All posts by Rod White

Disentangling from Addiction

A life in the Spirit, Psychological growth, , , , , , ,

When Jesus spent his “Lent” in the desert, I think he went into the wilderness to face the utter absence of anything that was familiar, to experience being saved in his vulnerability before he went back into a world fraught with attachments.

Old Foss Cemetery

When I was pondering the Lord’s radical trust after Ash Wednesday, I had a surprising image come up in my mind. I remembered visiting western Oklahoma with my family, the very towns in which my father grew up. Remembering how it all looked was almost like the Holy Spirit drawing me back into the wilderness of my father’s life and the emptiness from which I came. My mind went back to the time we stood in Old Foss Cemetery. Our steps on the brittle grass invaded the hush as we explored. My father found a family plot enclosed by an old iron fence. The rusty gate creaked in the wind as big black storm clouds blew in. The place was silent, desolate, and I felt the ache of my silent, desolate  father. I felt his unmet yearning. I still feel his yearning like I felt my unmet yearning for him. I think Jesus was feeling that absence and yearning in the desert.

Yearning in the wilderness

I think Jesus was in the wilderness to experience the yearning all people feel and to enter the ache of their wilderness, the pain of their emptiness. And in that vulnerable place he was tempted by the devil like we all are. He went there to do battle, like we all are doing battle in our most vulnerable places where we long to attach, to be loved and to love. Most of us will do almost anything to avoid going to that hurting place, so the devil often wins the battle because we don’t even show up.

Cross at St. Andrew’s Abbey, Valyermo

I have been to the geographic desert many times to try to show up, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Not too long ago Gwen and I made a return visit to St. Andrews Abbey in Valyermo where Gwen, especially, had some significant experiences of grace as she battled her temptations with Jesus.  For most of us, spending time in the geographic desert can be rare. Our geographic deserts mostly take the form of temporary, silent, solitude in a simple yet comfortable retreat center or hermitage. For everyone, however, the desert of the heart remains unchanged. And we can visit it anytime we dare. It is not comfortable. I have visited parts in me that are like a desolate, abandoned graveyard in Oklahoma.

Hungry for our addiction during Lent

The New Testament accounts of Jesus’ forty days of temptation in the wilderness are an intentional parallel to the Hebrews’ forty years of exodus. Lent is an intentional parallel to both. We are led into the desert by the Holy Spirit. There, while hungry and vulnerable, we are tempted by Satan. The three temptations Satan offers Jesus are all about desire, about yearning, and we will meet those same kinds of temptations ourselves. Because everybody has an inborn desire for God, whether you are consciously religious or not. This yearning is our deepest longing and our most precious treasure. Some of us have repressed this desire under so many competing interests and fears that we are mostly unaware of it. Or we may experience it as a longing for wholeness, completion or fulfillment of our potential. Regardless of how we describe it, it is a longing for love. We hunger to love and to be loved and to move closer to the Source of love. This yearning is the essence of what people call the human spirit. It is the origin of humanity’s highest hopes and dreams.  (Read Gerald May’s Addiction and Grace, please).

We describe this desire as God given. So Paul says in Romans 5: “We boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” The Bible is full of people yearning for God and God yearning for his people. Because in an outpouring of love God created us and planted the seeds of this desire for love and loving in us. Then God nurtured this desire in us toward fulfillment of the two great commandments: Love God with all your heart soul mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

But something gets in the way of God’s desire. We don’t fulfill the commandments even when we want to. We are usurped by forces that are not loving; we are captured. Our desires get repressed and stifled. Repression is one thing, but something even worse happens, our desire attaches to something or someone other than God, something other than true love. We get addicted.

Addiction enslaves the energy of desire to specific behaviors, things or people. The objects of attachments become preoccupations and obsessions; they come to rule our lives. They become gods. The psychological, neurological, and spiritual dynamics of addiction are actively at work in every human being. The same processes that are responsible for addiction to alcohol and narcotics are also responsible for addictions to ideas, work, relationships, power , moods, fantasies and so on.

The temptations that the devil presents to Jesus in the wilderness or to us in our wilderness, in the  emptiness we choose or the emptiness in which we are stuck, or which we inherited, all have to do with desires being attached, being nailed to something else.

Throughout these temptations, Satan was hoping Jesus’ desire in his vulnerable state would lead him to attach it to meeting his own needs, using his own power, or relying on the material world. Satan was trying to lure Jesus into the “I can handle it” trap, and Jesus could have handled it. But instead of giving in to the massive power of temptations to convince him to attach to something other than His true self in the love of God, Jesus stood firm in his own freedom, in his faith and in grace.

Jesus leads us home

Jesus was truly vulnerable, but the way he responded to Satan’s temptations reveals how people attached to God get through their deserts and get home. 1) He stood firm. He met the adversary, faced the temptation, and did not run away or rationalize. 2) He acted with strength: he claimed and used his free will with dignity. 3) He did not use his freedom willfully. None of his responses to Satan were even his own autonomous creation. He relied upon the truth that had already been revealed in love by quoting from the Torah. We are all working on being that free every day.

We go off into our wilderness of Lent to keep practicing being free, because we are still tempted. What’s more, like me realizing at a very young age out on a hill in Oklahoma, I have an emptiness in me yearning to attach and I need to be careful about what it latches on to.

It is an uncomfortable process to not merely avoid the pain. We have a proverb around Circle of Hope that speaks to that: We are all recovering from the sin addiction, expect conflict.

Recovering causes problems. It puts us in conflict with the whole society, which has notable addictions, en masse. I think, in general, the nation is addicted to fear, to carbon-based everything, to narcissism, to war, to radical self-reliance — even for poor people who aren’t allowed to be self-reliant, to freedom based on earning power. We live in a wilderness we did not choose in so many ways.

There is going to be trouble every day. As if where we live was not temptation enough, we all have our own personal drugs. Some are substances or habits like alcohol or sugar or painkillers or porn or Facebook. Some of them we don’t even see as addictions yet, because our desires are so trained by them, we are so enthralled to them, that they just seem like “us,” nothing else.

We need to get disentangled. Lent is a great time to face it all like Jesus in the wilderness, a great time to talk back and act back. Lent is a great time to exercise some freedom as members of an alternative society by going without addicted behavior we can recognize or to exercise some freedom by taking on new habits that come from grace, not bondage. Lent is for suffering the wilderness with Jesus, for aching. It is hard to show up for that battle, but losing by default is worse.

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No incarnation, no justice

Doing Theology, , , ,

You may experience the same theological divide I felt at the Justice Conference last week. Whenever one is listening to a parade of speakers there is not a lot to do but compare and contrast. So I did. And I felt an interesting contest going on. It was a fascinating smorgasbord of evangelical do-gooders and I enjoyed snacking on various goodies.

Strangely enough, I think my most long-lasting good impression has less to do the the speakers and more to do with the wonderful notebook the organizers made for each participant. Across from a nice bio of each speaker they had a page for “notes,” the “key quote” and the “key take away.” I am so unused to going to conferences that I forgot that we are often encouraged to get a takeaway from a speech. We are not supposed to immerse ourselves, relate, understand or resonate, necessarily; we are to sift the data for something that moves us, or is useful to us.

Well, I think I learned to do that a bit.

Evangelical justice

We were talking about justice at the conference and one of the scriptures used was I John 4. One interpretation dissected my understanding of that chapter more clearly than I can remember. I had forgotten how it could be divided up.

In his letter, John is defending the incarnation. Most commentators think he has some opponents in his congregations that are tilting the gospel toward Greek, “gnostic” thoughts that would not tolerate a God in the flesh or tolerate relating to God in a personal way. So it was surprising to see that even while thinking about John’s letter it is possible to divide up John’s thoughts in such a way that one can strain out the personal and end up with principles. One of the speakers seemed so steeped in his principles and committed to a sovereign God who was so “other,” that he had a difficult time figuring out how to argue for doing justice, which is so incarnational.

But he gave it a noble try. This Bible study is my takeaway.

1 John 4:9-11 — This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Why do justice? Here is what I stereotype as an Evangelical way to look at it, according to the passage above.

  • You should do justice by applying the principle: God loved us so we should love others.
  • Then, moving along with what John says, you could add the principle that: Our love means nothing; it’s all God’s love that changes the world.
  • If you are really going for it you could add: We should show love like God showed it in Jesus by being sent into the world so others might live through Jesus.

I don’t think those thoughts are all wrong. But I don’t think it is all John is trying to say, or that he would ever say it. Especially since he immediately says.

1 John 4:12 — No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

John is not merely applying principles, he is explaining the reality of God’s love living in him and God’s love being made complete in the body of Christ as they love one another and show his love to the world.

The incarnation of justice

I never would have become a Christian in the first place, had I just been signing up for the impossible task of applying biblical principles. I had enough guilt motivating me already. To be honest, the arguments that well-meaning Christians presented to me were not that convincing until I met God personally, which happened in spite of their arguments.

They were doing things like making principles out of the following nuggets from 1 John.

1 John 4: 16-17 — God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.

One could read 1 John 4 like it was a very good argument for what a Christian ought to do. One can take the sentences above and focus on the last clause: “In this world we are like Jesus.” The principle could be:

  • Jesus cares about people so you should care.
  • Jesus desires justice, so do it.
  • Obeying the principles is the only way to have confidence on the day of judgment because you can demonstrate that you actually followed the commands of your teacher.
  • Doing what is written is the way that love can be complete and not flawed under God’s scrupulous eye.
  • God is love. If you say you are saved, you’d better be loving.

I don’t think those ideas are all wrong, but they might be missing the main thing John is talking about.

1 John 4:18 — There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

It is only the love of Jesus at work in our hearts that can transform us into lovers. No amount of proper principle-applying will do it – especially when we apply the principles because we are afraid we will be disobedient and possibly judged if we don’t! Doing the work of justice no longer has to do with punishment, either; it is mainly about fearless lovers bringing the presence of Jesus with them as they dive into tangled-up humanity.

Nevertheless, one could reduce 1 John 4 down to one verse:

1 John 4:19 — We love because he first loved us.

That was a key verse the Baptists gave to me as a child. It was so short almost anyone could memorize it and get a prize! And even a child can get the point:

  • Jesus loves me.
  • And because Jesus loves me, I should love.

Only that is not all that John is saying. I’d say that sentence does not mean that at all, all due respect to Mrs. Roadhouse, my second grade Sunday school teacher. He means: Our capacity to love is set on fire by God’s love for us. We are rebooted for love by his love alive in us. Without God in us, we won’t be loving like God. John is experiencing an ongoing incarnation and he does not want it stolen by people who do not have God in the world, just a set of religious principles. I think he, again, quickly says just that:

1 John 4:20 — Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.

It is not so much what you say, it is whether the love of the living God is in you.

It’s not that John is not making an argument. It’s that he is making an argument for incarnation. His God is not “up there” and we worship this remote God by effecting empathy — like Jesus demonstrated, and like he left us word about in the Bible before he returned “up there.” To the contrary, John’s God has entered into our experience and into our lives. We enter into the difficult tasks of love, like loving people we can actually see today, because the Spirit has entered into us and Jesus is entering into our situation with us.

What should be your takeaway from my Bible study? I don’t know. Did Jesus tell you anything? Did God’s love move you? If nothing personal happened between you and God, then there wasn’t much point in writing anyway. Especially when it comes to making an impact for justice in the name of Jesus, we’ll just be arguing if Jesus is not in us causing love to break out.

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Blinders Off — the Rich Have Succeeded (again) in Gobbling Up the World.

The Mission, , , , , ,
Juan is second from left at the top.
Juan is second from left at the top.

Juan Marrero put a couple of things together for me last week. He did it when the Kingdombuilders bowed their diverse heads for prayer and he started reading from James 5. Let me try to bomb into your day with the same aggression:

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.  Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.

It may be a lost cause to say it, but, “Listen you rich people!”

Before Juan started reading, I had been flabbergasted all week over Oxfam’s report that the annual income of the richest 100 people in the world could end extreme poverty THE WORLD OVER four times. Here’s the claim: “The richest one per cent has increased its income by 60 per cent in the last 20 years with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process. Oxfam warned that extreme wealth and income is not only unethical it is also economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive and environmentally destructive. Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director, Oxfam International, said: ‘We can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for a few will inevitably benefit the many – too often the reverse is true.’“ James would add, “You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.”

a break at WEF in Davos

Oxfam got their report out in advance of the World Economic Forum held in Davos (in Switzerland, of course, the first tax haven). The WEF is a non-governmental group devoted to making things better, they say. One look at their video, at the people attending, and at the place they are meeting shows just how far away they are from Juan Marrero in North Philly [link]. It is fascinating to get a peek at how the super-rich and their institutions behave [link]. They certainly don’t look like they will be slaughtered any time soon, but they do look well fattened.

I appreciated how Juan Marerro was just not having it. He’s not too susceptible to promises from the rich who put themselves in charge of making things better. I suppose the Comcast building, the local castle that houses a corporation fat from recently gobbling up NBC, casts a shadow that reaches clear into Juan’s Fairhill neighborhood. That’s where he is pastor of Christ Centered Church and executive director of Crossroads Community Center. He says he is dealing with people “Who have nothing.” The church he leads opened on Christmas Day 2011 and by last summer had about 80 people involved, about half of whom are ex-offenders and their families. It bears saying that ex-offender bankers who have not been prosecuted were likely dining in Davos. Ex-offenders in North Philly can’t get a job because they are perpetually tracked as ex-cons, even though they have served their time. There are actually laws that require employers to screen for people who have been in jail [link]. He’s upset that the supposedly “fair” AVI assessment will drive his people out of their homes because landlords will pass along the tax increase, which will be substantial in his neighborhood.

Rich vs. those who have nothing

Marerro was not having it like James was not having it. As usual, the most authentic Christianity can be found among those who have nothing. At least they can read James and feel it. I suspect many of the Christians in the United States have no idea what to do with James 5. They might know better how to deal with the World Economic Forum. More likely than doing anything with James 5 or dealing with the WEF, they are just zoned out, trying to ignore the poor who live in the shadow of their local corporate giant, or trying to ignore the rich as they continue to gobble up resources in any way possible. Check out the PBS piece “Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream and it will help you to stay wake.

You can tell I am upset. I’m trying to blame it on Juan, but I was primed by the time I saw him. He just had the audacity to speak the truth. Yet he did not neglect to aggressively read the next few lines of James which aren’t usually connected to the writer’s aggressive prophecy against the rich. James cautions his people to “Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains.  You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.”

The Lord’s coming is near, now and later. Getting righteously angry is important in a world in which the richest people and their institutions charge themselves with taking care of the poor while not injuring their economies. They are failing. But their godless pursuits are doomed to failure, no matter how hard they use Comcast to convince us they are doing great. Whether we have nothing, or we just don’t know what to do, if we keep planting truth in love, we can be assured that the Lord will bring about the harvest.

OK. I am going to do that. But I am patiently impatient. I trust the Lord to be near, but I think keeping some fire burning, and some anger reserved, is part of that. Today and all during Lent, at least, I intend to look at my city, region and world with blinders off, as much as possible, and try to see what the Lord wants to do now. The corrosion is testifying and eating flesh like fire.

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Selling Dresses for Syrian Refugees Bought Comfort

The Mission, , ,

The Syrian uprising was reportedly ignited by bored teenagers who spray-painted some graffiti on the wall of a school in Dara’a challenging President Assad, who is a trained ophthalmologist. Their message simply said, “It’s your turn doctor” (check out the NY Times). When the reaction of the authorities was harsh, neighbors came to the defense of their kids and protests soon spread around the country. Before long, defecting soldiers created militias, which have now formed a coalition, one that does not include radical Islamists who have flooded into the conflict from around the Middle East.

Walid snuggles under an MCC comforter in Zarqa, Jordan.
Walid snuggles under an MCC comforter in Zarqa, Jordan.

By the start of 2013, more than 60,000 people, mostly civilians, had died and tens of thousands of others had been arrested. More than 400,000 Syrian refugees had registered in neighboring countries, with tens of thousands not registered. In addition, about 2.5 million Syrians needed aid inside the country, with more than 1.2 million displaced domestically, according to the United Nations.

In December the Mennonite Central committee beefed up their aid to $1.3million dollars as the refugee crisis deepened (check out the MCC website). Thank God that we are part of MCC! We are supporters of MCC in a number of ways. A good portion of our common fund goes directly to the mission all over the world. Our thrift stores exist as part of the MCC network of stores. Last year, $87,000 of our profits went to many good works.

Sara and the dresses
Sara and the dresses

On top of those regular contributions was the special portion derived from selling wedding dresses. Remember those dresses? The story goes like this. The landlord was trying to rent one of his unrentable spaces so, of course, he contacted us. He is familiar with our mission to redeem unrentable spaces – or so it would seem. As part of the deal, he wanted us to buy the who-knows-how-many wedding dresses and formals he had in the space. We bit the hook, assuming that we could sell almost anything – but not completely sure.

Howard and Katie getting the word out.
Howard and Katie getting the word out.

We wanted to highlight our new store and the plight of Syrian refugees, so we had an October-long dress sale: Be a hero, Buy a dress! Some of us even got out on the street to advertise (thanks Howard and Katie). Some of us even dressed up in the dresses and went to the Halloween Gala for Syria (Zombie Optional). We started selling dresses and some people even bought them because Syrians needed help. We have paid back the purchase price and have given over $2500 directly to Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan. Plus, we continue to sell dresses in both stores, and the money will continue to go to Syrians as long as we have dresses!

Apart from the joy of doing our part to help people in need, we have learned and gained a lot from this experience.

1)  We succeeded in making people aware of the trouble in Syria and making them aware that we care about it. We are world Christians. Jesus cares and so do we.

2) We forced ourselves out of our comfort zone and on to Broad St. and, as a result, met a lot of new people. We learned that we are actually quite capable of mixing it up on the street. Come to find out, we have a lot to offer people who need us. Jesus has gone before us and we are following.

3) The new, unrentable store space actually worked well! Circle Thrift profits (and contributions to our causes) have gone way up! Jesus has a lot of ways to get things done and we are trying to be creative, too.

It is a big world and it is such a mess! It is always tempting to hunker down and ignore as much as possible (FB, Twitter and this blog, notwithstanding!). It is hard to make choices about who to serve and how to give. But another thing I think we learned (again) from our four-month attention to Syrian refugees is that we get bigger when we try to do bigger things. Our hearts get bigger when we love beyond their normal confines. Our faith gets bigger when we exercise it, especially on behalf of those even poorer than ourselves.

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A spiritual midwife: God’s helpers in birthing new life

A life in the Spirit, Leadership, , ,

People were clamoring for spiritual direction! One of the best things I heard throughout all the dialogue of our church’s mapping process last year was the persistent request for more help to grow in grace. We need to nurture further gifted people in the body who direct us. We need to pay attention to the people and resources we have already been given. We want to provide everyone with good opportunities to go deep. It will take more spiritual midwives — men or women who can help with the spiritual birthing process. We need them, whoever they might be.

Shiprah and Puah
Shiprah and Puah

We need clever and brave midwives like Shiprah and Puah, the forerunners of good midwives everywhere. Here is their story:

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”
                 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”
                So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. — Exodus 1:15-21

Shiprah and Puah! Why haven’t any of our most recent female children been named after these great figures in Bible history? Is it because Moses gets most of the airtime in the Exodus story and these women only a few lines, so they are easily forgotten? Is it because our family story is written by and about men, primarily? Probably both.

Even though it is a male-dominated story, a very basic image manages to push its way to the surface quite often: narratives of  pregnancy and birth, stories of new life that redirect and transform.

God the midwife

Pivotal women in the Old Testament story set the stage for THE birth story. Luke’s sensitive telling makes the incarnation vivid. Mary asks the angel “How can this be?” Nicodemus asks Jesus when he is called to be born again “How can this be?”

It can be because God herself is the midwife. Psalm 22 spells it out as we are led to pray:

You brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
 From birth I was cast on you;
from my mother’s womb you have been my God. — Psalm 22:9-10

When we see God pictured like this, it should dawn on us, like Margaret Guenther says, “that the midwife helps new life into being and protects it; even more than the mother, she is the tender guardian of its safety…Shiprah and Puah may well stand as an icon, the foremothers of all midwives, but behind them is another guardian of new life. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. The Lord is my midwife, I shall be kept safe” (Holy Listening p. 84).

We need spiritual midwives

We need more directors who are like midwives for new birth: present to another in a time of vulnerability, working in areas that are deep and intimate, helping a birthing person to greater self-knowledge, assisting at a natural event. A spiritual midwife, like one who stays with a woman through a natural birth, sees what the birthgiver can’t see, knows the signs of transition, witnesses the crowning of newness. She or he recognizes the time to confront, the time to encourage and knows how to do both. Our goal for 2013 is to provide a roadmap for spiritual direction that helps people understand and exercise their options for growing in grace.

We are already blessed with people among us who have received training in spiritual direction. But we don’t need to wait to get on their schedule. We don’t need to go to the “spiritual birthing center” to give spiritual birth, per se. We have an assortment of ways we might meet the need. Our cells are hotbeds of spiritual direction, if one is listening and not devaluing. Our pastors are good directors, and getting better, as are our Cell Leader Coordinators. But one doesn’t need to wait for a one-on-one, you can access what is being taught in our meetings, dive into the pastors’ book recommendations, make a friend who is consciously a spiritual friend, or be involved in the day retreats of spiritual direction. We plan a whole brochure on the topic.

We can put Shiprah and Puah on the front of the brochure, but it won’t do much good unless people who are talking about needing direction receive the gifts given. We need directors, but we also need people who really want to be directed. It is often said that the person seeking to find direction finds a guide. A person who can’t be directed often complains they are without guidance.Enhanced by Zemanta

Planning: Let the Lord Make your Radical Steps Solid

The Mission, , , , ,

We are about ready to distribute a spiffy, hard-copy version of our 2013 Map this weekend. We take our planning seriously. We set goals and (to our surprise!) tend to meet them. But don’t get us wrong. We don’t have a very deep commitment to strategic planning, as it is commonly practiced (as in, I don’t really understand the following chart).

Some Christians actually think that if your church is not involved in some strategic plan you are being unbiblical. One article from the venerable Christianity Today said, not long ago, there is a mandate for strategic thinking in the Bible and they quoted Proverbs 16:9 as their proof: “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps.” I think they were interpreting that to mean, “If we plan, the Lord will make the plans happen” (Marshall, n.d.). But I think the proverb more likely teaches: “You can plan all you want, but if the Lord does not make your steps solid, your plans will come to nothing.”

The latter interpretation is more in line with how we map out the year. I admit, some of us wish we were much more adept at working together like a well-oiled machine according to a sensible, trackable, strategic plan. But we are not that adept. For instance, the pastors, have a 3-4 hour meeting every week that’s full of strategizing. But it is so long because a good hour of it, at least, is always devoted to sharing our hearts and developing one another. There is entirely too much laughter to allow for adept project management! We just can’t stop the love to make progress. Progress ends up “happening” in spite of our plans, sometimes.

How planning really works

That kind of planning for God to show up seems to be how Paul’s missions strategy really worked. If you want to talk about biblical strategizing, check out how the premier, most successful, strategist in the Bible worked out his plan. In the view of 21st century strategic planners, who take their cues from corporations, people say Paul focused on the major cities of the Mediterranean basin as his target for world evangelization and carefully worked out a well-considered plot to infiltrate the whole area. Well, I’m not sure about that. He got to the major cities, most of them, that’s true. But it seems like his strategy amounted, mostly, to taking the next opportunity that presented itself and then sticking with it until he, most of the time, got thrown out of town.

The Gangites River near the site of the first baptism in Europe.

Take Philippi, for instance, this was Paul’s first stop on his leap into Europe, a leap occasioned by a vision in the night. Philippi was an important city which Augustus had refounded as a Roman colony and where he settled Italian colonists and veterans of the Praetorian cohort. Acts 16:13 reports that there was a Jewish synagogue (proseuchë, “place of prayer,” is a designation for Jewish meeting places) by the river Gangites, about a mile west of the city center. That’s where Paul met Lydia and things got going. But up-and-coming Amphipolis, which would have been the next port of call for Paul’s ship, probably would have been a more strategic place to start. Preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Lord and Savior of the world in Philippi risked hostile reactions from the beginning, since its citizens were staunch worshipers of the emperor and of his deified ancestors. A series of coins minted in Philippi shows on one side the head of the emperor Augustus with the inscription “the Augustan colony of Julian Philippi on the command of Augustus”; the reverse side depicts a statue of Augustus on a pedestal being crowned by Julius Caesar, with the inscription “Augustus, son of the Divine, for the Divine Julius” (Schnabel, 2007). The Philippians were pretty hard-core.

While Luke reports in some detail the conversion of Lydia, a God-fearing woman from Thyatira in Asia Minor who lived in Philippi and attended the synagogue (Acts 16:13-15), he focuses his history of the mission in the city on the opposition instigated by locals who initiated legal proceedings against Paul and Silas before the magistrates, which landed them in prison (Acts 16:16-40). The missionaries were accused of causing disturbances in the city and of “advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice” (Acts 16:20-21). This is where Paul’s strategy led him to get started on Europe.

We plan like Paul

It looks like God established Paul’s steps right to Philippi, good strategic thinking notwithstanding. Paul had his general orders to take the gospel to the gentiles, but it looks like he didn’t overly care how that happened. We are doing a similar piece of strategizing this year. One of our network goals starts with the general idea of who we need to be. We know that “We are incarnations of Jesus in our neighborhoods. We want to be people who are known for bringing the hope and justice of Jesus to the streets.” That’s a given. But we don’t mind how many different ways that happens.

We have an idea for how we can carry out our vision this year. So we have charged “our Coordinating Groups to connect with people and partnerships who already bless our neighborhoods.” We don’t really know exactly how these groups of cells will meet this goal, although I hear that a couple already have some good ideas. Our Map offers an assortment of suggestions for how we might meet our need by working on the goal: We could connect and partner with people among us who work with agencies in our neighborhoods. We could partner with other churches, agencies, and allies. We could mobilize the resources of the church to bless our neighbors.

The suggestions are purposely general, because we want the Lord to establish our steps. We want people to listen to the Spirit and to one another and to risk taking the opportunities they are given. We don’t need to be slaves to the strategic plan, fitting ourselves into holes predesigned by some piece of paper. We know what God wants us to do, and we trust that the Lord will work out the specifics. We are sure that our plans and agreements can only help in the process, but we certainly make them flexible enough to take our best shot when it is provided. If we fail, or get thrown out of town, that might make things even better! Read Paul’s letter to the Philippians from prison in Rome and you’ll understand his idea of strategy even better!

This one comes with references!
Schnabel, E. E. (2007). Paul’s urban strategies : Jerusalem to Crete. Stone-Campbell Journal, 10(2), 231-260.
Marshall, M. (n.d.) Is strategic planning biblical?: Looking at leaders from scripture. Christianity Today. Retrieved from http://www.buildingchurchleaders.com/articles/2003/le-031112a.html?start=2

Children Nurture Us, Too.

The Mission

When Circle of Hope first got going, it was devoted to loving the “next generation” and providing them a safe place to connect with Jesus. That is still the central focus of our mission. And the central population of unbelievers are still 19-35 year olds. We’ve done a good job. And many of you reading this are those very people for whom Jesus had us looking. Thanks for coming by.

The next generation birthing the next one

We quickly realized that the next generation of Jesus-followers was creating the next generation of the church. We are inventing something that may seem old to Jesus but is rather new to the megalopolis (and to Denver, it appears). What’s more, as we suspected from the beginning, if you get a bunch of 19-35 year old people together and they become Jesus-followers, many of them will likely marry and produce another form of the “next generation.” Our children are an increasing tribe who are remaking us day by day.

I, for one, love children, and I often spend significant portions of my week down on various floors with them. I am a fan of children. It is one of my great joys to have the opportunity to bless that portion of the next generation. I am also a big fan of parents who stay close to the mission field in the megalopolis rather than retreating to safer-seeming enclaves.

This year, our network devoted one of its five goals to children and their parents: Develop the capacity and vision for our Network Children’s Team. The Broad and Washington Stakeholders have already said they want to participate in efforts to create a common philosophy and a network plan that considers the unique factors in each congregation. The pastors have already begun to create the position of Network Children’s Coordinator and we have a token amount in the budget to sweeten that person’s service.

Organizing for children

Children becoming visible

Organizing for children is a risk. They are like the invisible man — once he is wrapped in the bandages and becomes see-able, people freak out. Children are generally invisible; at the PM I am often making sure they are not stepped on as they compete for chips. Some people notice how many of them there are and freak out! Many people in our young constituency did not move to Philadelphia to come to Sunday school, to be married or to deal with children! So we are be testing people’s sense of affinity when we expect them to love a child – and we do expect them to do that. When we test them, they might leave us for adults-only places they prefer. So treating children like they belong can make the mission harder, but we can develop the skills to bring it all together – at least that is what we hope.

Children are a visual aid

Making a case for children as valuable members of the community is not that hard, really, since we are all children of God and are called to come to God as children. If nothing else, children are a constant visual aid for our own development. If you don’t believe me, take it from Jesus:

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ He called a little child, whom he placed among them. And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes a humble place—becoming like this child—is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me’” (Matthew 18:1-5).

Actually, we might be depriving people of one of the things they need most, if we deprive them of children. Our adults-only Center City is probably not a healthy place for anyone if it is not a healthy place for children. If a person attempts to grow up by denying their childhood or denying the child they carry within, that is not going to work out, well. If we just see children as appendages to dominate and control rather than as people to relate to and love, then we are not only hurting them, but dwarfing ourselves. So, like many things that are good for people that they don’t like, children are an important element of developing into our true selves. So when we organize to nurture them, we are organizing for them to turn right around and nurture us, too.

Get Out There in the Face of Fear

The Mission, , ,

When our second Network goal for 2013 appeared, some people immediately asked some anxious questions and some got downright upset! But all it said was that “people need to see Jesus where they live” and “we need to be good storytellers,” so we are going to “generate opportunities for our worship to be more public.” We already have public worship every week in our buildings and lots of people have found us there, but we are going to make it even more public by taking it to where people live in some way.

buskersWhat could be the big deal? People did not have a big problem with the idea (the discerning process came up with it, after all), but they were less aware of what it might mean until they saw suggestions for how it would be implemented, like “improv” and “busking” and a “touring PM team.” They suddenly had visions of intrusive preachers with portable microphones, and of people thinking that we are cheesy Christians imposing our cheesy songs on an unsuspecting public. The whole idea seemed too out there, too embarrassing, too prone to getting a bad review on Yelp. Seriously.

How did Jesus get out there?

We caused an interesting debate. I sympathize with some people who can’t imagine Jesus with his guitar out on a Capernaum sidewalk (the fact that there were no sidewalks is another matter, have some imagination!). And he did tell us not to pray on street corners. But what about this from Matthew 8?

When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever.  He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him.
When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
“He took up our infirmities
and bore our diseases.”

The question I ask of this scripture is this: was Jesus trying to be private and people found him in spite of all his efforts? Was he just doing a private act of kindness for his best friend into whose house he felt comfortable enough to enter and find his mother laying around?  That might be a shy Christian’s dream: healing as personal, private, intimate, secret, and in the family. They might say, “Jesus was just being good and people found out about it; they took the initiative, so He didn’t look proud. He didn’t look like he was trying to make a big deal about being the Son of God and doing miracles, or looking like he thought people should be impressed with him and pay attention to who he was and what he was doing. He wasn’t making trouble for someone by doing miracles in their backyard without a permit, or causing some uproar with the police.”

Or did Jesus walk into Peter’s house unannounced, even, or walk in because someone in the crowd told him the woman had a fever, just busting in to her private space. Did he touch her, fully knowing that it would be all over Capernaum and on up the hill to Nazareth in a couple of minutes? Shouldn’t he at least have had a feeling that by evening all sorts of people would be showing up to be healed? And didn’t he have some sort of consciousness that he was meant to be known for bearing people’s diseases? Did he ever do anything that he didn’t think was going to make a difference and didn’t he always think he was born to make a difference?

There are reasons to be scared

I think we are just a little scared to get “out there” in ways that put us next to uncontrollable people and bring us in contact with the authorities and powers that run our streets.  And there is reason to be scared. To be honest about the example of Jesus, it won’t be long after Matthew 8 that he will be in trouble with all sorts of authorities and powers. So there is something out there to inspire fear, if we are so inclined.

But it is a little strange that some of us can’t get our heads around the example of Jesus going to where people are! Some of us are out selling energy products, we meet people giving us free vodka in bars, we get free tastes in the Reading Terminal and we experience all sorts of people finding every way possible to get on our screens. Yet Jesus is supposed to wait until he is somehow discovered lest we seem too aggressive.

We say that Life in Christ is one whole cloth. As we participate in and love “the world,” we bring redemption from the Kingdom of God to our society. Jesus is Lord of all, so we have repented of separating “sacred” and “secular.” But it is true that the secularists have not repented of isolating the sacred and legislating against anything but what they deem tolerant. So it is hard to present oneself as a Jesus follower and not expect opposition, perhaps vocal and even legal! I think the younger one is the scarier it has become: “I won’t be able to have a job. They’ll find a picture of me busking. I’ll get tagged as an extremist. They’ll label me a hater.”

Nevertheless, I am still glad for the courage that prompted our goal. I don’t think the goal came from nowhere. I think it is intimately connected to the heart of Jesus. Who busted into Peter’s disease-filled house with healing and then poured his goodness on everyone else who thought he just might be their Savior. Taking worship to more public places is such a sweet way to confront the powers with epiphany and help seekers find us. I suspect we have even more “out there” ways up our sleeves.

Fomenting Diversity in the Age of Big Data

The Mission, , , , ,

We did a little demographic work recently. If we ever become proficient in running the programs that store our data, we can do more. And I think we may need to do more. We live in the age of data and it seems like the younger one is, the more one is interested in parsing data to decide what reality is.

We are on the cusp of entering the age of “BIG data.” We are growing up the ultimate consumers who expect to have their personal preferences met by the institutions with which they trade their info. The huge data whales of our info ocean, like Facebook, are training millions of people to trust them with their lives. When someone walks into Circle of Hope (or, more likely, checks out the webpage) they have new instincts to apply to see if they “fit.” Even more, they look for the perfect image of an institution that meets their estimation of righteousness.

Data breeds the illusion of perfection

People are now well-known for applying all their info gathering to assess the quality of their most personal relationships. And the church is on the personal relationship side of life, for sure. In an article in Psychology Today Hara Marano quotes Barry Schwartz noting that

“One of the problems with unrestrained choice…is that it raises expectations to the breaking point. A sense of multiple alternatives, of unlimited possibility, breeds in us the illusion that perfection exists out there, somewhere, if only we could find it. This one’s sense of humor, that one’s looks, another one’s charisma—we come to imagine that there will be a package in which all these desirable features coexist. We search for perfection because we believe we are entitled to the best—even if perfection is an illusion foisted on us by an abundance of possibilities.”

So it is no surprise that people bring similar mentalities to the church. They raise their expectations to the breaking point. A lot of people give us one public meeting, and maybe not even all of that, before they have decided we are not the best fit.

Looking for the perfect racial mix

One of the more painful results of people comparing us to their data relates to race. This is one reason we have to learn how to use our database (which doesn’t even track most of the things people assess!). We need to learn how to sort our people a little bit so we can give an intelligent answer to people who ask questions.

We don’t think it is particularly right to sort people according to class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, region of origin, political party or social media savvy. But many people we meet do that sorting instinctively and we need to speak some kind of language they understand. For instance, I had to prove that regular attenders of Broad and Washington PMs are about 25% so-called people of color. Our neighborhood association area is 68% white, 6% black, 19% Asian and 7% Hispanic. Ours numbers about match those of the Center City Core and are a licc population by agettle more “white” than the percentages of extended Center City. Point Breeze is surprisingly changing in make-up as we speak.

When someone enters our room (and often I do this, too) they “count the beans” like the proverbial accountant. How many people of color are there? This is especially relevant to us, since we say one of our convictions is “Fomenting diversity and reconciliation is at the prophetic heart of our gospel. “

“Have we achieved enough diversity?” is our question, too. In the age of big data and the accompanying rise of expectations, one might expect people to expect the perfect mix of population they prefer. We’re subject to that ourselves.

There is a lot more to the social dynamics of forming our church, of course, than just assessing its racial make up. For one thing, our target population has been the 19-35 years olds who make up 35%of extended Center City and nearly half of the core of it downtown. They are notoriously not followers of Jesus and we have good news for them. They are also mostly “white.”

If people want to count beans, I wish they were assessing how many faithless people are in the room when we meet. But even if I don’t like how people arrive at their questions about diversity sometimes, I still think they have good questions. Even though we might not meet some standards of righteousness, fomenting reconciliation is one of those convictions we will go down fighting for.

Counting different ways leads to different assumptions

I often gently argue with bean counters by noting that we are a lot more than what is happening in a meeting at any given moment. We are a 24/7 organism, not a meeting. The meeting is representative, but we are fully engaged with the city, as individuals and households, across all barriers all the time. Plus, many of our compassion teams connect us with groups that are not as diverse as we are, and not as interested in being so.

This year, we decided to demonstrate how we relate across barriers more deliberately as an entire church. One of the network’s five goals is: “Use our series of six Saturday seminars to feature facilitators from outside of our network who can open our minds and hearts and enrich our diversity.” Our first seminar will be lead by Drew Hart (who wrote a fine blog post recently). The title is “Jesus Doesn’t Sleep on Racial Reconciliation and Neither Do We.” (It has a Facebook page, of course). Come meet Drew on January 12th.  Our seminars will highlight the many relationships we have that make us quite successful at fomenting diversity and reconciliation.

I fear that some of you who got this far in this post are feeling a little tired, like you have been swimming frantically away from a data whale trying to consume you, and now you are tempted by your own pastor to make friends with the darkness of bean counting! I am not really recommending righteousness by demographic perfection. I just want us to listen to the people around us with love, to keep recognizing our weaknesses, and to keep striving to overcome the barriers that continue to divide people, especially the ones that keep them away from Jesus. We are doing that. Even if we fail in the eyes of many (or our own eyes), let’s keep doing what Jesus does, without slumber.

I, for one, have a big stake in it

Building community, Leadership, ,

I have been learning a lot about our life together as Circle of Hope at Broad and Washington from the Stakeholders discussion, both on and off the blogsite.  For one thing (since I can see the stats) more people than ever have visited the site this year.  That’s a good thing. What’s more, I think care-filled, intelligent and vulnerable comments have been offered as part of the dialogue.  I am re-learning what a treasure chest we are.  We are people who have applied ourselves to learning the way of Jesus, like the Lord says, ”Every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old” (Matthew 13.52).

Working a little stake

One of the things I’m learning, again, is that there are a lot of little stakes being worked out there. Some people are bringing up treasure that is old, which is that much better for being seasoned. Some people are discovering new treasure in themselves and it is all very exciting. I think it would be great if we could get it all together into a big mining company with Jesus as the CEO. He is actively making that happen.

stakeholders

Sometimes people start using the word “stakeholders” with just a vague notion of what it means. It has the general sense of someone who has a stake in something. They care. They are the people who feel they “own” the organization.  That’s a good way to look at it.

I use it in a more direct way. Being a stakeholder is like mining gold — like 49ers in California staking a claim in a territory they were sure had gold in it and being crazy enough and determined enough to keep digging until they find it — only our territory is the human “goldfield” of the Philadelphia region.

Still direct, but looking for deeper gold, being a stakeholder is like Jesus claiming us and us claiming him back, Jesus settling right into us and us settling right into him,  everyone expecting to see glory and digging in until they find it, like He prays in John 17, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one;  I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.” That’s treasure.

Big capacity

I think it would be better if we perfected a big, diverse operation with Jesus directing the whole thing. I suppose we are as far along as anyone in that pursuit. Many people are “digging in” at different levels. I’d say people are stakeholders “according to their capacity,” but that seems demeaning to me – I think we can all make a choice to serve with our whole hearts and not be restricted by an estimation of our “capacity.” We can’t really predict what the Spirit of God might do with us, whether we think we can do it or not.

For some people, capacious or not, their stake really is just dust in the wind, but some are working well with spoonfuls of dirt, others are immersed in the mud to good effect, and still others have learned how to move the dirt with heavy equipment. For instance, some people will read the title of this blog post, that’s a start. You obviously got this far in the text and may have even delved into what’s behind the words. Then there are people who will click the link and go to the BW Stakeholders site. Some will dig in and read it. Some will give of their treasure, new and old, there, with a comment. Then some will go to the meeting January 4. Some will bring glory to the meeting when they speak. Others will listen to others and not feel bad about talking or being talked to. Then many will do something about what is being said more than talk about it. Some will actually lead us to fulfill the goals we’ve discerned. And so on. There are a lot of levels. And I think the sum of the little stakes may be greater than the whole.

I admit, I love the chaos of the whole process of mining spiritual gold. Becoming a stakeholder always invites the moment of creation. I don’t think it is too grandiose to say we are exercising the image of God in us when we “hover” over the new year and then unveil glory by deciding the year is important and recognizing that what we do matters. Whether the stakes seem small or we get a glimpse of all the treasure around us, we are important in the process of bringing life to 2013 and should feel and act that way because God has made us so. It is always a good lesson to relearn.