tabletalk

Of Jobs and Houses: What's Happening?!

Whenever I am away from my blog it is usually because my life has overwhelmed my ability to sit down and reflect. Too many blogs are unreflected thoughts - which is fine, don't get me wrong. Just not my interest most of the time.

Why?! you may ask.

Answer: Since December we have been intently looking for a place to move and I have been on the job search. In the last 3 weeks all these things have come together.

First the job search. I am taking a position as Director of New Church Development for the Presbytery of the Cascades. For you non-Presbyterian types, the Presbytery has a certain jurisdiction. In this case the Cascades Presbytery is all of Oregon, the very southern border of Washington and the very northern border of California. It is a position that is funded for two years. The work of starting churches is at the center of my interests and passions. I'm excited for the opportunity to assist the Cascades in their vision and work. It is absolutely unique in our denomination, but I hope it will become more common. Click on Cascades NCD Website to find out what they are doing. I begin work on April 15th. I'll be in Portland. It is the same Presbytery that John and Gail Moody serve in (for those who know John and Gail) plus I have already taken advantage of the kind hospitality of Chuck and June Cassell (for those of you who know Chuck and June).

Second: We've found a house!

It is in the Ashton neighborhood of Forster Ranch in San Clemente. We plan on moving by April 15th. One of our goals was to get closer to the ocean. Unfortunately to be at the ocean was impractical financially. But we are now 4.5 miles from our new home to putting our big toes in the water. We think that is great. The house is smaller, but still has room for guests.

Why and how and?!? OK, I get it. We believe our long term residence is in S. California. Because the job is only funded for two years we decided to stay settled in SoCal and I would become an interstate commuter. How? Well we're not sure, but it seems to be the right thing all around. If we don't buy in this market then we may well be shut out in the future. We will always maintain a home in SoCal. Dee has moved her office out of the home and into her main office in Irvine. Lindsay is looking for a job in Orange County and Chelsea is in-between things. I'll be getting a small place in Portland for the time being. Alaska Air will be my friend. Anyone have frequent flier miles they want to contribute?! No, seriously!

Did I mention that the escrow on the house was 15 days! Kudos to Bill Rolfing our realtor, our lender, Karen Vietmeier of Los Ranchos Presbytery staff, Julie Sandler who found the loan, and I'm sure countless others. Thanks.

More in a while.

A View From the Side of the Road

An observation.

Last fall we had horrendous fires in Southern California. We could see the flames from our home. Our circumstance was safe, but many people suffered great loss. But we in S. Calif. know that the threat wasn't over with the fires. Once it started to rain, you could count on mudslides and hillslides and more. In anticipation of that, some agency decided that before the rains began in earnest, the hillsides that were burned needed to be reseeded. Not all, but those up on the mountainside near us needed to be sprayed in order to speed up the growth of vegetation to hold the earth in place. So they did.

Some two to three months later I can see those hills as I drive by in my car.

The irony - the places that have been seeded are still bare. The ones that were left un-seeded are now green.

What's my point? Simple. For me it represents the urgency with which we as a people act in order to control our circumstance. We can't wait for things to happen in a natural course. Our anxiety dictates that we take charge and make things happen. One of the things I'm learning in spiritual direction is that by taking control we often miss the point. That we're not in control and God's ways are different than my ways.

Look to the hills. Where is the green pasture? It is a thought worth considering. How do we do that in our busy lives when everything is centered on producing. The more we press, sometimes the further we get from the product, from the right result, from what God is doing.

Can we wait? Can we let things take their course without preempting the process? Do we really believe our answers are better than God's?

I look to the hills, from when cometh my help?

(P.S. - Maybe the sprayed areas weren't intended to grow. Maybe the spray is a kind of glue to hold the hill together....analogy still works.)

Radical Continuity: An Image

Last night I was driving to, and back from, San Diego - it's about a 75 mile drive one way. One thing you can count on when you head south on the I5 is traffic. If you don't have it in your direction it's coming at you. It was already dark and the stream of lights coming toward us seemed to be an endless ribbon that moved in a parallel but counter universe to my own.

As I watched I became aware that it was a good analogy for the spiritual journey and for the idea of radical continuity. So here you have it.

The journey we are on is longer than our individual excursions. I'm going 75 miles, the trucker might be going 1,500 miles, the teenager is just getting off at the second exit a mile from where they got on. The road is what is common between us. For a while, whether it is 1 mile or 1,000 miles, we share the same terrain. This is one of the bonds between human beings - the terrain we share. It is the landscape of physical geography, it is the ground covered in a lifetime, it can be the terrain of the heart, or work, or whatever. Humanity has a commonality that unites us. Everyone knows this, we often forget this. It is in itself a radical continuity. We can begin to think of ourselves so individualistically that we forget our connectedness.

The terrain of heart and place and journey are our touchstones with one another. It is something that is echoed in Paul's words/ideas about one part of the body saying to another, "I have no need of you." We're part of God's continuity.

Sometimes people join in our journey for a very brief moment, just a couple of exits. Sometimes people join in our journey for the long haul. I know when I'm on a long road trip I will find someone who drives at the speed I want to go and use them to pace myself.

What I'm learning in this time of radical discontinuity in my life is that those who join me in the journey are part of the radical continuity - the journey itself. They are part of it, because God has brought them into my lane. Once again, God is the one who holds all things together. None of this is arbitrary. I'm not saying it is all planned out either. But I believe that once you are "in the way of Jesus" Jesus gets in the way. Often in the form of people, companions, friends, colleagues....

Next time you see that stream of traffic, consider those who come alongside you for your journey and thank God.

Not Threatened By the State

Recently, I received an email inviting me to a discussion with a number of other pastors who are concerned about protecting the institution of marriage. In the header it suggested that we were in danger of being forced to perform wedding ceremonies that would violate the biblical values of marriage as an exclusive covenant partnership between one man and one woman. I believe this is the biblical value. But I was puzzled and in disagreement with my colleagues on several points.

The first is a practical point. I am not a servant of the state when it comes to performing a wedding ceremony. I don't have to unite anyone in marriage if I don't want to. It's my call. So from the beginning, their advertising was misleading and alarmist. Pastors can choose not to marry anyone.

But it's not true that we can perform weddings for anyone. In our Presbyterian church, we are bound by our constitution which says that marriage is a covenant agreement between one man and one woman. We are not free to go outside those bounds. My ordination is with the church not the state. Even if my conscience is open, as a representative of the church I am not open. I have restrictions which I agree with.

So what needs protecting? Well, I do believe in benefits and rights being the same for all domestic partnerships. I believe it is prejudicial that we don't allow single people to designate a family member or a dependent member of their household to get the same benefits afforded married people. This along with universal healthcare seem to be rights that we should protect and foster. We need to protect and encourage people to make commitments. If you are on my life insurance policy and my health benefits policy and my social security benefits, I'm committed to you. Commitment of caring for others is a good thing regardless of any kind of sexual, social, ethnic, or whatever orientation you can come up with. I know it will cost us something, but the costs are greater in the long run if we ignore it.

What about protecting marriage? First, I don't believe it needs protecting - at least not in the way that my colleagues have surmised. Marriage is a God thing. It is "created by God, blessed by the Lord Jesus Christ, and sustained by the Holy Spirit," at least that is what the marriage ceremony I use says. That means God protects it not me. We uphold it, but don't protect it.

Well, what if the state says that marriage is any two people who want to be together with a license? My response is still, "I'm not a servant of the state." I would argue against using the term marriage to mean something other than one man and one woman bound together. But, if the state, and our society is becoming more rapidly secular all the time, wants to call something marriage other than what the biblical standard is, then I am prepared to qualify what I do as Christian marriage. In fact, it already is that. For myself, if the state decides that same sex unions are to be considered marriage, then I'll stop representing the state in the marriage. People can get a marriage license, like they do in most of Europe. They can be married - but if they want recognition in the church of their marriage as a Christian union, then I will be happy to perform a Christian marriage. I'll stop being a representative of the state of California, even though I am licensed to be.

Maybe it is time we stop serving as cultural chaplains and become servants of the Kingdom of God. Oh I know, we'd lose an income source. So?

Just a thought from out there somewhere.

Radical Continuity and Long-Time Friends

I want to comment again on the idea of radical continuity. Particularly I want to reflect on the role of long-time friends.

Lately I've been reading that time honored and oft revised book by Richard Bolles "What Color Is Your Parachute?" But even as I write this I've got the title covered up with my wallet so nobody around me looks at me sadly and surmises I'm a desperate, out-of-work soul. OK! So I probably am! Not really desperate, but wondering eagerly where this path will lead. One of the things he says is that you should treat your friends well and value them along the way - long before you "need" them to help you with a job. I hope I've been a good friend over the years.

What I want to reflect on is the fact that friendship can run deep. So deep that years and distance don't seem to diminish the ability to not only be friends, but that the friendship can actually grow as one matures, even if there has been little contact. How do I know this? I'm experiencing it every day.

God's radical continuity in my life, besides the presence of Christ through the Spirit, is mostly seen through friendships that I've had for many years. I know I said this in the previous post, so I write here for emphasis. I've never been strategic about friendships. I'm not a climber. There's no place I need to get to. I don't look past people in a room to get to the "important" people (at least I hope not!). The important people have always been those God has put in front of me at the moment. Sometimes they are the ones I don't see often, but remember regularly. (One thing I learned long ago was to pray for those who come to mind. I'm not good at lists but I'm good at being immediately present.) All I can say is that friendships that were established long ago are sustaining me at the moment. Many of those walking with me are people who I've not been in regular contact with over the past 20 years. Why is this?

My only conclusion is that God draws together the resources I need. God is calling people to me. It's not something I orchestrate or scheme. It is with gratitude toward God and those he's called to my path that I write this.

What's my purpose? Well - value one another. Value those who journey with you, even the least of those who walk by you.

I'm reminded of a letter that I received from a student at Lithuanian Christian College a few years ago. In a remarkable way, our congregation had given him a scholarship for his education. The letter said something like this, "Thank you for the scholarship. I'm a business major. Without your help, I wouldn't be able to continue my education. Who knows, perhaps maybe some day, I'll be able to help you out financially."

I was very moved by this expression of thanksgiving. And very much aware of its potential validity.

You never know when the tables turn. Be mindful.

Radical Continuity

Again, this is what my spiritual director has asked me to focus on. Being in a state of radical discontinuity is one thing. But accompanying this is also being in a place of "radical continuity". I think I get it. Not in some superficial way that just echoes spiritual platitudes. How often do we hear Christian people talk about God being with them or they can feel God's presence or them never being alone, but they are unable to offer what that looks like, or their life doesn't reflect it.

Radical continuity affirms the above, but it asks that you attend to the ways that continuity takes place. Radical continuity is the continuous love of God for us through thick and thin. It isn't platitudinous it is very grounded.

For me, the radical continuity is mostly seen in companionship. God has provided for me in this time of radical discontinuity a remarkable group of fellow travelers. Some were expected, some were simply gifts. A long time friend who had surgery for cancer has been a fellow traveler. God used him to get me outside myself early on in my discontinuity. A colleague in ministry who has called me every week sometimes two or three times, just to make sure I was putting one foot in front of the other. There's been several others who I'd not spoken with in 20+ years and they have consistently encouraged and supported me through emails and prayers. The prayers...so many friends pray and I know they pray often and regularly. New friends, old friends, emerging friendships - God has given me fellow travelers. It has always been that way. I've never walked alone. There is a radical continuity to God's love very simply through his people.

When you see it happen it can be quite majestic. Thanks.

Radical Discontinuity

That's what my spiritual director has told me. I'm in a period of "radical discontinuity." Since my resignation as Pastor of Trabuco Presbyterian Church, I've been in a time of discontinuity and it has been radical! I didn't jump from one job into the next, I merely needed to stop and collect myself before I did move on. I felt it was disingenuous to make the congregation go through my personal "collecting". So rather than make this into a prolonged job search where I was only half committed to everything I was doing, I decided that it was best to commit myself to being in a personal "radical discontinuity," in the hopes that I would emerge knowing what to do next by focusing my energies on what was important to me, and the tasks that I had to accomplish to move forward in faith, ministry, calling, life.

It began by plunging into this "radical discontinuity." People who retire experience this. (Some have congratulated me on my retirement! Not old enough and not rich enough!) My director mentioned the other day that he went to a 'prepare for retirement seminar'. He said that the speaker said that retirees face three similar challenges. They face the anxiety of what to do. This is the future question. They face the question of 'Who am I?' We might say, the 'existential' question. Third they face the question of what to do with their time. He said the first thing that the speaker recommends to those in retirement is to create a business card. Let me say, it was one of the first things I did when I left my position as pastor. It helped me answer the question, "who am I?" - at least in casual conversation.

Some observations about living in this "radical discontinuity". First is to not live too far into the future. This is advice I've given others. It comes from Henri Nouwen's look at the Desert Fathers. His comment is that trying to secure the future leads to anxiety and greed. Plus the future is illusory. We have no idea about what Saturday will be on Tuesday. We have only Tuesday. Now we make plans for Saturday, but we don't live into them until we get there. So no use being anxious about tomorrow, Jesus says, today's troubles are enough. Second is to notice that the discontinuity is not an enemy. Can you make friends with where you are if you are in-between? If everything around you is changing, can you be at peace? The goal is to not strive against where you are. The goal is not to suppress your anxiety but simply face it. What will I do? How will I make money? Where will I live? I feel all these things and they make me anxious. But the truth is that I will make money, I will live somewhere, I will do and be something. Facing the anxiety and brushing it away with bravado or toughness or denial is no help. Letting out. Naming it. Turning it over to God. Telling friends. The pressure in the pressure cooker (an analogy I doubt anyone younger than me would understand) gets less and you can focus on today. Which is all you've got.

Radical discontinuity, when everything around you and in you is changing isn't a burden or something to be gotten over. It is rather a place to learn and live and grow.

Being Led Out 2

New churches can be exciting. They are doing all the new and interesting work. It's extremely challenging and an incredible roller-coaster ride - always changing.

Revitalizing existing congregations is harder work. People are stuck. They get set in their ways. It is tough sledding as some would say.

Loren Mead, from the Alban Institue, in his book Changing Pastors suggests that the greatest opportunity for change in a church is when the pastor leaves. It is the time when a congregation has the most freedom to examine itself and to embrace a new direction. It is the primary moment when a congregation can assume a new identity or reclaim an old one and embrace the journey ahead. When a pastor leaves is the time a church can get "unstuck" and is open to the injection of new and challenging directions.

Just a note. It is the same for the pastor.

Being Led Out

I've been out and about these last couple of weeks. Atlanta - Interim Pastor training. Learning a lot of useful things. Daytona Beach - new church coaching training. Learning lots of useful things.

Two observations: The primary way we grow the church of Jesus Christ is by starting new congregations. We've known it for a long time. To be a church, you plant churches. It's the definition of being church. We are sending agencies. God blesses us and we share the blessing. Anytime it gets tucked away as being our own, well we stop being the church.

The analogy of this is something I probably blogged on some time ago but would like to remark on again here. I went to an exhibit last year at the Smithsonian, of ancient manuscripts. Incredible! Some of the oldest known manuscripts in the world were there. The oldest texts of the scripture were there as well. One of the things that struck me was that the oldest texts were, what you might call, working texts. They were not ornate, not fancy in any way, simple - straight forward - translations. Faithful and unadorned. About the time of Constantine in the era we begin to call Christendom, the biblical texts were becoming more of a possession than a tool. They were being bound, they were illuminated, they were gold leafed, and even some of them were locked. It was about that time that the Empire declared Christianity to be the official religion. The church began to see itself as the keeper of the faith not the ones to disseminate it. This progressed through the height of possession during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. We defined and refined church and began to shrink back from being the church sent.

Second note: If congregations that are failing today can rediscover their roots, their initial dna, and in that dna is a missional identity, "we are a sent people", then they can reclaim that heritage and move out into the world. If it is missing, if the church began without that sense of "we are a sent people", then it may need to die and be resurrected in order to grow. It may never have been a church to start with.

For those starting congregations or interested in them, please make sure you implant the "we are a people sent with the gospel to the community we've been called to" dna. If you are a club or a service agency or a group that merely accommodates the culture and blesses it, you're missing the boat.

For those entering in to existing congregations that are plateaued or declining, find out what the dna is and work with it. I believe that what God implanted in the church never leaves it. It is your task to find it and help the congregation embrace it. The church needs to awaken from its slumber and remember.

Whatever your circumstance the truth is the gospel we have needs to be a working gospel, shared freely, not a locked up possession. Just a couple of thoughts.

Being Led Not Driven

What brings about the change in our lives? Is it that self-determined attitude of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps? A friend of mine when he saw a popular Christian book in Costco was taken aback by the title. He hadn't seen the book before that moment. It didn't take him long to summarize his feelings. He concluded two things. First, he decided he didn't want to be driven. Drivenness is how we describe the unhealthy business person, the high achiever. He said, "I don't want to be driven, I want to be led." Secondly he determined that purposes were too impersonal and a false representation of God - God is more than a purpose. He said, "I don't want to be led by purposes but by a person."

In Silas Marner, the object of Silas's gaze is shifted from his gold hoard to a little girl he adopts named Eppie. He retreats from his aloofness to the town and its people. He is reshaped by what holds his gaze. Here is how George Eliot describes the change.

“Silas began now to think of Raveloe life entirely in relation to Eppie: she must have everything that was a good in Raveloe; and he listened docilely, that he might come to understand better what this life was, from which, for fifteen years he had stood aloof as from a strange thing, wherewith he could have no communion: as some man who has a precious plant to which he would give a nurturing home in a new soil, thinks of the rain, and the sunshine, and all influences, in relation to his nursling, and asks industriously for all knowledge that will help him to satisfy the wants of the searching roots, or to guard leaf and bud from invading harm. The disposition to hoard had been utterly crushed at the very first by the loss of his long-stored gold: the coins he earned afterwards seemed as irrelevant as stones brought to complete a house suddenly buried by an earthquake; the sense of bereavement was too heavy upon him for the old thrill of satisfaction to arise again at the touch of the newly-earned coin. And now something had come to replace his hoard which gave a growing purpose to the earnings, drawing his hope and joy continually onward beyond the money.
In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be that of a little child’s.”

This is the theme of Christmas and the rest of our story. We are not intended to be driven people...and particularly we are not driven by purposes. We are to be led in this life, taken by the hand and shown the way. God is not interested in accomplishments, they are false gods. God is interested in relationship with us. Just as we are without excuse.