, people who were hurting for whatever reason. It took me awhile to get there but I realize another chapter is beginning, my backtrack journey has come to an end and with it my need to write about it, to vent my feelings.
Who knows, maybe I will start something different but maybe I won’t, and maybe this was enough. A place to share what I was going through.
Thanks to all the great people who have stopped by along the way. Thanks for all the great blogs listed on the side. Many of you helped me in deeper ways than you will ever know.
Pray for me as I continue on, one leg down, the next to come. I will try to remember to pray for you.
Jim basically brings up the type of discussion that I wanted to have. Did you read Dissident Discipleship?
I think it is good that my friend saw something in our former student. I think it is important that we have places and times for that but I have come to understand it is a beginning not an end.
As so many say today it is not either/or but both/and. That is a real buzz phrase but I am starting to see more and more that I have areas of either/or that should be both/and.
In the end we must start with our internal spirituality. We must begin by understanding that we have a spirit core. Why do so many seek so many different ways for understanding? The problem is not that this is legitimate but that it is incomplete. To only realize your own spirituality is to be all about self. To stop there doesn’t complete the story and the end keeps people from God. Unfortunately many religions today, even those carrying a Christian name, really only get to this part of spirituality. Self is the focus.
The second part of spirituality discussed in the book is that which exists between God and man. It is a deeper spirituality because it pushes us beyond ourselves to understand that we are not alone. Our spirit is not the only spirit. We also have the opportunity to commune with God. Part of this takes place when the Spirit lives within us and I believe it also takes place when we commune with God through nature and worship. There is something powerful and moving about experiencing God spiritually. It is important but still incomplete.
Now, in the book the writer, David Augsburger, points out that most believers’ spirituality ends here. We encounter God and realize He is beyond us and apart from us. We see where this leaves us and our spirituality as incomplete and it leads us to seek God more. But is that the ending point? I think Augsburger’s point was for many this is the case today.
In the end Augsburger talks about the final part of spirituality. This is when our spirit interacts with others. His point is that we need all three. We need to be self aware, understanding that we are made in God’s image. We are unique creations. We also need to understand that we relate to God. We need God to save us and redeem us. We need to acknowledge His power and authority, we need to seek His face. Finally, we need to relate this to others. We need to serve others, love the unlovable, and in this way we truly have full spirituality.
I think at times because I have seen so many lacking this third part I have tended to reject the others. The others are important but they are incomplete. If you look at the life of Jesus you will see someone whose spirituality is composed of all three.
In Luke 2 Jesus is at the Temple and his parents can’t find him. Jesus tells them that they should have understood His need to be in His Father’s house. He is self aware. This comes out throughout his ministry. Later there are times when Jesus goes away to a quiet place to pray. He has His time with God. Finally we see in his ministry that he is constantly connecting with others. Jesus is engaging in this third leg of spirituality and in fact he tells us that the other two are so that he can perform this third one. That I believe is true spirituality. Not that the others don’t matter but that the others build for this, service to the neighbor, the widow and orphan, the enemy.
The problem that we have today is that the first two always allow us to do the third. What happens when believers don’t understand this? I think you only have to look at the American church to know.
Thanks for allowing me to talk this out, and thanks for the comment. I needed this.
I would love to get your thoughts about spirituality today. It seems that an idea of spirituality exists today and I’m not sure where it came from and I’m not sure how healthy it is. Spirituality is all the buzz and my basic assumption has always been that this is good but I have been challenged recently in my thinking.
What do you think of when I say spirituality? What images come to mind? What expectations do you have? I ask for two reasons. Recently I was talking with a friend about our youth. He was telling me about one particular student who had left our fellowship to attend another.
He was impressed by his growth and I asked him what he meant. They had gone to a concert together and he shared that this young man had been much more emotional than he had ever seen before. He expressed himself more than he had ever before and this caught my friend’s attention.
What are your thoughts on this? Is this what we think of when we think of spirituality? If not what image comes to mind? I want to explore spirituality today and what it is and isn’t and maybe look at what it should be. I don’t know for sure, I have recently read a book entitled Dissident Discipleship that has really pushed my thinking.
So please share with me your thoughts on spirituality and thanks in advance.
Why do churches make promises they can never keep? Why do they tell people things to get them onboard without realizing that when they go back on their word they will have accomplished nothing?
As you may or may not know the church I work for was once an acapella Church of Christ. Now before I ever arrived they changed their name and began using instrumental music. What I didn’t fully understand was how this process took place.
See if this sounds familiar. Leadership decides to add instrumental music some time after they changed the name. Now the leadership promises all involved that the church will mix acapella and instrumentally accompanied singing. What do you think happened? The first Sunday they bring in their new worship leader to do worship. He not only sings all songs with music but he brings his band with him so that they can have instrumental music.
Talk about culture shock. Half the crowd just got up and left. Can you blame them? They were told it would be a certain way but that is not how it happened. Now before you jump on the new worship leader you must understand that he took the job with the understanding that he had full control over the music selection and style.
See a recipe for disaster? Be very careful of what people say you can and can not do. Instead of asking what is acceptable I think it wise to ask what they have told others is acceptable. Before doing something because they said you could make sure that is also what they told everyone else you could do.
Here is the slightly ironic thing in all of this. When I finally figured this out I did what was right, we honored the word we had given. I made the worship leader, a new worship leader by the way, begin to blend acapella and instrumental accompaniment in worship. Why? Most of the people who were burned by the original promise don’t even go to our church anymore but that really wasn’t the point. We had to prove to people that we would keep our word.
If I have learned anything from being out front I have learned that you better watch what you promise because you are going to have to do what you said. I should hold onto it tighter than anything else. Too many things are said to try to keep people happy without any thought to how each promise impacts the other and in the end what breaking promises says to people. You see we worship a God who has promised not to break his. How does it look when his followers won’t honor theirs?
I am still amazed at the number of churches that make promises that they either never intend to keep or that they discard when a different direction comes into play. I can’t tell you the number of times I have wanted to do some things differently but I can’t because I gave my word.
Why do you think more churches don’t understand this? I mean the Bible does say something about telling lies doesn’t it? Do people just decide everyone will understand that things are different now? Is there some type of statute of limitations that people believe exists on telling the truth? “Yes we said we would not do that but that was two years ago. That agreement only lasted one”?
Don’t just keep your word, force your fellowship to do the same and don’t add to their misery by trying to get them to change. Find out what has been promised and why before becoming frustrated at those who keep their word. In the end if what they have promised doesn’t fit you don’t ask them to change, either be willing to change or be willing to find a place that better fits the promises you would make.
Have you ever heard the saying cream rises to the top? Sounded good when I was young. Do we believe that the best always rises to the top?
When it comes to our fellowships do we have a place inside of us that says we have to do something just the right way for it to work? I enjoy watching the Apprentice but how many times was one team really that much better than the other? The show is edited to give you reasons why but editing could have painted the picture differently.
So they come into the board room and there must be a reason one team won and the other lost. No one wants to say it had nothing to do with anything other than the store location or something beyond their control.
Here is what I have come to understand. A lot of people do a really bad job and still succeed. A coach gets out coached and still wins a championship. Teams with weaker players still pull the upsets.
In the Exodus story Moses tells God that he is not the man for the job. When God speaks to him from a burning bush instead of being in awe Moses begins to tick off all the reasons he isn’t the guy to lead Israel out of slavery. God thought differently and God did differently.
I used to think I had to have just the right message spoken just the right way to inspire people. I used to believe that our worship mix, something old something new, something barrowed something blue, had to be exact for our fellowship to succeed. I now think bologna.
I spent too much time thinking things were failures because they didn’t measure up to my imaginary how to succeed when none of that mattered. To many people copy what others are doing thinking that is why they succeeded. Too many churches become successful for no other reason than God who turn and decide since their success came when they paved their parking lot it must have been the parking lot.
Can you imagine all of the people in Moses day running around looking for just the right staff if that were true?
No I have learned that you just need to be faithful. I had to learn to stop putting God to the test by expecting Him to follow my time table and my measure of success and I just need to roll with the punches.
If you are hunting for the ideal situation with everything done the right way you may want to stop. Maybe you are missing the forest for the trees, cream is not on top, God is.
This one is hard because for awhile I thought that someone was me. The image I got was of Moses and Joshua and I thought I was Moses, without the white hair and beard, no stone tablets ala Charlton Heston, but Moses none the less.
Now when I came to our fellowship I was told that we were an outwardly focused church. I was told we were trying to be Christ in the world we lived in. That was one of the things that attracted me. They weren’t just talking about it they were doing something about it, or at least that was what the brochure said.
I jumped in with both feet. We went from a once a year one day Medical Mission to every month. We began to celebrate our clothes closet and after a time we began to discuss what else we could do to impact our community.
What I soon found out is that it is one thing to say we wanted to be Christ in our community and another to actually do it. As someone within our fellowship recently said, we went from saying we wanted to be Christ to actually being Christ.
I was naïve. You see I didn’t understand the dynamics at play. I thought everyone had the same image of what being Jesus in your community was and should be. I didn’t realize that to some being Jesus in your community was hosting Easter egg hunts and throwing car shows. For me it meant we looked for the widow and orphan, the outcast so that is what we did.
I didn’t realize that when some people helped the hurting they wanted to pat them on the head and have them move on. I thought we actually wanted them to come to Christ and join our community.
In the end when you want to change someone usually has to die. The old person has to die as when Saul became Paul or people have to actually leave as with the exodus story.
There has to be some kind of clean break with the past. God did this in the Exodus story by making sure everyone died who didn’t have faith when they first arrived at the Promised Land. God did this when he did not allow Moses to enter.
I took a class on conflict resolution in my masters program and I actually took it thinking the knowledge would help me avoid trouble. What I understand now is that it helped me understand what was happening. All conflict isn’t bad, some times it is needed to figure out who has to die.
If your fellowship isn’t willing to let anyone die then watch out, you may find yourself wondering in the wilderness for years.
So what’s the point? You see I believe we must have a vision and if we don’t have a vision we must ask God to attach us to those carrying the vision we were created for. We must be looking forward. We can not be satisfied with standing still and waiting.
The story of God’s people has always been about journey. For a long time people thought it was about facts and having the right facts and standing still to defend those facts but that only confused the story, it didn’t change it. Yes our foundation is Truth but in the end it is still about journey, but how does the journey play out?
When I was a kid my mom liked to take us on family vacations. She loved to plan it all out in her head. She new the miles we needed to travel, the places we needed to go and the things we needed to see. The problem was that it never seemed to work out that way and when it didn’t my mother would get frustrated. Her frustration caused my dad frustration. His frustration made family vacation a job not an adventure.
So I share some of what shaped me so that you understand the vision God has given me. So that you understand the direction I have taken but in the end to caution you along the way. I want you to see that if you try to control this movement too tightly you will only become frustrated. If you try to get others to see it you may end with hours of frustration with nothing to show for it. You have to believe that God is getting you where you need to be so careful in trying to create the journey.
You will only be upset when the pace isn’t how you planned it or when the place you arrive looks different than you intended. Allow God to build your journey. That is what happens in the Bible. The Exodus story is one guided by a cloud by day and fire by night. The early church waited for the right time to announce the kingdom at Pentecost. Paul was kept from going to Asia and instead was guided to Macedonia.
You see at one point in my ministry I was working to create something in my journey very much like my mother and vacation. I wanted people to get it and understand. What I found was that the things I thought were great only confused others and sent them over the edge.
God had to show me that of the moments that shaped me the one that was truly important was the one dealing with people. Jesus didn’t come to rescue us from boring worship, though I do believe it bothers Him, He didn’t come to keep me engaged during a worship experience. He came for people.
You see I don’t push our fellowship as far as I once did because in the end that is not the point. I have to go with what is working to get people, the David’s of the world, the marginalized and abandoned people. You see they don’t care as much about candles as I would have believed and they don’t mind cracks in the ceiling because they want to hear something they have never heard before.
So as you go out looking for a place that has an experience that fits make sure to remember it is always about people, the widow and the orphan.
I must say it seemed harmless enough. I understood that you needed to be careful on these days. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, you need to watch what you say.
I thought I had covered all of the bases. I thought it seemed okay. I even looked for some feedback and all of it was good. I probably should have taken an all out vote though.
This is the video I created.
I thought it would be a powerful visual moment as we celebrated the wonderful gift of marriage. I mean I certainly wasn’t trying to make anyone mad. Did I already mention that I understood that this could be hard for any who didn’t have a spouse or who had lost a spouse or whose spouse wasn’t present?
Something about that video though didn’t sit well with some people. Something about the song I guess wasn’t deemed churchy enough. It is Stephen Curtis Chapman you know. Anyway, that wasn’t the only thing that got me in trouble that day but it didn’t help.
At the end of the message I talked about each set of people and I offered each set a place to share. Now it was Valentine’s Day and so the main focus was on couples, but we had stations for people who maybe needed someone to pray with about a future mate or a place to write some thoughts to a spouse who wasn’t present, but the focal point was on couples sharing with their spouse all the reasons they loved each other.
I felt that the church too often talks about it instead of helping people do something about it. I wanted to create a space where people could interact. It wasn’t the first time I had done this but it was the last.
As a minister I have never had more people frustrated and upset with me. I had pushed people well beyond their comfort zone. What I discovered was this was the last straw in a growing concern. This was not the first time we had went interactive you see.
What a meeting that was. I still find it interesting that even within this uproar people came to me who said this was the first time they had ever shared like that. I heard a lot of I can’t believe my husband feels that way. I had a single women tell me that she dreaded Valentine’s Day but that the message and time of prayer had made it better.
You may think that I am bitter but I am not. How did this shape me? It taught me that it wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about what I thought was cool or what I thought would be powerful. I still learn this on a regular basis. You see not everyone likes to have their wedding out of the Song of Solomon. Some think it is great but others just want love that is patient and kind.
I have figured out that this is okay. I made a deal that day with the leadership of the church, I gave them my word. The Spirit showed me that there was a place I just couldn’t go. There is an imaginary line that I respect, one that says that for my fellowship in my place that interactive is too far, and I respect that.
I have learned it isn’t about me and doing things that are cool to me only insures that one person is happy. Ministry is more than that. In the end I don’t want to risk what we are accomplishing as the hands and feet of Jesus just because I think it is cool to have people sculpt with clay and yes, they still give me a hard time about that one.
His name was David. We moved in the middle of my fifth grade year. He was hard to miss. He was an outcast. He spent his recesses by himself wondering around and talking to himself.
I was intrigued. Something inside me felt a deep sorrow for him. He looked alone and friendless. To be honest I suspect that he had some mild form of autism, but I certainly couldn’t spell autism let alone understand its impact in those days. I wanted to be his friend.
Maybe it had something to with the fact that I was living in a new town and I new the feelings of being friendless. We had moved from a town and school where I had lots of friends. I ended up in a school where the clicks were already formed and I didn’t fit any of them.
I began to work to become his friend. This was hard because most people just made fun of him or ignored him. He was the butt of the class jokes. Over time we became friends. Now I’d like to tell you that this story has a great ending, that we became best friends that I went to his wedding last year, but none of that would be true.
Eventually we became friends but I discovered why he was an outcast. He was strange. For a fifth grader at a new school I discovered that our friendship just made me more of an outcast. My new friend wasn’t really much of a friend so eventually I tried to make others.
I never really did until we moved five years later but there was something there in that experience that shaped me. I understood what it meant to be an outcast, to be alone and something told me this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
Fast forward several years to a married family living in Iowa following the American dream. I was climbing the corporate ladder of success but something happened along the way. I kept seeing more David’s and I guess a part of me realized it was time to finish what I started. It was time to see that one through until the end. Popularity was no longer an issue and being an outcast seemed to be just fine.
It started with two neighborhood kids whose mother seemed absent at best and disinterested at worse. We were their friends. They ended up moving for some reason but the dye was cast, the future was changing.
More and more I realized that something had to be done and it was something I couldn’t do while I was creating advertising to sell stuff that didn’t really matter.
Much has changed since I saw David walking by the swings muttering to himself but a lot hasn’t, it is still about the widow and the orphan, the outcast and the forgotten. I pray that I will do a better job remaining their friend. I pray that I point them in a lasting direction because we don’t have to be alone anymore.
Darin
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