The Agony of Defeat

Today, Sunday, September 14, 2008, at approximately 5:00pm on the North Ranch Community Tennis Courts, my friend, Kevin, beat me for the first time by a score of 6-4.

I was defeated.

There will be no living with him now...

Unexpected divergence

I realized something this morning as I was walking. It seems like the closer I get to God these days, the farther away I feel from my church. What is up with that?

Certainly it's a combination of internal changes in my own heart plus changes in our community. Here's one very recent example. Last Sunday, about 15 minutes before the service began and I was to speak, I heard something which really caught me off-guard. I pushed it aside in the moment to focus on the service, but that afternoon it resurfaced in my mind and turned me a little upside-down. Then I had lunch with one of our two senior pastors on Monday to make sure I had heard correctly and, if so, to express my concern. And, yes, I heard correctly. And, no, nothing would likely be done about it. And, yes, it's a big deal for me. He understood my concern and validated my feelings about it. Then we talked about living in that kind of tension when we don't agree with each other or decisions that are made. And about how that is one of the things we are striving for in our church. Living in the tension. Even if it's over values - not just theology or philosophy or ministry.

Ok, so pause that for a minute and let's go back to the whole missional/attractional church thing. Our church is very much an attractional church - meaning, we put a lot of energy into trying to get people to come to our Sunday morning service. In fact, I would say that most of our resources (time, money, effort) go towards pulling off a great Sunday service. And often we do. Beyond that, we offer serving opportunities for people to get involved either in our church or in the broader Tucson community. But that is sparse, at best. Now please don't hear me wrong. I am not bashing the attractional church paradigm. I grew up in this paradigm!

In a missional church, though, service to the community is not a ministry of the church or a program of the church. It is the church. Everything is focused and expressed through being a missional movement in the larger community. Emphasis is placed on the church going out instead of trying to get others to come in. In my opinion, the two paradigms are 180 degrees apart. And for me, as I've said before, I'm having more and more difficulty seeing church any other way than as a missional movement of people loving God and loving their neighbors.

So as I wonder what that kind of missional church might look like and how it would operate, I often struggle with what church gatherings should be. Should a missional church still meet every Sunday? And if so, for what purpose? And I often think that, for a missional church that is living, working, and playing in it's mission field, a regular gathering should be a type of break or time-out. It should be a time of refreshment, encouragement, rest. A time when we would come together to talk, laugh, cry, share, support, reflect, celebrate and get ready for whatever comes next. But a time of tension? No, I don't think so. There's already enough tension in life. Tension at work, at home, at school, and in relationships. Tension caused by hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, sickness, and death.

As I think about my church trying to foster an environment of differences, to celebrate those differences, and to live in the tension of disagreements - even over big things - I'm beginning to ask myself this simple question: Why? For what purpose?

Again, please don't hear something I'm not saying. I'm not saying we should be a Stepford church where everybody acts the same, thinks the same, or does the same thing. How boring would that be? There will always be differences. But, shouldn't there be some common ground, some common values, some common mission that brings us together and moves us forward?

When I consider what areas in my life are causing me the most stress, the most tension, the answer is clear: my church. How do I celebrate that? What am I missing in all of this?

September 11

I got to work early that day, after listening to a CD all the way there. When I walked in to a mostly empty office area, one of my co-workers stood up and asked me - I'll never forget his words - "Are we safe here?" I had no idea what he was talking about, but soon learned of what was unfolding. Working for a defense contractor who builds and stores missiles for the US Government, his question began to make sense.

I remember trying to get some work done, but spent most of the morning huddled with others in shock around a small TV in a break area. I left early and spent the evening hugging my family as we watched our country being changed forever.

I've been to Ground Zero twice since then. The first time was...well, let's just say we cried a lot. The second time (about 9 months ago) was better. Now it looks mostly like a construction site. But I was still filled with feelings of loss and sadness.

We will never forget.

Made it through

The service went well this morning. I don't want to say anything about riding a bicycle because that would sound very cliche-ish. But, I was relaxed and only had to refer to my notes a handful of times (I've been working on reducing my dependence on my notes.) Thank you, God.

However, I need to think a lot (still) about doing this again. I really struggled with getting this ready. Not because of the subject, but because of changes internally. I love talking about the Psalms, especially about praying the psalms. But my motivation level to prepare a sermon was pretty low, and I had over a month to prepare! Therefore, it was not very sermon-like. I'm just not sure anymore if this is what I should be doing, or if this is where I should be doing it - whatever "it" is.

In the meantime, I feel closer to God than I have in a long time. My morning walks (almost every day now, interspersed with some jogging) have become very special times. I'm reading The Divine Hours every morning and evening and praying the psalms. I have begun to look forward to these times of walking and praying much more than I would have ever anticipated. They are definitely putting me in a place where God can transform me, as Richard Foster writes.

I have no idea where God is leading me through all of this, but that's ok.

I'll find out along the way...

Catching up

A lot has been happening lately, and, in all honesty, I just haven't felt like taking the time to write. But the mood hit me tonight, so here's a recap of the past several days.

Mom spent a couple of days in the hospital this past weekend. She had some sort of intestinal issue which really knocked her down. But she came home Monday and is doing much better.

Besides that, our long holiday weekend was good. On Friday I purchased the most awesome car stereo in the world for my zoom-zoom! It plays MP3/WMA CDs, and has an aux port for MP3 players, built-in iPod controls, and a USB port. So for $30, I bought an 8GB thumb drive and now I can listen to pretty much my entire library of music in the car! (This was an early birthday present for me after my factory car stereo decided to eat a CD on Thursday.)

Kim and I almost made it to the first Arizona football game of the season on Saturday. After the game was delayed for an hour due to lightning, and then the call from Mom at urgent care, we called it a night. Arizona won 70-0 over Idaho, so it wasn't much of a game anyway. Yeah, 70 to nothing!

We spent Sunday afternoon with our best friends at their house, eating, drinking, and watching our kids play. It was great fun and very relaxing.

I've been busy preparing to speak this Sunday at church. I'm going to talk about praying the Psalms (a favorite subject of mine) while praying that God will give me the words to say! It's been almost two years since I taught, and I've had more than a little difficulty preparing for this one. In hindsight, I was not ready to do this again, given everything that has happened in these two years and where my journey is taking me. But, by God's grace, we'll make it through.

Now it's time to try to catch up on some sleep...

Walking Images

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love... more

Surprised and Forgotten

One of the advantages of not taking a class this summer was getting to choose which books I would read. I finished a really good one this past Saturday and started one yesterday which may end up on my best list.

The book I just finished is Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright. This is the fourth book of Wright's that I have read and he has quickly become one of my favorite theologians and authors. This particular book (with the subtitle Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church) was much more than I expected, even though much of this material Wright (by his own admission) has written about in other books in more detail.

One of the things I loved about Wright in this work was his continual reference to Scripture. I don't mean he quotes verses in every paragraph. Instead, he lays out different historical perspectives and beliefs on heaven, resurrection, and mission. Then, he will say something like, "Now let's go see what the bible actually says." Sure, he's coming at Scripture from a certain perspective - just like the rest of us. But he makes some very compelling arguments based on how he reads the bible. It was challenging, fascinating, and inspiring. If you really want to be surprised by hope, read this book!

The book I just started is The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church by Alan Hirsch. Hirsch is one of the leaders in the emerging missional church (EMC) movement today. The first book of his that I read was The Shaping of Things to Come: Mission and Innovation for the 21st Century Church, co-written with Michael Frost (Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture), and it sits on my all-time best list. That first book, combined with some Fuller classes at the time and personal experiences over the years, ignited a passion in me to be part of a missional community. As I've said in other posts, with each passing day I have a harder time envisioning "church" in any other way. This is a growing challenge for me in my current non-missional church, but I digress...

I'm only about 70 pages into it so far, but already several things stand out. Hirsch poses a question near the beginning of the book which drove much of his content. He points out that around AD 100, there were as few as 25,000 Christians. Merely 200 years later, before Constantine declared Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire, that number had grown to something like 20 million. So his question is simple: how did they do that? I expect much of the book will be trying to answer that question.

Another thing that caught my attention was a footnote on page 45, where he is writing about the decline of the Western church. He writes, "In fact, the church is on the decline right across the Western world, and we have had at least forty years of church-growth principles and practice." The footnote then explains:

In a dialogue between Michael Frost, many members of the faculty of Fuller's School of World Missions, and me, it was generally acknowledged by all there that church growth theory had, by and large, failed to reverse the church's decline in America and was therefore something of a failed experiment. The fact remains that more than four decades of church growth principles and practice has not halted the decline of the church in Western contexts.

As a Fuller student, I was pleased to read this. I was a little surprised, also, because Fuller has emphasized church growth and missions for a long time. But I was happy to read that at least some at Fuller are recognizing that perhaps we need something new.

More to come from this book...