Screw Yoda!

Something struck me out of the blue yesterday. Something just stabbed at me from the darkness and it landed the blow with clear and beautiful pain.

I’ve tried. Screw Yoda, there is such a thing as try. I’ve given my best effort towards making my way into an internship or an eldership or an anything and so far… nothing. I have not just shaken the bushes, I’ve pruned the damned things.

And nothing. Not a single solitary thing has emerged from that effort. A man I consider my friend, despite our many miles distant, once told me this,

“We serve a sovereign God and if He wants you here, nothing can stop you from getting here.”

God doesn’t want me anywhere but where I am right now. I sought the Lord, I inquired of Him everywhere I could and the only growth, the only call, the only place anything happened, is here.

Some people would say I’m giving up. Yeah? Well if I could give up, I passed that place a while back. I waved to that version of me, the one who has stopped and been crushed under the weight of ‘what might have been’, and I kept on going.

Screw Yoda. Sorry, had to say that again.

Don’t believe me? When I committed to joining the team planting a church in Las Vegas. All hell broke loose. For six months I made plans to move. One day in January I get told I am being laid off, here’s a small chunk of severance and so long, see you later. And then what happened? Then stumbles, roadblocks, etc. suddenly pop up everywhere. And, then, somebody pays my way to Vegas. Pays it and then some. So it became a huge rollercoaster and I could not back down from it. I couldn’t stop it. I was going to Vegas and it almost killed me. But God had His way. Now, conversely, I’ve been seeking to move to Memphis, Birmingham, Huntsville, Nashville, Atlanta, Macon, etc and not a single door has opened.

So now it’s here. Now, regardless of what comes next, I am digging in my heels. I am willing to do what comes next, but I am in no way ready. That’s the next step. I am going to get myself ready. Yes, I used two selfish terms to describe what will really just be Christ’s work in me. I know that, but I know He accomplishes His will in me through me, not always in spite of me.

Me? I’m calm. Calm like a bomb.

Looking for Apollos

So some of you have begun following my journey here. I am appreciative. It’s been a rough one. 

Something on my mind of late has been a criticism of the way that church planters are perceived and developed. There is a leadership concept that most leaders don’t like to discuss because when you look at it critically, you begin to see it is neither biblical nor is it really all that smart. And yet, it is regarded as a quality for leaders to have.

I’ve written concerning the personality aspects of church planters before and though this touches on that, it’s also broadly more about the kind of guy most church planting networks are looking for. 

The guy they seem to search for is the guy who can just ‘do’ it. This guy is a risk taker, a natural leader. A guy who can stand and fight and keep going under strain and pressure. A guy who can do the job. A guy who can lead a core team. A guy who can run a church. And in a lot of ways, none of those things are wrong to look for. But I would argue that looking at those things above other criterion is perhaps not as biblical as one might think. 

What I am saying, in essence, is this:

We’ve been looking for Apollos and putting him in charge of churches when the bible seems to outline a clear mandate for Timothy’s and Paul’s. 

So why do we do that? 

Well, my theory is that Apollos is not a bad leader. And I don’t mean to literally imply that we chase showy preachers who are doctrinally unsound. I would well imagine Apollos did a fine job after being corrected by Priscilla and Aquilla. But I also see that we can model only about %0.001 of our church structure, ideals, etc. on Apollos and the rest on Paul, Timothy, Titus, Peter, John and James. But we see a mixed bag of people in the church of Acts that we do not see in church planters these days. Or perhaps not in the networks I have been invovled with. 

We look for the guy who seems like he’ll make it. And yet, we have Paul admonishing Timothy that the gifting he has to lead the church in Ephesus came from the laying on of hands by Paul specifically and the elders. 

We don’t have a picture of Timothy as a guy who really fits the bill for church planter. The things Paul corrects in him seem to be indicative of either an introvert or someone who had both introverted and extroverted tendencies combined. 

Paul constantly encourages him not to give up, to run the church and to keep going inspite of the persecution and suffering he has to go through. He doesn’t tell him, “You really have to reign in your tongue. You are prideful. You really need to watch how you are damaging people. You are being too much of a risk taker.” No, he tells him more often than anything to continue in the fight, to continue to preach and teach sound doctrine and to do things which fulfill the call on his life. 

Am I saying all church planting networks are doing it wrong and they need to go back to house church models where only introverts can be teachers? No. A resounding no. But rather I would ask that any of you reading this who are bringing up church planters might consider the men who don’t typically fit your ideal for a church planter and ask yourself why not. 

What It Looks Like

Tuesday night I taught on a balanced view of spiritual warfare. 

I taught on Angels, Satan and Demons from Grudem’s Christian Beliefs. It was intense leading up to it. Never have I ever been so attacked in all my life. It was like a race to see what else might go wrong before the teaching. At a certain point there was an admonition not to flush the toilets anymore. Yes, really.

And I realized something that night that the Lord has been trying to show me for a while. Something I haven’t been willing or able to see. I mentioned in a previous post about quitting if you are able. I don’t think I’m able. I don’t think I’m going to be able to walk away from any of this. And I don’t think He’s going to let me. He changed my heart. He made me this way. And I don’t think it’s really up to me anymore. I just walked through the most hellish week I have encountered in a very long time. And coming through it I don’t feel a release to do something with less suffering. I don’t feel like I can just weigh the scales and choose the lighter load. 

I don’t know, fully, what God has intended but a scripture has struck me of late. It’s come to my attention not just in my teaching but through other sources that brought me back to it for completely different reasons.

“And he said, “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd. And the LORD said, ‘These have no master; let each return to his home in peace.’” 2 Chronicles 18:16

That may not mean anything to you. I would, in fact, expect not. But right now that verse is breaking my heart. 

Pray for me? Pray that I would have the humility and the strength to do what must be done.

The Inverted Community

I touched briefly yesterday on what I perceive as community, inverted. Today I will expound. Bonhoeffer in his book, Life Together, said some truly important and amazing things about community. But one, and I am not going to quote it because I had it in audio only and can’t remember the exact passage, was along these lines: “You can’t approach community from the perspective that you have a new thing to offer it or a new way to build it. It exists before you and you were brought to it, not the other way around.” Virtual communities are becoming the hip thing to do. From Facebook to Twitter to whole churches offering services online. I’ve seen people ‘pray’ for one another in Facebook threads, in chatrooms, over Twitter, etc. I’ve heard from people who say how much they love staying home and going to church on the internet. And I look at all of these things and I realize that they are attempts to replicate what real community is. They are attempts to copycat the original recipe without realizing that the main ingredient in the original recipe is grace driven effort. I can’t and won’t say “Facebook is of the devil” or “Pastors should never tweet”. I like Twitter and Facebook both. But where I inverted it is seeing either one of those as a real substitute for community. Community happens face to face. When I begin to extend my tendrils outward towards people I don’t know and don’t really love, in hopes of their reciprocation of this ‘pretend love’, then I cannot be surprised when they don’t or won’t join my faux community. If I build a kind or type of community in order to sit in place of the community for which I was designed, I will feel like a man fed honey and nothing other than honey. I will enjoy the taste but will never be truly satisfied or strengthened by it. I believe things like Facebook and Twitter should be used to strengthen and increase existing community. But the way so many use it - the way I myself have been guilty of using it - is to spread and dilute community. And I’m not sure I can get back to a place where I can use it to modify the community I have built. I need to work on building that community first. If I am ever going to plant a church, it is vital that I not only understand true community, but am practicing it.

Schism

I want to explain why I closed down Facebook and Twitter and hopefully give the few of you that care my reasons. I’m under a fairly massive attack right now. The biggest areas with which I am attacked right now are ministry and career. I’m getting hit from *all*sides, really, but those two are particularly hot battlegrounds. I spoke with a friend about it and he gave me some fairly surprising advice. He said he sat in a sermon with Johnny Hunt, former president of the SBC, in which Pastor Johnny said the following, “If you can quit, quit. I’ve tried several times and I can’t.” And this got the gears in my brain turning. Why can’t I quit? Or, can I? Can I lay these dreams down? If I can, does that mean that I’m the originator of them? I would posit, yes. So I have to establish what this really means, long term. And I kind of have to do that in a vacuum. Not a complete vacuum, mind you. I am not cut off from all possible accountability, I am just cutting myself away from the echo chamber that Twitter and Facebook have become for me. Is this the only reason? Assuredly not. But it’s a big one. I have to see if this dream is real or if it’s just a product of me spending time with likeminded individuals who are pursuing it. Am I just chasing something down because of peer pressure? Am I enjoying my ‘friendship’ and my ‘community’ without it being true friendship or community? My closest friends are not ones I have met through Facebook or Twitter. Some of them are also on Facebook and Twitter, but I am realizing the ‘community’ that Twitter and Facebook tend to create is a fake one. It requires nothing of me. And if it requires nothing, in the end, it really *means* nothing. I need complicated, messy and painful community. I need the heartbreak. I need the suffering. And I don’t need to keep pretending that I’m ‘one’ with the universal church because I have a convenient way to talk to a tiny percentage of them. I am not Paul. I am not the super Apostle. I am me. I am a guy who is currently failing at life. So, far from just saying ‘FML’ and throwing my hands up, I am doing something about this. I nearly deleted my Tumblr but then I realized it doesn’t do the things Twitter and Facebook do to me. I get almost no interaction here. I get almost no sense of community here, faux or real. I may once again open my Facebook or Twitter. I may. But I will do so not in pursuit of community but as a result of it. I will do so because it will allow me to bring people who are close, closer, not a tool for trying to keep the far away in some kind of check. And because I am a completely mischievous guy, feel free to retweet this or post it to your Facebook.

Okay, if your children’s pastor EVER shows up looking like this… somebody dropped the ball on the background check. 

thedailywhat:

Lights Out: Dogs fur Jesus.

[d|m.]

Let Me Draw You a Map

I am easily distracted. 

Actually, scratch that, I love distraction. I love to spend as much time as possible doing as little as possible and being totally entertained. Twitter and Facebook had become outlets for me. To give you an example of how easily distracted I am, I have to use a piece of software to keep me focused on the task at hand by denying me sites where I would normally waste time.

My attention span has never been this bad. Never. I’ve never been one of those ADD children who can’t be alone in a room without fear of destroying it. I used to read a novel every day. I used to complete a video game in a sitting. All of these things feel like they are so far from my capability right now. And I can honestly say the reason has to be my copious immersion into the internet.

Hear me, the internet is not evil. But it allows for such a massive change in my overall ability to focus and work that I am now restricting what I can and cannot do here. 

I’ll go ahead and make a prediction: we’re on the cusp of something much worse. I know, that’s a fish in the barrel kind of prophecy, but I think we are truly at the edge of no longer having any separation from the digital life. I really believe we’re on the edge of no longer even longing for privacy or quiet. 

And that, my friends, is truly dangerous. What are we so afraid of in silence? What can we not tolerate when our minds are allowed to be still? 

I return again and again to Psalms 131. I must begin living that. And I must begin using that as a meter for my life. Whatever takes me from it, I must leave. 

bendelaney:

Some great illustration work here by Pope Saint Victor.