A few months back I mentioned the release of the book ViralHope: Good News from the Urbs to the Burbs (and everything in-between). I am one of 50 different authors who offers a brief reflection on what the “good news” might mean for my city (which was Memphis when I originally wrote).  The book has been doing quite well from what I understand and it now boasts an excellent promotional video.

You can still get single copies of the book through Amazon, or order multiple copies through Ecclesia Press.  I hope you’ll consider spreading this video around, maybe with a link to the book.

The video was made by Aaron Nee of the Brother NEE.  Check out this trailer from their feature film, The Last Romantic.

I ended my previous post about Amy’s and my trip to San Francisco by saying that one of the highlights for me was seeing Wicked for the first time on account of its similarity to my favorite recent TV series, LOST.

The connection I want to make is well articulated in the quote,

Strangers and enemies are merely people whose stories we haven’t heard yet.

We saw this at play in LOST inasmuch as our assumptions and assessments about the nature of the main characters were subverted over the course of getting to know their history and background.  Let’s face it, it’s just way harder to be so critical of Sawyer once you learn that someone was responsible for conning his mother out of money resulting in his father killing her and then himself right in front of him.

Similarly, in Wicked, we are given a story behind the relationship between the “good” witch and the “bad” witch from the Wizard of Oz.  We learn that the “good” witch was actually a fairly empty-headed, spoiled brat who always got her way and was extremely judgmental.  At the same time, we learn that the “bad” witch was a product of years of scorn and ridicule from her father and peers.  Not only did she blame herself for her mother’s death, but she was extremely mindful and caring toward her invalid sister.

Let’s be honest, life is easier when we pretend that we can engage it in black and white.  Truth be told, our need to control life in this way is probably directly related to our own fears and inadequacies.

It is when we lack contentment in who we are in Christ, that we default to judging others so that we can feel better about who we are.

… I am more valuable than him because I work hard and he’s a lazy bum.

… I am nicer than her because I saw how rude she was to the bank teller.

… We are a more devoted family than them because they are constantly missing church services.

Little do we know that…

… he was born addicted to crack and never had the sort of love and support it takes to help someone to recover from that sort of disability.

… she just found out that her 2 year old son was diagnosed with Lukemia and their family is uninsured.

… as a family, they are trying to spend time with their neighbors who think Jesus is a joke.

Stories change everything.

Identifying with others by entering into their stories is risky because we almost always discover that we have more in common with the people that we would just assume distance ourselves from as strangers and enemies that we’d like to admit.

So here’s the challenge before you you and I today (and for the rest of our lives!) – to risk entering into the pain and uncertainly of the stories of the people we consider strangers and enemies that we might identify with them as Christ entered into the story of humanity and identified with it – such is the nature and meaning of incarnational ministry and witness.

I will never be able to watch The Wizard of Oz with as much innocence as I once did. And regardless of what you and I thought about the conclusion of LOST as a television series, there is something profound about this notion of our salvation being bound up with our willingness to truly know and be known by others, especially those we are most unlike us.

Stories change everything.

A wedding between our friends Matt and Brianna last weekend gave Amy and I the opportunity to take our first trip to San Francisco.

The wedding was held at the Guglielmo Winery in Morgan Hill and was one of the most beautiful weddings I have ever attended.

Thursday and Saturday we stayed in Gilroy, just south of Morgan Hill and apparently the “Garlic Capital of the World.”  Sounded pretty ridiculous to me until we drove into Gilroy and all we could smell was garlic – seriously!

After the mandatory trip to In-N-Out…

We of course felt compelled to visit the Garlic Shoppe.

Amy was even brave enough to taste the Chocolate-Garlic Ice ream.

We spent Sunday with our friend Jeanelle seeing some of the sights around the city of San Francisco including Hyde St. Pier, Ghiradelli Square, Chinatown, Golden Gate Park and the adjacent beach.  We also took the perfunctory trip across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Sunday evening, Amy and I went to see Wicked at the Orpheum in the Union Square district of downtown.

~~ Lots more pictures here and videos here

Now, Amy is a musical buff, she’s seen em all (multiple times in many cases!) but this was my first time seeing Wicked and I loved it.  It was probably one of the highlights of the trip for me.  Why? Because Wicked bore a striking resemblance to one of my favorite TV series’ of all time, LOST. Let me offer a quote I heard recently as a prelude to my explanation of that observation.

“Strangers and enemies are merely people whose stories we haven’t heard yet.”

More on that in my next post.

Try to jump and hang in the air for 10 seconds.  How’d you do?  You either failed, cheated, or are reading this from the moon.  You are a captive of gravity.  It pulls at you, refusing to let you wander off.

Culture is a lot like that.  The various elements of the culture we inhabit pull us toward some sort of center.  Culture, in all of its various forms: language, architecture, customs, expectations, rhythms, etc., creates a sort of reality for those who live in it.  This is what I am calling cultural gravity.

Cultural gravity cuts two ways – it simultaneously frees and binds.  As regular gravity gives us the ability to walk around and explore our immediate surroundings, it also binds us there, making any desire we have to explore our not so immediate surroundings extraordinarily difficult.  Analogously, cultural gravity is what enables us to authentically enter a particular time and space – to know it personally and deeply.  But it can also trap our imaginations and stymie us intellectually and creatively.  The longer we live with in a particular brand of cultural gravity (geography, tradition, denomination, etc.) the harder it will be to enter new ones with any degree of receptivity or discernment.

Anyone who has ever lived cross-culturally has experienced this tension.  It is why new cultures can be hard to adjust to and why we may have a hard time (or outright fear!) returning to the culture we came from.

As one who has had some varied over-seas experience and has moved from the suburban mid-west, to urban So. Cal, to some blend of suburban/urban culture in the midsouth, and now lives outside of Chicago, these are some thoughts I have been having.

In Part 2 I plan to offer some reflections on what I think cultural gravity has to do with missional churches.

Leaving this afternoon for Miami along with some other friends for the CCDA conference.  I have been looking forward to this conference for quite some time and plan on blogging and twittering some of my thoughts and experiences through the week as I am able.

There is a Facebook group if you are intereted in joining.

Tomorrow I’ll be in a workshop that has to do with creating urban/suburban partnerships and here’s a list of the speakers for the week.

Caught something about “Walkable Neighborhoods” over on Joe’s blog today.  He pointed to walkscore.com – a site that will tell you how walkable your neighborhood is.  On the site, they have this to say about walkable neighborhoods…

Walkable neighborhoods offer surprising benefits to our health, the environment, and our communities.

Better health: A study in Washington State found that the average resident of a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood weighs 7 pounds less than someone who lives in a sprawling neighborhood.¹ Residents of walkable neighborhoods drive less and suffer fewer car accidents, a leading cause of death between the ages of 15–45.

Reduction in greenhouse gas: Cars are a leading cause of global warming. Your feet are zero-pollution transportation machines.

More transportation options: Compact neighborhoods tend to have higher population density, which leads to more public transportation options and bicycle infrastructure. Not only is taking the bus cheaper than driving, but riding a bus is ten times safer than driving a car!²

Increased social capital: Walking increases social capital by promoting face-to-face interaction with your neighbors. Studies have shown that for every 10 minutes a person spends in a daily car commute, time spent in community activities falls by 10%.³

Stronger local businesses: Dense, walkable neighborhoods provide local businesses with the foot traffic they need to thrive. It’s easier for pedestrians to shop at many stores on one trip, since they don’t need to drive between destinations.

My new neighborhood scored an 82/100!

Also, in my ongoing effort to try and make as many of my normal purchases from people and places that make positive and conscientious contributions to society, I wanted to point out betterworld.com.

Better World Books collects and sells books online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide. With more than two million new and used titles in stock, we’re a self-sustaining, triple-bottom-line company that creates social, economic and environmental value for all our stakeholders.

Yeah, I am gonna spend a little more on books from this group than Amazon or another group like that, but I am always reminding myself, low costs almost never come without someone else paying the “price.”

After 4 months of getting to know Memphis, living with various people and in various places, and living out of a suit case, I have found a place to hang my hat – at least for the next year.

here for more pictures (not my stuff in the house)

Here’s what metropolitan Memphis looks like

Downtown Memphis is actually to the west of “the loop” between the Mississippi River and 240.  Inside the loop is generally referred to as midtown, though it has more specific designations in certain parts.  To the east of the the loop is Germantown, Cordova, and Collierville.  Piperton, where our church community has purchased land for some future use is a little more east than Collierville.  I considered living in virtually all of these places.

Living subversively in a suburban context is something I care deeply about and feel like a good portion of my life will probably go to, but for a smattering of reasons, it doesn’t seem that now is the season for that. I mentioned a slew of factors in the decision making process in my post about being scared to live in the suburbs and I don’t really think that any decision I would have made would have been THE right decision, but here’s why I am pretty excited about this place.

1) Location.  This house puts me within walking distance (less than 1/2 of a mile) of coffee shops, restaurants, shopping, the largest park in the city, the playhouse, and the only theater I am aware of in Memphis that shows Indy films.  Here’s a little map I started to put together of all the stuff I can walk to easily.  There’s a ton more that is easily within biking distance (1-3 miles) such as the YMCA where I’ll work out and my bank.

2) Set-up.  The house is perfectly set-up to invite others to explore intentional community.  There are 3 huge bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms on the 1st floor as well as a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment with its own kitchen and a separate entrance on top.

3) Neighborhood.  The neighborhood is both racially and socio-economically diverse and by virtue of living here I will be part of the “Tucker-Jefferson Neighborhood Association,” an active group which aims “to maintain and improve the dignity and integrity of the residences and businesses in the area, to preserve the diversity of the area, to insure orderly an compatible land use in the area, to encourage homeowners living in the area to improve their homes, and to work together on problems and issues of certain concern.”

4) Opportunity.  Living Hope is a primarily white, affluent, suburban church that is asking God how we might engage and be a blessing to urban Memphis as well as to where we are.  Having more people move into urban parts of the city will inevitably be a big part of that.

I am truly grateful to have found this place and am really looking forward to having a context to engage on a more constant basis.

Update: Just after I posted this, I happened to come across a few relevant posts on this subject.  Be sure to check out David Fitch’s – “The Middle In: The Unique Missional Opportunity,” and Joe Thorn’s, “I Love the Suburbs” on a brand new blog about the gospel in the suburban context, SubText.

I hear people talk quite frequently about the “dangers of the city” and how unsafe certain parts of town are.  But if I were being honest, I would tell you that I am far more scared to live in the suburbs than I am to live virtually anywhere else.

By design, suburbs are places of isolation, disconnection, and compartmentalization.  Their very existence is predicated on cultural values of materialism, consumerism , and individualism.  All of this makes it much harder (not impossible mind you) to follow the way of Jesus – a way of simplicity and interconnectedness with those on the margins of society.

I bring this up because I will very soon need to decide on a more permanent place to live.  I have been looking in mid-town which is more urban, racially mixed, threatened by crime and violence, accessible to pedestrians, affordable, and artistic.  All of this most naturally appeals to me.

But, I have also been looking in the Germantown/Collierville area which is suburban, predominantly white, relatively free of crime and violence, necessitates a car to go anywhere, more expensive, and culturally bland.

Complicating these basic dynamics are factors such as these…

– most of the folks at Living Hope are suburban people thus I feel I should live among them

– I am a young adult pastor and mid-town is more attractive to young adults

– we gave bought land and are discussing the potential of building a gathering place on it even further east from urban Memphis in Piperton

– the idea of our church planting or having more of a presence in urban Memphis is something we are discussing

– currently, the people I am aiming to really share life with live predominantly in suburban Memphis

– it maybe the case that more of our folks would head toward mid-town if a few more folks blazed that trail

… and I could probably list more.  I have been basically paralyzed by this decision of where to live and why.  Maybe I can just rest in the fact that no matter what, I am looking to rent and not buy, which ties me down probably for a year at the most. On top of this, where ever I wind up, I am seeking to be there with the express purpose of taking Jesus’ command to love my neighbors literally and seriously.  So, whether in mid-town or the burbs, I am sure there will be folks who are hurting and in need, and I find some solace in the primacy of this calling.

So there ya have it – with all the transparency I can muster, the suburbs scare me.  I would much rather live in a place where I could be shot or robbed than in a place that has the potential to chip away at my soul and spiritual sensibilities every so slowly and subtlety.  I welcome your thoughts.

Not sure why I didn’t think of this the other day, but there is another vital component of what it mean to be the people of God linked to the idea of hospitality – welcoming the stranger.

Because of their experience in Egypt and God’s deliverance, the nation of Israel was admonished to always welcome the stranger (alien – Gen 15:13, Ex. 23:9). In Luke 10 Jesus sends the disciples out to announce the Kingdom of God and part of their task was to bless those who welcomed them as strangers/aliens.

Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs note this as a distinctive of the Emerging Churches that they researched and this, at least to my mind, is intrinsic to what it means to be missional.

Sidenote: I don’t throw that word missional around lightly. As I wrote about here, this word is fast being co-opted by the consumeristic trends of American evangelicals, thus necessitating that we be very deliberate about how we understand, use, and define this word. Being missional stems from a theological revolution resulting in not simply new mediums or methods of communicating the same gospel message, but a fundamentally different, thouroughly biblical, message of the mission of God in the world – the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom in and through Jesus, the way in which this mission of God creates a community called church, whose salvation is experienced here and now for the sake of the world. Being missional (and therefore missional language) is not something which can simply be added to church structures and practices – it either recreates from the inside-out, when rightly understood, or destroys from the outside-in, when wrongly understood.

Eric Jacobsen in his book, Sidewalks in the Kingdom, also has some great things to say about how the places we live in effect our ability to be the sort of people who are even able to welcome starngers.

All this to say that being hospitable people is not merely something we can hope to aspire to someday, but is part and parcel of the very identity of the people of God. It’s important.

I haven’t posted much here about my girlfriend Maria, but I intend to begin remedying that unfortunate situation right now.

There is so much about Maria that I respect and admire – such as her sense of calling to “at risk” teenagers. Maria has primarily grown up in the city of Oslo in Norway, a city not so unlike major cities in the states in many ways (though quite different in others). So, when she thinks of “at risk” teenagers, she is thinking of kids who have been neglected at home, have experienced abuse or violence, have been victims or users of drugs and alcohol, or are tied up with gang culture. These kids are quite certainly “at risk” in so may ways. Her compassion for teenagers in these situations is both amazing and inspiring. She has been a pioneer in the field of youth ministry in Norway and has had numerous opportunities to speak and write on the subject.

Our relationship has given me occasion to broaden my perspectives and horizons in countless ways. One of these ways is in terms of rethinking my past experience in youth ministry any my lingering burden for the sorts of people that I have worked with previously. After talking about Maria’s sense of calling with her and getting to see her in action, I have come to realize that my sense of calling is also to people who are “at risk,” but in a much different way.

Whereas Maria’s draw is to an urban context, mine is more to a suburban one. Teenagers, and people in general, are also “at risk,” but not usually from the sorts of things I mentioned above. Rather, in the suburbs, teenagers are “at risk” from much more subtle and appealing forms of oppression, persecution, and pain. The teens I am used to working with are “at risk” from their parents demands of success and achievement. They are at risk from pressure from peers to fit in, to look a certain way, and act a certain way. They run the risk of being completely overrun by the overwhelming and oh-so-pervasive powers of consumerism, individualism, and materialism. Different than in cities where there is often little church presence or witness, suburbs tend to offer a plethora of church communities in all imaginable varieties. Consequently, suburban teenagers (and everyone else in the suburbs for that matter) are at risk from getting just enough of a dose of church and Christianity so as to inoculate them from the real power of the gospel.

I suppose when you get right down to it, everyone is “at risk” from something to some extent, but I was just struck by the realistic way in which suburban teenagers may be counted among those who are poor and oppressed on account of the subtle, but evil powers which are mightily and pervasively at work within suburban contexts.

Back to Maria – I love that we have in common this desire to help people experience the freedom and liberation found in Christ regardless of what they are at risk from or oppressed by.