Saturday, May 19, 2012

God-sightings at the Hope Epidemic

Today we experienced our community's second annual mission blitz event known now as HOPE EPIDEMIC.  We had at least 1200 people out doing acts of love, kindness, mercy, and grace this morning.  At noon we started a HOPEFEST celebration using a large former food store facility, offering free health screenings, food, haircuts, and many other services.  Throughout the afternoon we heard testimonies of faith in Jesus through word and music.  Holding the event in a public, non-church-building facility we drew even more people that last year's kick-off HOPE EPIDEMIC event. 

Each of us saw the Holy Spirit at work in a variety of days, depending on where our work projects were and how we were involved at the HOPEFEST celebration.  Here are a few of the God-sightings that graced me:

  • Seeing so many people of so many different ages willing to work to help clean up neighborhoods in which they'd never been.
  • Watching people pray for each other's needs before we even left the church building to head into the mission field.
  • Meeting neighbors we might otherwise never meet.  Breaking stereotypes of "those neighborhoods" and finding caring people eager to receive and offer God's grace.
  • Watching part of our crew rescue "the Hope Epidemic kitten" - a tiny thing not even weaned.  "Hope" now has a home.  We're about bringing hope to all God's creation!
  • Hearing Christian rapper "J-SON" sing and talk about the pain of child sexual abuse, and watching someone being ministered-to and begin to experience the freedom from bondage that only Christ can bring.
  • Seeing people respond to baseball legend Darryl Strawberry as he and his wife Tracy invited people to give their lives to Jesus!
  • Watching a recent new Christian eagerly share with someone how God is fully trust-able!
  • Witnessing people new to Jesus and/or new to our church throwing themselves all-in for giving real hope in Christ to our community.
And that was just my limited experience today!  The church has left the building - FOR GOOD!

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Someone Else's Family Reunion

As a follower of Jesus I have been passionate about evangelism and disciple-making for three decades.  I have been appointed to five different settings as a pastor during that time, and I have worked with and consulted with many more congregations in different communities.  I always get the same answer when I ask an introductory question in any church fellowship - "What's the greatest strength of your church?"  Church folks always say, "Well, we're a friendly church!"  And usually they are right.  The kicker is that "friendly" has lots of definitions.  Most churches are a particular kind of "friendly."  Generally, it's the kind of "friendly" that any of us would experience at a good family reunion.

If your family does reunions regularly and you like them, they are a friendly experience to you.  It's a gathering of people you know, even if you haven't seen them in a while.  They are people with whom you have a shared history and shared traditions.  It's easy to pick up conversations and subjects of interest, even if episodes are separated by up to a year.  There's a comfort level in seeing the same set of faces.  Births are celebrated and deaths are mourned, all as part of the family fabric.  Family reunions give us a sense of belonging and identity.  From this anchored base, the rest of the world can make more sense to us.  Family reunions feel "friendly."  When most churches describe themselves as being friendly, it's this sense that they mean.  We are friendly to those who are already in the "family" or who are coming into the family via birth or marriage.

Now, imagine showing up as a total stranger to a family reunion.  I'm not even talking about the experience of marrying into a family and having to go through the awkward time of "passing muster" with your spouse's kin and acclimating to this new group.  Think of what it would be like to come into such a setting with no built in contact, just showing up.  Do you think that would be a friendly experience?  I doubt it.  It's not about people being mean or intentionally unfriendly.  It's just awkward.  Here's the hard part.  For the vast majority of people who summon up the courage to attend worship in North America, this is what it feels like to show up at a worship service.  It's like crashing someone else's family reunion.

Just this morning I was reading Psalm 68 in the Bible.  In the New International Version, verse 6 starts out, "God sets the lonely in families..."   Do you hear that?  If a person who is relationally or spiritually lonely comes to our churches, Jesus followers, God sent that person!   The burden is not on them to find a way to graft into an already set family-reunion system.  The burden is on us to break open the closed family system and to make the needs of the stranger more important than our own comfort and internal "friendly" feeling.  To do otherwise is to run contrary to the flow of God's own heart.  This is not an easy task for churches.  It's runs against a natural tendency.  I'm very blessed to be a part of a church doing all it can to open its borders to people who are seeking.  We can tell you that it's a constant challenge.  But it is the effort an energy required to fulfill Jesus' command of Matthew 28:19.  Beyond that, it is the source of blessing beyond compare, to be about God's business of setting the lonely in a family that fully adopts them and embraces them in the name of Jesus.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

They Keep Rewriting the Rules!

Transitions happen, sometimes at a pace that outstretches our ability to keep up.  Telephones had cords not that long ago.  People wrote notes on paper instead of Facebook and Twitter.  Computers sat on desks instead of in palms.  Things shift rapidly.  Because of that, life can become disorienting and scary.

When you think about it, it's the rule-changing that throws us off.   Game-changers rewrite the rules.  (Game changers are things like the Gutenberg press, the discovery and colonization of the Western Hemisphere by Europe, the cotton gin, electricity, flight, computers, the microchip, etc.)   For instance, Generals Grant and Sherman rewrote the accepted "rules" of "gentlemanly" warfare, and crushed the South during the Civil War.  Our country is still affected by this shift, rightly or wrongly.  Each time a pivot in history happens, we struggle to figure out the new rule set.  Then, as soon as we do, the next shift hits us.

Look at an example from my world.  The church of which I am a part is one of the many courageous United Methodist congregations in our state that has decided to be obedient to Jesus' marching orders as expressed in Matthew 28:19 and Acts 1:8.  It has not been an easy journey, here or in any other church like us.  We've had to shift from being a congregation mostly concerned with maintaining our own internal structure and focusing on the people we already have, to restructuring our focus outward on the people who have yet to meet Jesus.  In most established, long-term Christian churches, that's a discovery-of-electricity level shift.  Once church involvement was defined by showing up at worship, maybe attending Sunday School, pledging to the church budget, serving on a committee when asked, and voicing your vote to direct the pastor, the leaders, and the programs of the church.  A missional focus for a congregation rewrites these rules along the lines of the Book of Acts.   Involvement is now defined by making a personal commitment to Jesus, growing in relationship with Jesus in daily and disciplined way, binding with other Jesus-followers in this growth, discovering how the Holy Spirit has called and equipped each of us for ministry, and doing that ministry while introducing others to Jesus.  The old rules were like a democracy making group decisions on directions.  The new, first century model is more like an army under command taking objectives.  For most like me who are into their sixth decade of church or more, this is a seismic change.  It is a complete shift of the rules of the game; disorienting and frightening.

So, what do we do when the game-changers throw us off in any organization or just in our personal lives?   Maybe we just need to remember that we have responded to major game changers already - each one of us.  Once I was in the care of my mother every day, and then I walked into a public school for the first time.  Game-changer!  I survived, and the core identity which is "me" stayed in tact.  Once I lived at home, and then I had to survive on my own in a college dormitory.  It was a major shift, but I managed to navigate the new terrain.   Once I was single, and then I was married and had children.  All the rules got rewritten, but it was worth it.  You get the idea...we have more experience and capability to handle the game-changers than we think we do. 

That being the case, maybe the game-changer shifts in life and the subsequent upset of the rules can be more of an opportunity than a threat.   What if we approached any such transition with an open-ended question:  "What might the game look like now?"

And we can remember that there are some things that don't shift, like core values.  For people of my faith system, God is still God, Jesus is still Lord, the Holy Spirit is still moving in our midst, and our task still is leading people in new life with Jesus.  We just need to keep asking what that looks like when the game-changers happen.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.