From High Brow Pirate to Hometown Pastor

This Sunday started with a very special gifting to some special people.  Back in July, Jessica, Dana, and Fuzzy were baptized.  Well, this week they were presented with proper baptism certificates and gifts.  The gists were small leather versions of The Message version of the New Testament.  After that we had our worship/sharing period.  We went around the room and each shared a piece of ourselves with each other.  It was a time of sharing and laughter and all around good time.  Amy saw someone outside picking up recyclable trash and went outside to bring him a donut and asked him if he wanted to come to church and he came in.  He was a nice young man named Doug and he seemed to enjoy himself.  

We went into a discussion about prayer and why we do it and it was a really good discussion and there were raw and honest emotions and tears.  From there we had our time of prayer and reflection and candle lighting and then we had our period of announcements and then a most lovely communion.  

We did decide that next week is going to be a Thanksgiving leftover potluck communion Sunday, but we also decided to do some discussion about future services at the juice bar.  So off to the juice bar we go.  Almost everyone who attended service went to the juice bar.  We pulled tables together, placed our orders, shared some laughs, and enjoyed life.  After a bit I pulled it in a bit and we started into the meat of the conversation.  

The first thing we discussed was an interest by everyone about sin and Satan.  What is sin, how did it get here, who is Satan, how does that work…etc.  So two weeks from now we will be discussing sin and satan.  From there we are going to take each week and discuss the seven deadly sins week after week.  That’s right…Wrath, Avarice, Sloth, etc etc etc.  Some people even discussed how much fun it would be to dress up like each sin that will be discussed that week.  

As the conversations got deeper we found the areas they wanted to discuss even more specifically.  The devil…what is his relation to God and what is his relation to us and how do those interactions work?  With the seven deadly sins, there were two that seemed to spark the most conversation.  Pride and lust.  With pride there seems to be a concern as to where the line between healthy self esteem and arrogance lay.  With Lust there is also a similar concern.  We are attracted to people and in many cases that attraction is how babies get into the world and babies are overall good things…so when is the sweet love making love and when is it lust and how does that all work.  Essentially…where is the line between healthy attraction and lust?

Then we got to the parts about the mechanics of service.  The simple stuff was simple.  Everyone loves the candles, everyone loves the communion.  There does seem to be more comfort made for those who are not ready to light a candle or take the bread and juice.  I have thoughts on that, but I will discuss that on another post.  In worship, some weeks we will do music and in other weeks we will do what we did this week…go around the room and share something spiritual and from God.  We will not do both at the same time.  Our next service will have music done by Krystal and Amy.  

Finally we hit a tricky point.  Alyssa pointed out her desire for there to be more interaction.  I agree with her.  Others said they would like it to be as it was this week where I yap and then there is q&a and perspective time.  Dana asked me what I wanted and I said both.  So here is what we are going to do for now.  When I speak, if someone has a concern or a question burning in them over something I just said, they can signal that they would like to say or ask something and I will let them do it.  Then, after the sermon/discussion, we will have q&a.  We all agreed that would be a good place to go and know this will be a process to find the sweet spot in the discussion and we will meet at the juice bar most Sunday afternoons and review and reflect on where we are going, how that week went, and where we want to go.  

It was lovely and it was wonderful and it was marvelous.  I love these people with every fiber of my being and I think we did not have church…we WERE the church.  This was a first magnificent step into a wonderful direction.   

I’m not really sure how to describe what has happened this last week as the community takes control and ownership of LifeBridge.  We now have had two meetings on that ownership.  The first one was at my home on Thursday and the last one was a scant few hours ago at a juice bar in Lockport. 

At the first one we had Dana and Puma and Kris and a short visit from David. This was actually three meetings in one.  The first one was between Dana and I.  I am organizationally challenged and it is not like we have a budget for fancy things like church office assistants or anything and Dana was kind enough to volunteer.  So we had a pre meeting about my organizational weak spots and the areas I need help in.  That meeting went VERY well.  Then, David and Dana and I had a discussion about the topics for the nect few YASO’s and what we will do for the YASO Christmas Formal.  For those keeping track at home, the next YASO topics will be about Family Decompression, Holiday Stress, Christmas Formal, Christmas Family Decompression, and then Reflections of the last year and hopes for the next year.  The Christmas party will have dance music, pizza, soda, punch, eggnog, cookies, brownies, and dollar store secret santa.

We also wrapped up the second meeting by agreeing to have a newsletter.  The newsletter will be for YASO and LifeBridge and be done at the end of the month.  Though the newsletter will have upcoming events, the main focus will be individual reflections of the last month.  

After this pre meetings were done, Kris and Puma arrived and we started into the meeting about Sunday Worship time.  It was very casual and loose and fun.  It was life and energy and vibrancy.  From all of that goodness we got something done.  There would be no music that week, that portion of worship would be dedicated to intimate sharing about life.  It was decided there needed to be a greater seperation between the candle lighting prayer time and communion because they felt the candle time is precious and it gets lost in communion.   The came time for what topic to choose.  This one was very emotional as some…well…almost everyone expressed frustration over prayers.  What’s the point?  If God is gonna do what he is gonna do, why pray? So now we had out topic.  There was also a side bar.  Kris wanted the ability to vet my sermons and view my notes so those will now be made available online.  Everyone left and it was a good time had by all.

That led to this Sunday.  This Sunday we had a good service and in the next entry I will discuss what happened at worship service and the meeting at the juice bar later.  Sorry to leave you all in suspense, but I need to take a walk and maybe make dinner or something.  

So here we are as a community a year later.  Almost none of the core that we started with are there save two people, but what we do have is more lovely and amazing than I can begin to describe to you.  After service I asked everyone to stick around so we could talk about the direction of LifeBridge.  I told them it was optional.  Well, after communion was done and service ended, not one person left.

I told them a few confessions.  I started by telling them how happy I am that YASO and B&L are communities that have a genuine sense of ownership by the community.  I told them that I have wanted the same thing out of LifeBridge, but instead of letting the community take ownership, I always tried things from my ideas to foster an environment of community without ever really involving them in the discussion.  I also admitted I am horrible administrator on the little details and needed help.  I further admitted that while focusing so much energy on YASO, I’ve allowed LB to sit on the backburner.  Everyone was very receptive to my opening up.  We then discussed an idea I had to start first steps in real community involvement.  My suggestion, based on Solomon’s Porch in Minnesota, was to have whoever wanted to come on Tuesday’s to come to my house and help plan…as a community…the next Sunday.  Sermon topic, music, worship experience, etc.  They liked the core of the idea, but felt it would be better to do it at a juice bar in Lockport that has wifi and a meeting room right after service.  Most of the people in our group are younger and live in town while I live the next town over so this mkes transportantion more accessable for more people to be involved.  They also said that they wanted it to be fun and loose.  Yeah, they know things need to be done, but they do not want it to feel committee driven and so forth.  So we are taking our first steps into a community driven worship service.  I cannot wait to tell you how it goes.  Since I was not prepared to spend Sunday afternoon with everyone, this Tuesday some people are coming to my house and next sunday will be our first Sunday planning gathering.  

In other news, I got a volunteer to be my help in the weakness of organization and we also will be discussing our most core values as a community and how to ensure that everything we do and say and print and show on the web reflects that. 

Updates to come, but this weekend was a very good weekend indeed.

This last Saturday we had a YASO gathering.  It was a time of wonderful discussion.  We based it on Laura who is in the hospital after her liver failed and she had to get a new one.  The ups and downs of this tumultuous attempt at recovery that now includes seizure based setbacks has had her sister, Liz, asking many questions and finding the need to seize the day and tell people she is close to and cares about that she loves them and cares about them.  Life is precious and sometimes short and uncertain and you do not want a day to go by with things unsaid and love not shown. 

This was the basis of the conversation we had at YASO about how each of us intends to seize the day.  The conversation ranged from a great many topics.  The topics ranged, but could be summed up into two categories.  The first categories is dreams and the second one is people.  The dreams ranged from learning to do things like ride a motorcycle or learn to play guitar.  The to do dreams were matters like skydiving, travel to exotic locations, publishing a book, scuba diving, and even riding a zip line.  The aspects of people were as varied.  Making personal stands for themselves, building bridges on burned relationships, and saying kind words of love and affection someone who has not heard the words, but should.  

It was a day of hope, of dreams, and of expression.  It was a most lovely night of sharing, stuffed animals, and heart.

Then we had a post conversation that was more serious in nature.  I spoke very candidly that despite my best efforts to get other churches and groups to aid us in our efforts, I was not able to enlist any help from any other church for a variety of different reasons….most of those reasons poor.  I told them of the hope of the bridge we may build with the Emergent Village and the kids all wanna go with me to an up/rooted cohort meeting on the seventh in Wicker Park.  They want to meet these people and exchange stories.  But we also have to accept that harsh reality that we are mostly alone and anything we do, we do by ourselves.  So what are we, what do we hope to be, and what do we want our legacy to be are questions that we will be discussing in depth at the next YASO meeting.  

The beauty and the honesty and the trust continues and we all agree that what we have is precious and lovely.  We also composed a special card to Liz for giving us the night’s topic to share with each other in one of our best discussions in a long time.  

I am going through a strange transition.  I have been in a process of change and that change has been a hard process.  One of my coping mechanisms for that change has been to be angry.  The transition has been two fold and it has had ramifications on my life and my faith and my interactions with everything around me.  The first is the way I view the entire Gospel and faith.  The 1980’s incarnation of the Evangelical and Pentecostal faith has been all I have known since I was 16 years of age.  Around 2006 that was challenged and turned upside down.  I got to know ministers of other practices, I read books, and I ultimately went back to the Bible and started reading it without preconceived notions.  Suddenly, the world I live in is no longer a waiting room to the eternal with no implications.  Being a disciple is more than saying the sinners prayer and immersing myself into a subculture that ultimately becomes a protection from the world club.  As I take this new path I find that on the old path that there had been division and harm done.  Harm to myself and to others.  I felt lied to and angry and I wanted to tear it all down and vent.  The other thing I was dealing with was a more personal wound.  Fair or unfair I felt orphaned by what I perceived to be my mother church, my friend, my mentor, and my coach.  I’ve worn both of these wounds on my sleeve and held them close to my chest.  In some ways I have allowed these matters to define me and how I have conducted things.  While confused about so much anger is all I had to grab onto and work with so I ran with it.  

I stand behind every word I said and I still firmly believe that it is all right to call an injustice an injustice and have righteous indignation about it.  I think that has been shown to us by Jesus when he had no problem with telling off the Pharisees and turning over tables in the temple.  But there is a balance to it all.  Sure he got mad, sure he said some pretty harsh things, but they were moments in time and he went right back to teaching beautiful truth and loving the marginalized.  

So, I have had my moment in the sun.  I have deconstructed a bit (quite a bit) about what bothers me about a few trends and I have turned over some tables in the temple.  But now I have to walk in the yoke of Christ and get on to other matters.  It is time to renew my efforts into doing this thing right.  I have said what I am against, now it is time to focus my energies on what I am for and build alliances and bridges with people who also believe in this path.  

In one of my most early posts, I spoke about how I regretted the fact that there were certain people that were not there for me after my heart attack that I almost missed the people who WERE there for me. There are, right now, some good people who work with good organizations (and some who are not with ANY orgs) who want to build bridges with me and are receptive to the idea of not being alone together.  There is also the opportunity to have the LifeBridge and YASO and Beer and Life communities better reflect this vision burning in my soul.  That only happens if the people around me share the vision and the lovely thing about that is that the vision is not so firmly defined that we, as a community, cannot help form and flesh out a new vision and consider the one in me to be a rough draft, or template that whatever we build will be loosely based on.  It is not my way, it is OUR way.

On this Saturday I am going to have a deep discussion with the YASO kids and we are going to talk seriously about what we are going to be and how we are going to move forward.  At LifeBridge on Sunday we have a sermon/discussion that we are going to have, but I am going to reserve some time at the end and have the same discussion.  Part of me has this idea rumbling around in my head that I think would be cool.  The idea is something based on something I have heard of a church in Minnesota doing.  The idea is this, inviting anyone who wants to come, to come to my house every tuesday night and together, as a group, we plan the worship gathering for the following sunday.  Whoever attends has a voice and a role and a part from the music to the communion to the message content.  I feel this is very reflective of the early church and encourages that real sense of community we should have.  One of the great things about YASO is that the kids helped form it and it is theirs.  I have rather put people into the role of spectator in LifeBridge and I want us all to be participants and I think this is a good start and I hope they agree with me.  

So there is so much more I want to say, but it is hard without having more discussion with the people in my respective community and talking to members of other communities.  I think I need to log off now and do a little prayer and meditation.  It is odd, but I feel renewed and calm and at peace right now.  I am not used to life without the anger and feels….well….lighter. 

In reference to my last post, what would an honest Christ like web site look like?  How do we break the bad habits of making a website for the church that consumeristically outline all age group ministries, how to become a member, staff and pastor bios, and all that attractional stuff that Alan Hirsch says is more extractional in nature?

Do we use pictures?  If so, what do we take pictures of?  How do we describe ourselves and what do we say?  What message do we want to send? What story do we want to tell?  What are we inviting people to be a part of?

I have theories and thoughts of my own, but I am curious to see if anyone out there reading this has ideas.  I am very serious about redoing my website ASAP and I want to tell the right story and make the right invitation and not feel dirty about it.  

As far as the blog, I slept on that one.  I want to keep blogging and sharing my thoughts in the hopes that they have value and insight that may help others, but I also hope to be more proactive in generating real conversation and learn from others in the discussion as opposed to merely pontificating and accepting accolade for saying swell things.  This is not about me, this is about us…whoever that us may be.  I will also be spending more time on the blogs of my friends and commenting when I can to encourage discussion as a community.  The key factor in all of this is going to be humility and a perspective that this is not about me.  This blog started as a blow by blow story of how a church got planted.  I realize now that I have not really discussed as much about the community as I could have or should have and instead have bragged and pontificated.   I will try to rectify that and keep telling the original story.  That story will be initially from my perspective, but I hope others join in and we have OUR perspectives.  That makes for a better story and a better community.

So….thoughts?