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Name: bigtook
Gender: Male
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Occupation: net surfer addict
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Member Since:
12/10/2004
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| Back from Arizona and verbally spewing...Life is starting to normalize again. After three months of extreme physical, emotional and spiritual fatigue from our move out of the house, we're starting to come around again. The process of cleaning, readying, and selling a house in three weeks is without a doubt something I hope I never have to do again. We just moved in two weeks ago.
All of that left us hardly ready to go to Arizona for a different kind of informal gathering; this one -- a continuation of Colorado Springs -- was one where we listened to the Lord for what we were supposed to do. Why 10 people would clear their schedules and meet in the desert for something they're not sure about in the why and what realm is absolutely ludicrous if you think about it. Where the last gathering was mainly listening for the CHURCH, this one was different.
How was it for me? Surreal and life changing are the two words I would use to describe it. I'm not sure I can adequately explain what happened. And I'm not even sure that 90% of the Christian world would even believe me when I do.
It was surreal for me personally because I was dealing with overwhelming feelings of inadequacy, feeling like I did not belong. L. went to Colorado Springs and at least befriended all these other simple church leaders. I've sat under their teaching in seminars, conferences, and books, but here I was in a "meeting" with them, and unlike most of them, I'm not prophetically gifted. I was "hanging out" and ministering as a peer with those who spawned the house church movement in England in the 70's and carried it over the States in the 90's, with a couple that have had a hand in over 1,000,000 lives being touched in India over the last 8 years by training leaders in the church planting multiplication movement there, with a man who was at the heart of training up the house church leaders in China in the 90's -- a movement of roughly 80-100 million people. That fellow had a hand in planting hundreds of thousands of churches in China, India and Indonesia alone in that decade. And I haven't even talked yet about the Neil Coles. But somehow God wanted L. and me to be there with these folks 10-20 years our seniors and light years beyond that in terms of spiritual maturity and ministry fruitfulness and faithfulness. I laugh still when I think about it, but after the weekend, I laugh with a sense of acceptance. It was absolutely personally surreal. Why would God have us in their company? Perhaps for the same reason he chose Jacob instead of Esau? Just ... because.
One point made by one of the fellows there there was that more than fruitfulness, what bound together this group of people was willingness. That made a LOT of sense to me. I know I'm there. My thirst and hunger to know Jesus as Lord of the Harvest is raging within me. And I want it more badly than I want a comfortable life or even a long life. And I have come to see that all the ministry experiences I've had in my young life have taken me to this point of raw, insatiable hunger to be with Jesus on the front lines and to throw away safe, comfortable Christianity. I'm done with that.
It was also surreal generally because there was a lot of the supernatural going on. My two year missional journey into Organic Church and Church Planting Movements has come to show me the true life of a disciple of Jesus Christ and the place of the supernatural in the midst of it all. It's funny b/c most think house, simple or organic church is primarily a renaissance of church structure traveling back to a bygone era of "New Testament Church." For the hurt-by-institutional-church-and-still-deconstructing-house-church-groupies [in my opinion, parallel to this generation's "emergents"], it is. This expression is more about church renewal [and these expressions always come and go] more than it is about mission. But for me it is squarely about mission -- the ORIGINAL MISSION Jesus gave us to love our neighbors and to make disciples. I've come to see that no other church expression can handle the rapid multiplicational growth of churches that organic churches can. Yes, they ARE infinitely closer to what Jesus told us to do than the Sunday ministry monster we are doing now across the West, but that's secondary for me [check out Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity for a shocker on the "pagan" origins of most of our current church practices]. When Jesus shows up, traditional structures, funding, salaried clergy, by-laws, and so on slow things down. Not to mention we cannot possibly fund and staff churches that continue to multiply to the tune of 40,000 in a decade in one region of North India alone or churches that multiply to the 10th generation and are just as healthy as the first generation church. So it's primarily about FUNCTION for me than about FORM. And meeting these practitioners in oversea missions has confirmed that all the more to me. They are not being invited to the "emergent" conversations and conferences. They are not trying to rewrite theology and shake their fists at those bad, bad denominational churches. They are trying to join God in reaching all His lost children across the world, and they've seen just how committed God is to prepping the harvest for reaping. And with that eye-witnessing is the element of the supernatural.
Anyhow I digress... there was a LOT of supernatural and preternatural things happening. The agenda the Lord gave us was basically to go on the offensive in this small Arizona town. It involved undoing curses on the land uttered by Apache Medicine Men in response to mass genocide from the Colonial Euro-Americans. There was empathic intercessory repenting on behalf of those sins against the Apache Indians. There were prophetic visions giving glimpses to where the spiritual centers/locations as well as people/hosts of demonic strongholds that had to be broken and blessed -- even a wild prophetic vision of the past that saw the activity happening, who was at its center, and even gave correct architectural details of the insides of that home that none of us had ever been in before. There was a nighttime appearance of a demon to one of our members and a daytime appearance of four angels. Surreal.
I'll just leave it at this: I got a FIRST RATE introduction into spiritual mapping and warfare prayer walking from people who have done this on every inhabitable continent. Whatever you may or may not believe about the supernatural, I will say this: the veil in the West is getting thinner and thinner between natural and supernatural. [Read James Rutz's Mega Shift for an excellent book on this. Jim is a self-appointed scribe tracking the supernatural in the world and also a grandfather of House Church in America. He's also a fantastic writer who was at one point the highest paid copy writer in America.] The up-front, in-your-face spiritual warfare that Christians face in the 2/3 world is becoming a greater reality in the West as well. Why I don't know, but I've heard it countless times, and now I got to see it with my own two eyes this past weekend.
Surreal.
Well, it's getting late, and we leave at the crack of dawn for a vacation in Hawaii. If you're still reading this, you really do love us... or you're really, REALLY bored.
When we return from our vacation, I'll talk about the life-transforming bit. That part I still need to process with L. But as you can possibly infer already, one does not receive mentoring from people like this and experience such realities without some sort of life transformation that happens. I'm grateful for it. Please pray for us in this time.
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| Compassion Unleashed ConferenceBlogging has been difficult this last month and a half. I've been in a rut and experienced the closest thing to burn-out in a long time. I think the house sale, preparation, and the hundred decisions that needed to happen were what did me in.
I feel like my mind has been in neutral for a while. Didn't want to think about or read heavy things. Felt dull. And just wanted to watch movies and get my fantasy baseball team out of last place.
I think I'm coming out of it.
Yesterday, I attended a one day conference called Compassion Unleashed in San Jose. It was a sudden decision made primarily because I liked the guy who invited me from GrX and because I wanted to find partners for Castro School there. I'm really glad I went.
Some things I took out of it:
1.) Encouragement that there are organized/congregational churches in the Bay Area that are trying to join God's mission to the world and build the local communities around them through acts and partnerships of compassion. There were some 300 church leaders there last year, and roughly that many this year. While there was a strong program feel to some of the stuff, I remain encouraged that some larger churches are opening up their people and not just their funds to compassion.
The representation of the people I knew there was indicative of the wider movement happening. There was a guy I went to seminary with, Gary, who was a speaker there and has transitioned his 57 year old program-based church into a missional, get-into-the-community-outside-their-walls church. There was a former church planter friend who merged his young church plant into a bigger non-denominational church, Garrett. There was an organic church planter in Berkeley there, Humberto. There was a leader of a small house church network in San Jose, Elton. And there was my mission pastor friend at a very large seeker-oriented Asian American church, Rob. These were the guys there that I knew already; all our church contexts are different, but we're all asking the same questions.
2.) Encouragement that we are on the right track. Over and over again, the Lord was confirming this to me. Even down to the same vocabulary the speakers were using with that we've been using: e.g., following Jesus, not building an empire, being comfortable with saying we don't know where we're going, using new metrics or "scorecards." The direction of our Sunday morning, the direction of our partnerships with local communities. We're asking the right questions and emphasizing the right things. We're not alone. And we're not crazy. And there are many different expressions of "ekklesia" that are trying to do the same thing.
3.) Encouragement because I met the outreach director at a nearby church in Mountain View who wants to partner with us at Castro Elementary. This was probably the main reason I went. And up until the very end, I had struck out in my tries to find others. I'm hopeful.
That was the good stuff. I'm really, really, really glad for it all.
Now, it's time for some ranting.
The part I was least impressed with: when they brought two Christian former NFL quarterbacks in. Yes, they were local. And yes, they made it into the NFL. But the fact remains, they're both unemployed as of today. I love sports, but it doesn't do it for me when you get mediocre players or players who have had no longevity in the profession to talk about their faith. Get me David Robinson or even a Coach Tony Dungy b/c they have tested character and humility and also storied careers. But don't get me a guy who can't even make the 49'rs or make the Bears during their awful Dave Wannstedt days. Call me unteachable or a tough crowd, but my ears don't perk up to that. I'd rather hear the missional theologians like Reggie McNeal or Len Sweet talk at a Compassion Unleashed conference. Even a fellow like Guy Kawasaki, the Apple Marketing guy in their start-up days, was interesting for me to hear and bore some line of relevance to me at this conference. But these two ex-NFL guys didn't fit the conference like they would have if the venue was a seeker-oriented church service or a Promise Keepers rally. Plus, I'm not a White-American baby boomer who once had dreams of making into the big league and now pedestalizes professionals. I say if you're going to go the celebrity athlete route, make sure that person really is good and not mentioned in jokes or on ESPN as an example of a top 5 draft day bust. Or at least have him talk about a relevant angle to that person's life story like never giving up or overcoming disappointment in life -- not talk to me about leadership like he's John Maxwell or something. The leap was too much for me.
Another [strongly felt but not big in the grand scale of things] complaint I have: I'm NOT into contemporary American Christian/church culture. I'm not into the rah rah rah happiness in it. I'm not into the spectatorship of it. Where these two aspects met for me was during the worship at the conference. First off, I don't mean to be irreverent, just christian-culture-envelope-pushing, but why do we need to sing worship songs at conferences? I think it's become part of the gathering template and is an automatic space-filler for Christian events. I'm not saying it's not good or useful. I'm just wondering why we feel like we always have to have it. But I digress...
I REALLY struggled during the worship at the conference. Most of it probably has to do with me and where I am in life, but boy was it difficult. I couldn't sing the worship stuff. I couldn't focus. Musically, it was rocking good, tight and crisp. And visually, the Passion Band would have given the thumbs up as they were obviously using a more powerful presentation software than Microsoft PPT that could stream edgy video into the background.
Usually I've heard the worship distraction discussion centered around bad technical quality (bad singer, poor mix-down, missed notes, etc.). It wasn't like that here. The quality was great. I'm still trying to put my finger on it. They were so impressive I couldn't focus in. I couldn't get my attention off the band itself. It didn't help that some of them dressed like they were in a real rock concert, and that the bass player teenager was way too demonstrative given the instrument he plays (sorry, I'm a former bass player in a high school band). But something about the culture felt so performative and the mood felt too forced campy rah rah rah. It didn't feel like we were being taken somewhere on a journey. Life seemed to be left behind at the door during that time -- rather than invited in to the feet of the Father.
I felt close to God that whole day and desirous of meeting new people, but I did not feel like participating in that worship time at all. It was actually strange -- like I was a missionary on furlough back to America and thinking, "What is all this? When and how did this all happen?"
Gosh, this makes me more appreciative of the worship at BCC. We had a good foundation laid and legacy carried on. I think our guys really get it the worship as connection to God thing.
Oh well, time to end this verbal spewing. Please forgive the upchuck or as we said in Pittsburgh growing up, "Gruk."
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| StarfieldLOVE Starfield's new album. The first several songs ROCK. Love the remake of Hillsongs United's Hosanna. And love the song after it too on letting God reign.
There's a song close to the end where the lead sounds very Bono-esque. It's different. But I like it. Speaking of Bono, I think I like Starfield's version of 40 better than U2's. U2's was always too campy live feeling for me. Starfield's has some grit to it.
I like.
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| Jim Henderson comes to the East BaySo yesterday Minho invited me to go up to the East Bay with him. I gladly went not really knowing much about the event other than that Minho was singing a song there and that Jim Henderson was going to be speaking.
I'm glad I went.
The Lord has been telling me the same thing from David Watson's Church Planting Movement Awareness conference, the speakers at the Organic Church greenhouse, and now Jim Henderson: that we need to, in Jim's words, release Jesus from organized religion and let him go public again. The way there is much less deconstructionist sounding as that phrase may indicate. It's the radically simple 2nd half of the Great Commandment revisited: love others as yourself. If every follower of Jesus would get back to basics and love more than any other person around and love people regardless of whether or not they are spiritually open then Jesus gets out of private religion and the isles of irrelevance and obscurity that we have banished him on to.
Love like no other. Love deeply. Love the unloveables. Love sacrificially. No wonder people admired the Mother Teresa's of the world. They did this when few were doing it.
Jim makes the excellent point that not-yet-Christians AND Christians hate doing evangelism. We have made it something so unnatural, made it about one-way talking (packaging and selling), and made it about US controlling the agenda of the conversation. No wonder not-yet-Christians don't want any. No relationship works like this anywhere [except in church but that's another topic].
Most relationships that are healthy and enjoyable are two-way -- talking and listening. They also flow naturally out of life and don't have to always revolve around one single topic. And people want to feel respected, like you will hear them and learn from them -- not just one way.
Jim demonstrates this in his book, Jim and Casper go to Church. A hilarious and unfortunately damning book on Christian culture where Jim takes Matt Casper around with him to all the famous churches in America to get an outsider perspective -- something he learned from the business world: find non-customers; ask why they are so, and win them over.
Anyhow, I highly recommend it and think that this alternative evangelist is giving a gift to the church for how to be normal and natural all over again.
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| My goodness, March 20th was the last time I wrote in here.
Some updates:
1.) We're selling our house and looking to become renters. The last three weeks have been crazy busy getting ready for it and looking for rentals. There's a longer story here that I'll save for another day.
2.) As a result of the above, I'm no longer going to Seattle for my graduate class this June. Now I'm going to India in November. I'm excited about it since I know very little about Indian culture. Yet along with China, it's one of the hotbeds of exponential church planting movements. The class leader is a guy from YWAM San Francisco who has knows a lot about organic church planting in India. He's spearheading efforts to do it in the S.R.O's of San Francisco. I think this class will be quite educational for me from a cross-cultural perspective. Can't wait. Need to start frequenting more Indian restaurants now. Any suggestions?
3.) Attended the David Watson Church Planting Movement Awareness conference yesterday. Very encouraging to see lots of pastors and elders there from the traditional/congregational churches. There's a growing hunger here in the Bay area to see God do something big and something that has God instead of human strategies written all over it. That they were filled to capacity at City Team for this event is quite encouraging.
He made the point that ordinary lay people are better evangelists and church planters than seminary-trained clergy -- something that the Organic Church movement has helped me see as well. But there was some doubt in that room when that assertion was made. Then, he brought up a 24 year old Latina woman who was a divorcee with a toddler son struggling with Lupis. In the last year, she had trained enough people that 60 discovery bible studies (embryonic churches before the people realize they are churches) had started from her ministry or coaching and over 100 people baptized as a result. She was just intentional about investing in people and about sharing Jesus with unchurched people and willing to obey. Watson asked us pastors to raise our hands if we saw 100 people come to faith in the last year as a result of our ministry. No one raised her or his hand. He asked how many of us even planted a few churches let alone 60. The same result. It was a powerful moment and illustration that God loves to use ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
More to come later -- hopefully. | | |
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