From High Brow Pirate to Hometown Pastor

I know marketing and how to get the word out.  I just do not see the tools used in the business world as always appropriate for the church.  Maybe for some churches, but not all.  Anyway, before some of you think I am just some hippie idealist who hates corporate America, I need to give you a little background.

From 2004 to 2007 I ran two small enterprises.  Silver Strand Solutions and GigaStrand Computers.  Silverstrand was a Linux migration consulting firm and GigaStrand was (at the time) one of a few companies out there selling computers with warranties that had Linux installed on them.  Running this small operation out of my house with a small band of cohorts we were able to get some clients that included names like Linspire, Novell, State of Indiana Board of Education, Intel, Microcenter, and a few others of note.  End of the day, I know how to use marketing and drive a successful campaign.  Just because something works, though, does not necessarily mean you should use it.  Frankly, I am no longer convinced many of these tools work as well as some think in the church.  Though some of these tools may get the desired result of more butts in the seats, I wonder if it is sending the wrong message and becomes a "bait and switch".  The irony of bait and switch by the church is that in the business world it is generally considered unethical and in some cases, illegal.  But that is not the point of this entry.

The point of this entry is this.  I have spent the last few entries venting some frustrations I have had about business as usual, but not offering a better way.  I am not so myopic as to think that what I propose is THE way or even a BETTER way, but it is an alternative that I feel more comfortable embracing.  At our last service we spoke about how we are almost a year old and now that we have a better grasp of who we are as a community, we want to start inviting other people to come to the party with us.  Why?  We feel there is safe harbor in this community and it is a great place to explore those deeper spiritual questions and make a difference.  We do not wanna have pizazz and zing and wow factors, we just want to extend a simple and honest invitation and be honest about what we are inviting people to.

So last Sunday I took out a easel and marker and we wrote down some things as a community.  We wrote about LifeBridge and YASO and here is what ended up on the board.

We ARE:
Open Minded
Accepting
Reality
Loving
Conversation (everyone has a voice)
Direct
Open hearts eyes and ears (togetherness)

We Are NOT:
Pressuring you to conform
Snarky
Phony Smile Sunday personality
a Right Wing-Republican-White Man Empire
Hypocritical bunch of legalistic pharisees
no dancing around touchy subjects like other places.
manipulative
money hungry

About Lifebridge:
We Talk about God stuff
Open up
Conversation
Freedom of Expression
Every day People-not perfect

About YASO:
Eye opening
Understanding environment
Youth group, but not
Group Therapy, but not

What is not in this picture? We never mention the music, kids programs, and other wow points.  We have a simple identity and now we want to tell people about that and invite them to it, if they want to come.  In a good marketing arc, you want to create awareness of a problem and show how your product or service is best suited to solve that problem.  But the gospel and a gospel community is not a product or a service, it is a journey.   How do you invite people on a journey or a quest?  The best way is to do it honestly and conversationally.  As community we have decided that there are other valid ways to invite people on a journey.  We still have to have a few meetings about the matter so I cannot tell you what we will do yet, but I can tell you that it is likely we will use the same tools some marketers use.  The internet, social networking, newspapers, press releases, stickers, etc.  But these tools are used by many other people other than marketers.  Websites and Social Networking groups are too vast to rationally discuss here, press releases talk about a great many things, newspaper ads are not always ads.  If you look at older papers that pre date the internet and telephones, you will find that people used the paper to communicate social events in simple and honest ways.  Not much wow factor was added to a bridge game at the Smith’s house..unless cucumber sandwiches being served is a wow factor.  Stickers and posters….okay…these are mostly used for marketing, but in our message, the stickers will say…

" As Christians, we’re sorry for being self-righteous, judgmental bastards."  Why?  Well, we feel the apology is overdue.

Because we embrace the conversation, much of what we say and do in this will likely be very conversational and verbose in it’s nature.  I doubt we will use a newspaper ad, for instance. I am not sure what you could put on a 3 by 5 inch section of print about this.  I also doubt we will do direct mailers.  My issue there is the impersonality of it all.  With a sticker or a website or a youtube link or a facebook page, there is an opportunity to interact and someone can share with someone else the link or the sticker or whatever.  You send a mailer and you look like you are trying to sell something no matter how well and honestly it is written. 

I will keep you in the loop of our next steps, but for now, I wanted to tell you a few things that were important to me.

1. There is a difference between invitation and marketing even though some of the same tools are used.

2.  We wanted our community more established in its identity before we started inviting people more broadly to it.

3.  We wanna be honest and would rather state who we are than talk up the music, preaching, art supplies for kids, and have pictures of a bunch of multi ethnic smiling people of a borad age range.  All of those tings are images, something you project…we want people to know our identity…who we are.  If they like that…cool, if they do not…cool.

As I share my personal experiences about the planting process I am not suggesting that I am angry about my experiences nor am I casting judgments on those who helped us plant.  As critical as I am of current planting trends, I am not even saying that they are wrong.  What I am saying is that the core concepts of planting is the most important thing and that the methods of the bricks and mortar are less essential in their mechanisms.  The paths and directions that I wanted to take and had to fight for are not THE way to do it, but A way to do it that is just as valid in my humble opinion as the conventional ways.  End of the day, planting coaches need to be flexible and allow for differing external visions and expressions of church community as opposed to firmly creating and multiplying clones of your own experiences and visions.

If the core beliefs about Jesus, the Gospel, Mission, and Incarnational living are solid and the planter has a honest grasp of these things, then the expression of church community and the founding of that church community can, and should be allowed to differ.  

What was in my heart was to reach the dissillusioned and the ones with many hurts and demands put on them by the church.  The methods I felt compelled to use were wonderful for the "seekers" and the "unchurched" and for a plant where the planter is called to reach those people that is fine.  But when you are reaching the disillusioned and the burned, a different toolbox is needed.  I know of a pastor in Boystown in Chicago who reaches to the GLBT community and his expression and invitations are different than mine and the methods I was asked to use.  There is a church starting on the strip in Vegas trying to reach prostitutes and addicted gamblers…again, different methods.  What of the church trying to reach the homeless community…snazzy music and four color flyers may intimidate them.  It is the same gospel, but there are different expressions of reaching people and loving them and one size does not and cannot be expected to fit all.

In my case (to summarize), door hangers do not earn trust or open the opportunity to earn trust, the music does not have to be perfect (sometimes there is no music), and a conventional core would have been detrimental.  Further, in this first year the community helped form what we are as opposed to us forcing hopes and dreams into it.  Now, almost a year later, we are prepared to invite others to join our community now that we know what we are inviting them to.  

I do hope this better explains my frustration.  It is not with the methods themselves, it is that there needs to be room and allowances for trailblazers and callings that have different external expressions.  Counter culture sometimes means being counter to the conventional methods within the church and if we want to survive in this emerging post modern world, we have to become flexible to these alternative visions and expressions of community.

Ah marketing and models.  In my planting efforts I was having so much fun going into diners and bars and bowling alleys and street corners (literally) and getting to know people and talk to them about Jesus and LifeBridge and what church is not and what it could be and what they wanted it to be.  Then I was made (I suspect unintentionally) to feel compelled to design flyers, gather volunteers, and "canvass the neighborhood" with these four color door hangers.  I was told that this would define who in my core group meant business and who didn’t.  This would show who was willing to work for this and who was not.  So not only was it marketing, but it was some kinda weird test of dedication for my new friends.  My new friends were, like me, walking into bars and bowling alleys and diners and street corners and having the time of their lives meeting people one on one and talking about life.  When I told them about the door hanger plan, they looked at me and could not understand the logic.  I related with them and told them that this was not my idea and when they asked if it was okay if they did not take part in this because it felt commercial, I told them they did not have to. 

I went and passed out the flyers and felt dirty the whole time.  I was conflicted and this was the opposite of what was in my heart.  I was told that behind every door was a story and that story had hearts and needs and I was asked if I wanted to know that story?  Hell yes!  But I get to know that story when I meet them, not when they look at a four color graphic with a clever slogon that looks no different than any other church marketing ploy.  Not one person came in from those flyers and if any of you are reading this, I am so sorry.  I hope you at least recycled the blank side for notepaper or something.  

That same day was the day that I found out that music was not only about worship, but it was also about marketing.  See, this was a scant few weeks prior to the first service and I did not have all my ducks in a row to the satisfaction of my mentor for worship music.  I was fine with it because I knew the community that was forming and the direction we were heading.  But I was told, and I quote, "Do not underestimate the power of awkward music to drive people away from your church.  The last planter underestimated the music and he failed.  Your pulling the trigger here and you are not taking this seriously."  Oh, I WAS taking it seriously.  As far as our music, a year later I will tell you that it is okay and decent from a technical standpoint, but everyone there likes it and it is ours.  Sometimes *gasp* we do not have music.  This last week, my singer got sick and could not make rehearsal and then on Saturday, my guitarist got sick.  So we did not have any music and we still worshipped God without song, but with sincere hearts and NOT ONE PERSON MINDED!

So what do you do different?  This first year was based mostly on word of mouth only.  Our numbers started strong, around April many people left as more and more youth came in with messy lives and tripp pants and our numbers now are less than what they were that first week.  Our money is almost non existant.  What do we have?  We know who we are and what we are and we can now know WHAT we are inviting people to becuase we have an identity as opposed to a rpepackaged plan.  We will use some stickers, we will use you tube videos, we will use tools, but we will use them honestly and without "zing" and wow factors.  We will be simple and honest and the power to spread the invitation still happens on the road because someone has to hand someone a sticker, give a link, and talk about it.  But we waited a year before we even considered a sign.

During my planting internship I learned about this wild Messiah who did not play by the rules of society.  He was so counter culture that the religious elite conspired with governmental forces to kill him.  He spent his time with unsavory people and loved them without condition.  He spoke against not only the norms of government and society, but also the norms of religious thought.  This was revolution and love and messiness and poetry and wonder.  Some of my best and most formative thoughts on Jesus came in a condensed time of nine months that I will be eternally grateful for.  But then came the disconnect.  In following this wild messiah and making disciples that follow in his yoke of beautiful chaos was reduced to formulas and tests and other things that did not compute.  It reminded me of Bible College.  They (Bible College) taught me Hermeneutics-the science of interpreting the Bible.  They gave me the tools to read and interpret and understand for myself.  But when my questions got too uncomfortable or challenged assumptions they held dear, I was being misguided and somehow in error.  I used the tools too well for my own good.  Now here I am, given the gift of a wild messiah with a revolutionary message and call and as I try to walk in His yoke with the very tools of understanding given to me, I was told to ignore it temporarily for pragmatic purposes. 

This whole process of having a core was very troubling to me.  Jesus surrounded himself by the "not good enoughs" and they went out to reach the marginalized and the hurting and the ignored and the honest questioning people who were also "not good enoughs".  How could I reach out to the people who Jesus reached out to with a bunch of people who had the same ingrained bad habits I did and were as out of touch with the world as I was?  To have some of my bad habits broken, I had to go through a personal little "deprogramming" session that took many months and happened one on one.  It just seemed to make more sense to me to strike out with a bunch of people who were in the margins and fed up with churches and say,"hey! let’s chase after the kingdom together!"  So that is exactly what I did.  My planter support group was not offering me core volunteers and yet I had to find them.  So I got them from bars and blogs and bowling alleys and was very careful (though honest) about what I said about my "core".  My core also had some seasoned vets of the faith who are very good people with genuine hearts.  But ya know what?  None of those people are here anymore.  There was not enough offered for them and they needed to be "fed" and they went on to places that could better offer them what they were looking for.  I bear them no ill will and knew from day one that this was not what they were ready for and what they needed.  I tried to tell them what we were chasing as honestly as I could.  

Over the last year since our "launch", the true core I knew was out there developed.  Most of the pre start faces are seen no more and a new batch of people have emerged.  They are honest, raw, rough around the edges, and are beautiful.  They have taken early steps into discipleship and mission without knowing the words for it and they are trying to get others to walk in this journey with them without knowing the subculture and the Christian folkways and mores.  They do not have money, they do not have power, most of them are under 25, and their lives are messy…but they know what is important and they get the core aspects of this journey (the kingdom of God, mission, and the great commission to name a few) more than most Christians I know who have been in the individualistically based faith subculture for years and years.  

As opposed to having a seasoned core that would then decide what others needed and and formulating an offering for them, we spent this year letting the wheat and the chaff sift itself out and becoming a community with a small group of people who know what they identity IS as opposed to what we hope it to be.  They are now ready to invite others into this journey with them.   I went to the beach and asked some people to drop their net and take a journey with me as opposed to the synagogue.  The beaches and the bars and the streets are where we find the people of the beatitudes, also known as the salt of the earth. 

I think that anyone who has read this blog a few times can guess that I am not too hip on the takeover of business in the church.  I think this is especially prevalent in the church planting racket.  We have developed management training, marketing arks, business strategies and whole bunch of other stuff based on corporate America.  As I have said many a time, if imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then the church is proving itself to be very enamored by corporate America.  Hell, we kiss corporate America’s ass and have made marketing and strategic planning our idols.  The funny part is, our current economy, the recent Wall Street Crash, the housing crisis, and the over ten percent unemployment figures should tell us that the emporor of consumerism and business strategy has no clothes.  But here we are, using a failed tools, tests, and methods and assigning God to them. 

Though my first beef is not closely related to business strategy, it is related.  In starting churches it is standard practice to have a core group.  As an emerging missional guy, this is a hard one to swallow.  The need for "mature" christians to sit in a room and plot and plan how we are going to bring in and attract real people who are outside the church.  The problem is, that the "converted" know how to reach the other "converted" and you often end up with consumer Christians looking for the latest music, kids programs, and other stuff that does not matter.  Well, it does not matter to those outside the church, but it matters for the consumer Christian.  The problem is that you end up being beholden to these people and you end up performing so much maintenance to keep them happy that you never really do get to fulfilling the mission.  Let me give you an example.  I was once talking to a planter who was getting ready to start a church in a city with needs.  This city has two sides to it.  One side is affluent and the other side is poor.  He claims to be missional, and when he talks about the city’s needs he always talks about the poor side.  So, I asked him, why start on the affluent side when the need is on the poor side?  He said he would leverage the affluence of the rich side to one day make a greater impact on the side with immediate need.  Do you kind of see my problem?  How many years will this take and how many people will he have to appease while people lose homes, live in fear of violence and street gangs, and suffer abuse and marginalization?  What of the needs of the wealthy side?  Rich people have hurts too.  He will spend so much time administering to them with his sensitive and caring nature that he will only have token efforts to the hurting that serve mainly to make the wealthy feel good.  It is backwards…people like Shane Claiborn and  Mother Teresa just go to where the need they claim to have a heart for and do it with what little you have and let God guide the way. 

Now, I realized I strayed, but I just thought of an analogy with my problem of the core group stuff. Imagine Jesus, instead of grabbing his motley crew of fishermen, women, tax collectors, and so forth to change the world and start this movement, he had gone with the core group principle.  He would have to take some mature Jews who know the law…so….maybe a core group of Pharisees and Sadducees.  They would all then sit in regularly scheduled meetings and discuss rationally how they are going to reach the hookers, the centurions, the lepers, and all the rest of the people that they have proved themselves to be painfully out of touch with.  They would also need to work on fund raising, financial viabilities, find some space to rent, and create an awareness marketing campaign.  Then, and only then, would they be ready for a first service and invite everyone-who already does not trust them-to come and see this wonderful new event.

Now that we are almost a year old and it is evident that I have nothing to lose since no one is offering us anything and we are bastard children not getting child support, I may as well discuss openly what I think is a different, and valid way to try things. What I am about to suggest in my next entry is not a better way per se, but it is a different way.  When you hear me speak against different mindsets, please understand that I am not speaking AGAINST anyone or trying to vilify, I am trying to grow out of that.  I am expressing some frustration that I never had the opportunity to be openly different and instead had to test the waters and strike out on my own in what has proved to be a very lonely journey.  Mostly, I am expressing facts as seen through the lense of my existence.  Try not to hold it against me.  There will be a part two to this coming along shortly, I just did not want to make this entry too long. 

I will make this brief, because the end is more important than the content.

It was a good first day. I am not sure how to describe it, other than to say that it was a good setting of the stage. We are doing this in two parts. Today’s part was about setting the hearts and the spirits to be in the right attitude before we open up Bibles. Sometimes, you need a primer of being Christ like before you open the book.

I started out by talking about the great chasm that exists between Christians and the GLBT community. I then talked about, and apologized for my own prejudices and asked forgiveness for not being more Christ like in my life. I shared some of the content on some discussions I had with gay and straight Christians, told my story of starting out in evangelical conservative land that was opposed to gays and then the evolution of seeing One Punk Under God and then getting to meet gay people who are believers. After that, I went into the tough questions and refused to answer them with closed answers, rather I elevated the conversation. (SHORT VERSION: Is being gay a sin? According to Romans and James we are all sinners and we are all in the same boat, gay or straight. This is not about sinlessness, but a one on one relationship with God and being a part of a community. I will be judged with the same measure I judge others and considering how I have treated gays in my Bible thumping years as a homophobe, I have some things to answer too. ) In other words, I answered the questions that need to be answered and for now, put the other issues to the side. Chose to elevate the conversation. Then I talked about how we can build the bridge. Next week, we are talking the "big five" verses and looking at them from the conventional side, the gay affirming side, and the third option…how to look at the bigger picture and elevate the convo. Everyone has been given the verses and challenged to google them and look at them from both sides and help me find the third side. It was a good start.

So this is where the rubber met the road and I knew we made progress. First of all, we rarely get new visitors. Today we had 4. One of them had no idea who we were or what we were or what the topic was. The person is bi and currently goes to a church she does not feel comfortable in or feel she can be open, but here she is, day one in the doors, comfortable to tell me where she is in life. Further, two other younger congregates who have been with us almost from the beginning, not only told me they were GLBT, but also a couple. I’ve known them for over a year and I never knew and it never would have mattered, but today, they felt safe enough with me to tell me. This is the beginning of something good.

YASO’s future is always uncertain due to a lack of resources and funding, but for as long as we are together, it is something lovely and beautiful.  These young adults speaking out never cease to amaze me, touch me, enrich me and teach me. As a church, we have not "planted" or "seeded" other churches, but YASO being what it is has a child and has another one on the way. The first child is beer and life which was given birth two last tuesday and talked about already in another blog entry.

There is another ministry that I will talk about with permission from the pastor when I get (if I get it). This pastor lives in the north burbs and has been following YASO and wants to start her own version of it in her hometown with her children working with her. It is not going to be a clone or the formation of a new model, but what will happen is she will sit in a room of teens and young adults and say,"Hey, here is what I see and hope for, now you tell me what you want this to look and feel like." Together, they will form it and make it and own it.  This is not about us and how great we are, but it is really neat to see a good idea spread to other communities. 

I struggled a bit with what to write next…soooooo…I stopped writing.  A little over a year ago it got in my head to start a church and I thought God may have put this idea there.  So this chronicled the good, bad, and ugly of how we got there with a few temper tantrums along the way that seemed to have provided mass entertainment. But then what?  After that first service I was in figuring it out mode.  So my writing was getting stale and my thoughts were overly pragmatic.  No, that is not true, my thoughts were very deep.  It’s just they were so deep that I had no idea how to get them out.  So all that would come out as I tried to write was xx people came today and tithed $xxx and they liked my sermon and the music was okay.  And while that is factual, it is not very helpful…..or interesting. 

Truth is, I started trying too hard.  I also found myself caught in traps that I was claiming to be raging against.  The worship area looked like a stage and I hit behind the security and comfort of a mic.  I used notes to refer from and did everything in three little points.  I worried too hard about the music being something people would sing along with.  I struggled with communion.  It became a miniaturized version of what most small evangelical church plants are.  In practice, I really had no idea WHAT I was doing and I had more seasoned pastors nodding and smiling as if I learned some life lesson and now I was one of them raging into the machine of conformity and claiming to talk about a rebel and radical Jesus while knowing inside I was blowing this.  But I was not merely blowing MY vision.  I was blowing the renewing that was given to me in my heart by God and confirmed by men and women of action in their faith who lived and wrote about this stuff.  Bonhoeffer, Assisi, Wright,  Theresa, Mandella, McLaren, and some guy named Jesus of Nazereth. 

Over a year of planning and praying and dreaming about movements only to find that the establishment still co opted my practice.  This was not the Jesus of the Gospels, this was the Jesus of the movies with the glazed look on his face, monotone voice, and feathered hair.  This was the Jesus of the WWJD brigade who have carefully stuffed God in a box and gave us permission to be Pharisees again.  I quote David Byrne when I cry out, "My God…what have I become?"  

So, in usual Pat Green fashion I sung the pendulum to the other extreme and had me a sermon where I essentially said, "Hey, ya know that ?  I can’t be that pastor guy you see in consumer church and here are some quotes from the purpose driven church book and why they suck."  Did you know flipping the bird verbally to the establishment who some people see value in does not warm people up to you as well as Jesus like behavior does (now Jesus did go after the system and the pharisees, but it was all in balance).  Insulting systems and establishments does not a movement make.  I am hearing Dan Kimball and Jay Bakker and others saying the same thing, but I did not listen for a spell.

Life seems to forever intertwine great beauty hidden in the midst of confusion.  Some of natures examples are pearls erupting from irritation, a yellow rose in the middle of a desert, and the giggle of a toddler in the middle of a hell called haiti who is too busy spinning in circles to know he is poor and destined for a life of pain and struggle. While I allowed vision to languish in the sea of pragmatic delight, birth was being given to something that would force me to dip deeper into the well of idealism and hope more than ever before.  A youth outreach with more beauty and God in it than anything I have ever seen in my life.  There are no books written that describe what is going on here, no formula, no nothing.  Yet, it is working better than anything I have ever seen in Christiandom.  I would like to say that I am an evil genius, but the truth is, I feel like I am just the guy who picks up the pizza and sets up chairs.  I am humbled, scared, and renewed and these moments of beauty have allowed me to put into practice what has been in my heart.  When you have a dream that is bigger than you, it can be intimidating, but when you start to live that dream and taste it, things start to click.

In a matter of weeks, stadium seating became a semi circle, microphone and a podium got replaced with a chair, notes are no longer needed, intimacy abounds.  As far as the music, I am being most literal when I say that Savage Garden and The Black Eyed Peas have become worship music that people sing along to.

In future entries (coming SOON, I promise), I am gonna tell you about a vision called YASO and the kids within it.

A little nugget for you.  6 years ago a 13 year old girl tried to get me to come to coffeehouse on ninth street.  4 years later I finally went and the road to ministry began. I tried to start a church in Bolingbrook and I ended up back in that building on ninth.  I tried to start a church for single moms and homeless people, and the kids on ninth cried out in the darkness.  Turns out it begins with them and it began with them.  

"Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?"  These famous words were uttered by Apple Co Founder Steve Jobs to then CEO of Pepsi John Sculley.  John was sitting tight in a nice job in a secure company raking in options and money that even in 1983 dollars, I will likely never see in my life.  John’s claim to fame was being the brainchild of the Pepsi Challenge ad campaign. 

Steve Jobs and the Woz birthed the Apple IIe.  Apple was successful and tapping into a new market, but at the time, they were no PepsiCo.  But that final challenge to John was what drove him to leave his safety and security and help change the world.  

At the end of the day, that is what Jesus is calling us to do.  We are to let the dead bury the dead, drop our fishing nets and follow him, pick up a cross and follow him, and essentially be broken and poured for other people.  There is no safety or security in answering this call.  There is no promise of cash, glory, safety, or security.  But we get to change the world. 

So I ask my fellow pastors with 80% or more of your tithes going into operating expenses, my fellow neighbors in homes of comfort and debt, my friends who value (like me) safety and security and a glimpse of tomorrow….do you wanna sell sugar water…or do you wanna change the world.  Invite me to change the world with you and I will come.  

I’ve been invited to Haiti, I go to Haiti.  I’ve been invited to the east side of Joliet to feed people, I go.  I have been invited to coffeehouse to make a difference in the lives of kids, I go.  I’ve been invited to a fair trade event, I’m going.  I’ve been invited to go start a community, I go.  I go becuase we can change the world.  I’ve invited you to do the same.  This is good.  

 I’ll take that over a wicked cool party with lots of sugar water any day.  Don’t try to sell me sugar water.  Invite me to change the world.

Okay.  I have had a nights sleep and I realize that in my eagerness to tell everyone how it went, I missed a big element.  Here, via email, and on facebook I am hearing one simple question:  How do you feel!  I did not intend to avoid the question.  But I think the absence of the answer to that is complicated.  But it boils down to I did not know how I felt yesterday.  Not for any insidious reason, but for the reason that my brain and emotions were too spent for me to give a real answer.  In many ways I am still sorting out all my emotions and at the same time trying to fast forward through all the eventualities. There is an irony in my choosing the song title from Superstar for my entry.  The lyrics are telling at the beginning and I did not think about it.

APOSTLES

What’s the buzz?
Tell me what’s a-happening.

JESUS

Why should you want to know?
Don’t you mind about the future?
Don’t you try to think ahead?
Save tomorrow for tomorrow;
Think about today instead.

APOSTLES

What’s the buzz?
Tell me what’s happening.

JESUS

I could give you facts and figures.
Even give you plans and forecasts.
Even tell you where I’m going.

So with that in mind, I am going to forget about the future, facts and figures, and plans and forecasts (is it bad that I gained wisdom from a fictional Andrew Lloyd Webber version of Jesus as seen through the eyes of Judas????) and focus on today.  Today, right here, right now, I feel wonderful about what happened yesterday.  What I feel good about is not numbers, style of music, worship, prayer, or sermonizing.  I feel good about what can best be described as glimpses and emotions and spirit of community.  Something good happened. 

Some of these people who are connected solely to me met for the first time today.  Many of them have sat at the same table with me at George’s Diner…but on different nights.  Some are not connected to me at all (until yesterday), but they were connected with other people I have sat at tables with at George’s.  It was fun watching people laughing and talking and their children running about as if they have grown up together when in actuality some met that day.  That part had me grinning ear to ear.  Why?  Because that is organic and real community and was not contrived by lighting, music, preaching, or programs.  It was organic.  It was one of those things that God and people do working together without the people even being aware of that symbiosis because they are living in a good moment. 

Something interesting happened at one point.  Everyone just kinda sat at one point and waited.  They were ready.  They had decided they were ready to sing and be a group.  They applauded the worship efforts of those and sang together and paid attention to the words of the spirit of the songs.  

The preaching.  I did use some of the things I prepared, but to be honest, I kinda ad libbed it because it just felt right in that moment to establish some things.  What I feel good about was that I not only used the passages in Amos, Isaiah, and Matthew to identify what if wrong with church today, but I was able to elaborate on WHY it is wrong.  Where I personally wish I had been stronger was when I spoke of the things that could be right about a community and how we intend to do that in a way, the line of how to get from a to b was not as clear.  However, I am not sure the world’s problems can be summarized in 15 minutes.  Also, while I spoke of the right things…I saw some people wiping tears from their eyes.  I have never in my life said anything that made someone cry besides-I’m breaking up with you or Your mom died or golly your fat and unattractive.

Afterwards I had some really good conversations with people looking for something like this and they are hoping this is what they are looking for.  I hope so to..not for numbers, but because of your heart meaning the world to me.

What was missing for me?  I am reticent to bring that up.  See, on Saturday I popped over there really quick and sat in the space alone and prayed.  I told God I was sorry for a great many things.  I begged God for his will to be done and begged him to make this real and not some whim of mine that would have been a year and half mistake and I walked in there on Sunday calm.  I say that because of a new found humility.  I am not saying I am without humility, but I found a new depth of it that I did not know was within me.  It’s like when you have a kid.  You discover fonts of love you did not know you had.  Or if you fall in love, you have the same result.  I suppose if you lose a child or a spouse you feel new pain.  There are moments you find a depth of emotion you did not know you had in you.  This new humility was one of those depths and it was good. 

Yeah yeah yeah!  I am stalling here.  All right, here goes.  I wanted the tables out with the chairs in a more organic fashion.  I did not this Sunday because I had NO idea how many people would show up.  I wanted as many chairs out there as possible.  Worship.  I need at least an overhead projector so people do not have to fumble for lyrics on sheets of paper.   And as I work through this worship issue I am having I need to chew on what the worship music portion was like. I also need to make for more interaction.   My gay friends blew me off.  They would have had safe harbor there, but maybe that would be hard to trust.  My college age people blew me off…and Dana too.  I thought I was building a better bridge over these social chasms…and maybe I have.  But the bridge needs to be tested a bit more so I suppose I will have to cross the bridge over the chasm and see what’s up. 

Though it would have been nice to come have lunch with people, it made my heart’s day that I visited some of the coffeehouse kids at the hospital.  Because in that moment I felt in my zone.  Being with people who are suffering and hurt and scared.  It was all part of the same church service for me.  It was worship for me and I hate that they are ill, but I am glad to be able to visit them without reservation and love them.  

So…ummmm…is that a better answer?

 I have no crystal ball, but I feel damn good and very hopeful.