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. 

Recently I was having an online discussion with another pastor about technology.  He feels there is something inherently immoral about some of the tools rapidly coming into the world and I feel these are amoral things.  The debate raged on and I doubt either of us will budge in our positions.  One thing we did agree on is how poorly the churches and pastors use web sites and blogs and social networking and other tools. 

Now for me, poor use a two fold.  The first thing I notice is hideously poor design.   That is a function of me having worked with some of the best web designers in Chicago at one time.  The second thing I notice is the wrong message being sent out.  This happens most in three places.

1. Websites that self promote the church and market it.
2. Blogs that are filled with more ego than humilty.
3. Social Networking used to self promote and generate false buzz as opposed to…well..social networking with a community.

Let’s start with the websites.  Many church websites feature pictures of smiling multi ethnic people joined together and at least one of them has a cute smiling child on his or her shoulders. Then there is a Re/Max Realtor like picture of the pastor and his wife. Next we have a picture of either the building exterior or people worshiping inside.  Then comes the wording.  The wording often promises things like dynamic worship, relevant preaching, great kids programs, small groups, and a sense of real community and belonging unlike any of those other churches you have been to.  Church becomes the destination as opposed to a community of people on a journey.  The reason to come to this place is for the programs it has for you, the chance to be part of something exciting to belong to, and for an opportunity to be like those smiling happy people who are in that great building while getting to befriend the hip pastor and his wife. In contrast to this is an early church who saw a community living and working together and a Savior who tells us the Gospel is for the least of these and instead of talking about programs, talks of being God’s hands and feet, being like Christ, tasting eternal life, being a disciple and making disciples (which is not done in a class or small group, but out there in the wilderness). 

Now let’s look at Blogs. Many a pastor, including this one, gets pretty darn proud of their thoughts and insights and thinks everyone should be reading and learning at our feet and commenting on our brilliant insights.  Where we could be lifting up Jesus and trying to sort out thoughts and perspectives and invite others to join the conversation as peers (priesthood of all believers), we tend to show off.  We may not admit to that, but we are.  I recently read my first post all the way through to the most recent post and I am getting more and more arrogant with each month.  That will not do. We need to either repent of the pride and write from a more humble place or we need to stop blogging lest we look like Pharisees.  There is nothing wrong with sharing insights, perspectives, and even leadership on a blog, but there is something desperately wrong with pride and uplifting ourselves before others and Jesus.

The final one is social networking. According to Wikipedia (which I know is suspect to some, but I like it) a social network is defined as:

A social network is a social structure made of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes," which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

The reason I like this definition is this is what I get out of it: Individuals connected by interdependency. We join a facebook group to share something that connects us and we are interdependent on each other as we share. Man!  If that does not sound like something Christ would want out of his church, I do not know what would!  I was on Facebook back when you had to have an .edu at the end of your email address to gain entry.  The early Facebook community exemplified this definition in the most beautiful of ways.  There was so much we could learn from those earlier and more simple days of Facebook.  But pastors and church leaders did not look to those lessons.  They instead decided to follow the examples of soda companies and pharmaceutical groups and they use their facebook groups to draw in crowds and they use their status updates to be a PT Barnum like person generating buzz and trying to create the impression that people are missing exciting things every day by not being a member of that community.  That buzz and generating desire to be on the in crowd is how one gets someone to start smoking or lose their virginity….not make disciples.

So what do we do?  For some, the answer may be to give up their online presence all together and become further disconnected from the emerging generation.  For others, it is time to rethink the way we present ourselves and connect on the web.  Our websites need to stop selling programs and using power adjectives and be simple expressions of truth and hopes and dreams and the Gospel.  Our blogs need to come from a place of humility.  Our social interaction on social networks needs to embrace the spirit of interdependency and  if we are truly leaders…we need to act like leaders encouraging that and not generate buzz.  In other words, we need to show our identity as followers of Christ and stop projecting an image.  Follow the way of Jesus and not the way of Consumerism.  Buy the way, the finger I am pointing at the rest of the western church leaders, I am firmly pointing at myself as well.  I stand guilty of this and will soon be changing the website, adjusting the way I blog, and rethinking the way I interact socially on the web.

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.