• Archive of "living hope" Category

    Childcare or Kingdom Community?

    July 23, 2008 // 5 Comments »

    This is a brief piece I wrote for the Living Hope community as we continue to explore what it means to embrace a missional identity as a church community – specifically with regard to how we understand the place of children.

    The first church I served at as a pastor was very large.  We had all sorts of programs and services for people to choose from.  We invested a great deal of time and energy as a staff in trying to figure out the best ways, times, and methods to get people involved in church activities.  One of the things we were constantly wrestling with was how to have the necessary volunteers to pull everything off.  No area of ministry struggled more for consistent and dedicated volunteers than our children’s ministry.  My good friend Cyd, our children’s pastor, would ask the staff every single week to please talk to others about serving in the children’s ministry.  It was an area of constant need and an utterly shameful reality which screamed of just how far off course we were in living out God’s dream for his people.

    In retrospect, I am able to see that this need was a direct result of the skewed understanding we had of what it meant to be the church.  We approached the church as though it were a volunteer organization.  Basically, our mentality was, “People have busy lives already, we need to do what we can to make it easy for them to participate in church activities and be careful not to ask too much – lest they leave.”  But the church is not a volunteer organization – the church is a family, a community invited by God to embody God’s good news of the Kingdom to the world around us.  This makes all the difference in the world in terms of the way we approach how we live, worship, and share life together.

    Children are God’s gift, not only to parents, but to the community of the church.  In the context of this community, it’s not that we need volunteers to care for kids.  Rather, it’s that part of the identity of this new community is a mutual concern for each other, including a vested interest in the care for each other’s children.  In a culture so thoroughly individualistic, where we are led to believe that it is ultimately to ourselves that we are accountable and responsible, the church stands as a contrast.  In the community called church, we find our true identity not in ourselves, but in our relationship to others.

    For Living Hope, our desire to be a missional church community means that we are seeking to live out a peculiar existence; an existence in which the needs of others come before our own and the care of children is seen as a communal, not private, affair.

    Practically speaking, here’s what this might mean and look like.  Each Sunday morning people gather to worship – some gather at 9:00, others at 10:45.  During these times, children who can’t or don’t participate in the corporate worship gathering, meet in age specific groups.  This is our divine opportunity to experience what it means for the church to be different – to reject the dominant consumer culture.  This is our opportunity to invest a little bit of time with the children of our community – to show mutual (and opposed to individual) concern and accountability.  It’s not about volunteerism; it’s about Kingdom community.

    Of course the ways in which we ought to show mutual concern and accountability run far deeper than this Sunday morning opportunity.  There are implications for our small group times, for sharing meals, for sharing resources, for taking vacations, for involvement in extracurricular activities, and so on, but there is something unique about the significance of caring for the children of our church community during those times that we are gathered corporately.

    Posted in church, community, individualism, living hope, missional

    I Love Listening

    July 19, 2008 // 2 Comments »

    God has done some kind of number on me.  In days gone by I would have described me (and I am pretty sure others would have as well) as a guy who primarily loves to talk.  While that may still be true, I am way more interested in listening these days.  Wednesday night, therefore, was an unbelievable time.

    Once upon a time there was a small group of friends that began to grow.  Over time that group has become three (probably soon to be more).  On Wednesday, those groups got together for an evening of sharing stories and praying with one another.

    For several hours people talked about what God has been doing in their life, what challenges they are facing, what some of their hopes and dreams for the future are, and prayed with and for one another.  I shared in this time from 2 points of view.  First and foremost, I am a part of one of these groups and I was overjoyed to count myself among these people who are trying to follow God in their lives.  Secondly, I am a pastor on staff with the church community all these friends are a part of.  It is really this 2nd perspective that I want to comment on briefly.

    Most of my undergraduate education, internships, and church experience has taught me that the paid pastors/professionals are charged with the task of developing vision for a church community and then laboring to help those who comprise the body get on board.  Ugh.  This is a methodology I have been happy to wave bye-bye to.  Instead, I would rather spend my time listening to peoples hearts and stories as we, together, try to get a handle on what God is doing and saying in our midst.  This is intrinsic to how I have come to understand what it means to be a truly missional church community.  It drastically changes how we go about being the body of Christ and I am all for it.  Here’s to the journey my friends – allelon!

    Posted in church, community, living hope, missional

    Truth Be Told, I am Scared to Death to Live in the Suburbs

    July 12, 2008 // 6 Comments »

    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.

    Posted in consumerism, culture, decisions, individualism, living hope, memphis, spiritual formation, suburban, urban

    Riches in Poverty

    July 10, 2008 // 1 Comment »

    If I had to guess, I’d say that I’ll be posting on “the scandalous impracticality of all that Jesus stood for” really soon as I can’t seem to stop thinking about it.

    As a prelude to that though, I wanted to point to a message Gib offered to the Living Hope community this past Sunday when I was away, “Riches in Poverty.”  Probably my favorite line, “Every time currency changes hands, I am making a spiritual decision.”  How different our lives would be, how different our very understanding on what it means to be a gospel people if we embraced and lived out this Kingdom truth!

    Posted in decisions, kingdom, living hope, money

    Loving My Worlds… and Wanting Them to Collide

    June 9, 2008 // 1 Comment »

    My position at Living Hope has been enigmatic to say the least. I am a Young Adult Pastor, but my task is not to create or run young adult programs per se. Instead, I have spent my time relationally connecting with young adults and seeking ways to help them connect to the broader church community as we try and let what it means to be the church flow from that.

    Young adults fall into 3 general categories: singles, young married couples, and young married couples with kids. I have been fortunate enough to be embraced by communities of all three types and yesterday was a microcosm of those worlds for me.

    Yesterday morning I socialized mainly with my house group, which is comprised exclusively of pre-kid, married couples. We collaborated to help one of those couples move and then I spent the afternoon with one of the married guys, Zach, checking out various neighborhoods and properties as we think towards the possibility of intentional community (post on that forthcoming!).

    Then, I had dinner with a slew of my friends who are married w/ small kids. We were celebrating Clay’s graduation as a Doctor of Physical Therapy. This is a great time for me – getting to see how parents deal with kid stuff, trying to love on them myself, and embracing the mess that simply must be embraced if sanity is to remain.

    Finally, last night I spent with a bunch of my single friends. People were really just hanging out and talking. We played a game my friends from Ohio lay claim to, “… and a bottle of wine,” and it was a great time.

    Each of these groups is of course incredibly unique and I treasure my time with all of these folks in accordance with that uniqueness. I am thinking more and more about how to help others discover the joy of sharing life with those in various stages of it, but in the meantime, boy am I thrilled that it’s something God has orchestrated for me. It’s just good for my soul.

    Posted in friends, intentional community, living hope, memphis, young adults

    A Follow Up

    June 3, 2008 // No Comments »

    To all my fellow Living Hopers…

    I am so sorry that I didn’t take the time on Sunday morning to say a heartfelt thanks to all those who have made time to invite me over, take me out, ask about my story, have conversations, and spend time with me in general. Moving to a brand new context and culture with no family, no friends, and no real sense of who’s who and what’s what, is a daunting undertaking and you have made it easier. So here’s me sayin’ thanks!

    Posted in living hope

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