Do you feel like I do?

A young friend lamented to me this afternoon: “Today just didn’t feel like the last day of school.” Her frustrated statement caused me to think.

All of us who have children in the our school system know that today was the last day of school. It is verifiably true that today, June 12, 2008, was the last day for school to be in session in our district. So, if it didn’t feel like the last day of school I wonder if it made the fact that it was the last day any less true. I asked her about it and she looked at me with a face that said, “Why did I just say it didn’t feel like it was the last day of school?” That was the end of our conversation.

I am curious about this. When something doesn’t feel like it is supposed to, does that make it any less true? Sometimes yes, and sometimes no, I suppose. There are certainly things that our feelings can accurately assess. If the air temperature feels hot to you than it probably is hot. You may even be able, by your feelings, to determine the air temperature to within a close degree of accuracy. Feelings are good that way. Those are physical feelings, driven by nerve endings, pretty good in the area of data acquisition. But what about our inner feelings, driven by emotions? Now we start to get a little more fuzzy.

We have to be careful about decisions or assessments that we make based on our emotions. My young friend won’t show up at school tomorrow because despite the way that she feels, today was the last day of school, and she knows that it is true. Tomorrow she will sleep in and won’t go to the high school because despite what she feels, what she knows will override her feelings. What do you do when the way that you feel directly contradicts what you know to be true? What wins? What drives your actions?

This is a very important question, be careful not to simply dismiss it. Let’s turn up the heat just a bit. Suppose you no longer feel like being married, or being a parent, or being a friend, or perhaps you don’t feel like you are loved, or that you are being treated fairly or suppose just for a moment God feels distant to you. How does how you feel about these things make them true or not true? The simple fact is that your feelings have no bearing on their truthfulness. What is, is, regardless of how you or I feel about it.

Our feelings about a certain thing are certainly something to be considered but they often tell us more about ourselves than they tell us about the event or relationship that we are considering. Many of us live our lives with a great sense of entitlement. Our feelings betray the fact that we believe that the world orbits around our lives.

Sometimes it is our expectations that get us in trouble.

When we expect a certain thing we recalibrate our feelings. When our expectations are not met our feelings let us know by making us feel disappointed. My young friend was expecting a certain kind of a day at school today, when things didn’t happen that way, her feelings told her that “today must not have been the last day of school because the last day of school wasn’t supposed to go this way.” We have an amazing capacity to get ourselves turned inside out, don’t we?

Next time you feel a certain way stop and consider some things. Consider if what you are feeling about an event or relationship is really true. Stop and consider whether your expectations may have been unreasonable. Consider if the feelings that have at the moment should be the driving force of your life, the energy behind your next few decisions. We have an emotional side for a reason, our feelings are important but they serve us better as a diagnostic tool than the fuel for activity. They tell us where we are relative to the event or relationship we are considering. They help us to understand our current reality, but they can’t take us where we should go.

What can?

Learning vs. Changing

It seems that I have spent a great deal of my life learning. I always have a book in my hand and frequently get excited about new ideas and concepts. Most of these books, ideas and concepts concern spiritual things and relate to God and theology. I like to learn. I have recently come to understand that there is a very real difference between learning and changing.

I crave learning new things but I wonder if it is just another form of mental boredom that needs a diversion to be satisfied. Sometimes "idea adrenaline" can be the fix that I need. When I find a new concept in a book, or even come up with one on my own I am quick to pass it on to others. Many times, in retrospect, I pass titillating bits of data along to improve my image in the eyes of other people.

There is a way to allow new thoughts to pass through our mind with out ever becoming a part of who we are or what we are becoming. What I am discovering is that it is possible to cover over a life rife with character cracks with a wallpaper of new concepts so that we don't even understand what is really under all that wallpaper any longer.

I have come to think of this ability as some kind of a cardiac by-pass. Rather than allowing new ideas to begin in my brain and then seep slowly down into my heart and soul, I have developed the ability to completely by pass that process and divert these new thoughts right to my mouth. As a teacher I am constantly on the look out for new ways to teach old things so I digest new information only well enough to puke it back up onto my hearers.

Reminds me of a mother bird. She looks for worms and holds them somewhere until she comes back to the nest and then regurgitates them into the mouths of her waiting babies. I am afraid that my motivation for data regurgitation is not quite as pure as that of a robin.

How do we take a new thought, live with it and allow it to settle into our heart? How can we actually become what we have just learned about? I like the concept of "steeping." Allowing our life to steep in the concept until we are colored by it and our essence has been changed is quite a challenge.

Perhaps it is the difference between paint and dye. Perhaps it goes even deeper than that but a better metaphor does not come to me at the moment. I am beginning to wonder how long it has been since something that I have discovered was handled by my heart and not just my brain. My brain has conspired against my heart and seems to selfishly hold on to some pretty significant concepts and keep them for itself. It is time for my heart to fight back.

My heart is not used to fighting for its life, it has taken a set and it has taken pain to wake it up. My brain has been the despot for so long that it has gotten a bit lazy...my heart is starting to quietly set up a movement of guerrilla warfare. A quiet insurgency that will require a fight...there will be blood.

My brain is like a pharisee and my heart is yearning to be set free by the one who comes to bring life and health. Lord Jesus, have mercy on me. I am involved in arming my heart to overthrow my brain and put it back in the place that it was designed to live, somewhere in the suburbs of my life. I wonder if it is possible to have that by-pass reversed?

Hearing isn't easy but seeing is even harder

It never ceases to amaze me how I can be moving through life and think that I know where I am when I am confronted by the brutal truth and reality gets redefined. We humans have become experts at living in un-reality. I don't want to call it fantasy because for most of us it isn't some place that we go to on purpose. We don't actively try to move our heads into the clouds so that we can't see the ground beneath our feet, but we end up doing it anyway. Unreality is a place we live to protect us from something, it is not an accidental destination but neither is it a place we know we are hiding. Unreality is an interesting place to live. When you hang out there you see patterns developing but you never think that you have any culpability in the patterns. You create a reality for yourself so that you can continue to do the things that you have always done and wonder why nothing ever changes.

We have gravitated towards unreality. Unreality reminds me of one of my favorite elementary school playground games, dodge ball. It is a place where the things that we have learned to do to help us to dodge the playground balls of reality that others are trying to pop us with. The funny thing about unreality is that we just think they are wrong, we look at there sorry throws and either dodge them, or catch them and then throw the ball right back where it came from

That is all well and good and we seem to be happy in our little state of unreality and we seem to develop the mechanisms necessary to keep dodging. In essence we are the kings of our own little game of dodge ball. For some reason, though, there are fewer and fewer players as the days go on. People just keep drifting away, no one wants to play anymore. We might even wonder why and consider that people just don't love us like they should. Our unreality gets a little deeper and a little more hazy.

If you are fortunate a new kid comes onto the playground with an arm like a rifle. He throws that red playground ball so fast we can't see it coming and it tags us on the head. We are stunned and things begin to clear up for us. For a few minutes there is a clarity that can be dazzling. After we realize what just happened we have a choice to make. We can pretend that it didn't happen, now we aren't choosing unreality anymore but have graduated to full on fantasy living, (denial is not just a river in Egypt) or we can thank the new kid with the good arm and shake ourselves awake and really take a good look around. Hopefully we experience sorrow about how long we lived in a state of unreality and sorrow over the people that we hurt while we camped there and hopefully we can put some things in place based on the new reality that we see. My usual reaction to a well placed dodge ball is, "oh, shit."

For some of us that fast moving playground ball is a phone call from a doctor, or from the police, or from the bedside of one of our parents, or some other personal tragedy. For me, recently it was attending an experiential learning even called "Breakthrough" where I was popped by ball after ball thrown by the trainers and the other attenders. At one point, I felt that I was bleeding from the ears and would have to be carried off the field, but I began to see, and hear. I said more than "oh, shit" but can't really share that here.

Thanks ACCD, Thanks Dan and Sarah, you guys have nice arms.

These were the same balls that people had been throwing for quite some time, but now they were traveling at a speed where there was no dodging, only collision, pain, repentance, and growth.

Jesus had a similar effect on people. Through a well designed question, or some feedback he was able to help people see things that before then were left unseen. Remember the time that he was over at a Pharisee's house and a woman came in to care for him? Luke tells us this version of the story:

Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner."

Jesus answered him, "Simon, I have something to tell you."
"Tell me, teacher," he said.
"Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?"
Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled."
"You have judged correctly," Jesus said.
Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.
Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little."
Then Jesus said to her, "Your sins are forgiven."
The other guests began to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?"
Jesus said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

Simon was living in a state of unreality called judgment. He thought he had a pretty good handle on who was who and had taken a seat behind the bench to judge all that he saw. Jesus loved Simon enough to wind up and aim.

In essence Jesus asked permission to give Simon a little feedback, a little reality check. "Simon, can I throw this playground ball at your noggin?" "Sure, teacher, Simon replied." Simon

My guess is that Simon thought he could dodge it. I will bet that he had been playing catch with these kinds of balls for years and he thought that he could either dodge or catch and re-throw, we don't know for sure but I know Simon, some days he shows up in my mirror. We don't know what Simon did with this sting on the side of his face. I can almost hear him say my famous, "oh shit." but what happened next? Did he jump at the chance to really see and hear, or did he retreat further back from unreality into fantasy? We don't know.

All I know is that I am glad for red play ground balls and glad for people with 95 mph fast balls. The interesting thing is that unreality is layered on us like old paint on an antique chair. Shot after shot must be taken to take off layer after layer. At some point we begin to see that those tossing the balls at us are not trying to hurt us but rescue us from ourselves, and we even let some of those slow knucklers smack us around. People have invented a word for that, listening. Wow, but I guess you have to learn to hear for that whole thing to work.

I wish that it only took one good shot to smack us out of all our unreality but I don't think it works that way. I know that another ball will come whistling out of no where at any time, and I hope that I won't be able to dodge it. If we learn to listen we may someday even hear, "Joe, I have something to tell you." When you hear that, give him permission and quickly find a bag of ice because you are just about to get one of those red playground balls up side the head, but at least you will be living in reality, learning to see and hear.

Rethinking the thinking that we have been thinking.

So...it has been a wonderful lent. I have been spending a lot of time in the Gospels reading the stories of the last week of the life of Christ and learning quite a bit. I have been influenced by driving under the influence of Marcus Borg and some of his thoughts on the last week of Christ. It has occurred to me that we have been really gotten ripped off.

Our thinking about the Bible has been heavily influenced by the thinking of the last 200 years...not such good thinking. It seems to me that it is kind of like our only influence on fashion design being the magazines of the 1970's. Imagine if we thought that the 70's were the high water mark of fashion design rather than the low water mark? "Hey pal, nice leisure suit..." Just as the 70s will go down in history as an unfortunate aborition in fashion, or in architecture, or in auto design, or....gosh what happened in the 70's, I believe the enlightenment will prove to be so theologically. It seems to me that the last 200 years of thought will be the AMC Pacer of theology.

For some of us who are beginning to read things that were written pre-enlightment we are beginning to understand that there was quite a bit of "enlightenment" before the enlightenment really happened. C.S. Lewis said that if we really want to understand the church fathers we should read the church fathers, not what someone has said about the church fathers. He said that it would be very difficult for someone who entered the room at 11:00 to join in on a conversation that began at 8:00 and fully understand what was being said...brilliant. That is really what we have done. We have entered a conversation that began 2000 years ago...at least its latest iteration...and we entered it just a few years ago and have not done good disciplined work to understand what has been said before we arrived. Perhaps this is the height of arrogance.

so, when it comes to the nature of God, of salvation, of the atonement, of eternal destines, of the Kingdom of God, we know what people have been saying since the notes in our study bibles have been written but what were people saying in the second and third and fourth centuries? Does that question even seem relevant?

We have taken a book of stories and made it something that it was never intended to be. If God wanted us to have a systematic theology couldn't he have written one? We have made it possible to "understand" God without knowing God. I am not sure if that is what we were supposed to do. So...how about rethinking some of these things? I wonder thought if it is really re-thinking...maybe is it simply going back a little further than the invention of the printing press and joining some of the greatest minds of all time in their quest for God. A quest not for academic understanding but for intimate knowing.

If we do this we may have to change some of our language, the definition of orthodoxy, and certainly some of our practices...but isn't that why Jesus came in the first place.

He is the one who first said, "You have heart it said before, but I say unto you" Was he rethinking things or just trying to get back to the thinking before the thinking that people were doing at the time. It seems to me that we need to figure this one out together.

The art of getting things done...

Well, I am no mathematician. I believe that in my educational career I failed algebra on at least two separate occasions. I am not sure if it was my untreated ADD or simply my lack of motivation due to failure to see what in the hell all of those numbers and symbols could possibly mean in real life.

I have come to some understandings of them and their usefulness. I have wondered over the last years why it was so difficult to get things accomplished around here. Spiritual warfare? Perhaps people were right about this place and a new plant would only ever just barely scratch out a meager little spot in the kingdom for itself. I have come to understand that although spiritual warfare is raging on a level often unseen, that my inability to execute was the result of a simple missing variable.

Over the last years my vision for this place has never really changed. I really do believe it is God's vision for this place...but in the past I was able to execute on the vision and see good things happen. Here any good work that I did was soon swallowed up in business and anything that was started soon petered out. (interesting phrase I wonder if it was coined by a male after....well never mind)

For some reason last week as I was thinking about all of these things it occurred to me that the reason there has not been good sustainable gains made here was not a lack of vision. It was the lack of an executable strategy. A strategy for this place, not borrowed from someone else for somewhere else. After thinking about it I came up with an algebraic expression and so here it is.

Execution = Vision + Strategy x Accountability
________________________
Reality

So, in order to get things done, accomplished, one needs more than a vision, more than a strategy and more than accountability. For years I have had the vision to see things done here that need to be done. I would say God's vision. I have simply not had an executable strategy that would work.

Many people talk about borrowed vision not being able to sustain the passion necessary to see something sustainable put in place. Very little is said about borrowed strategies. For years I have pieced together strategies from various places, all the while knowing that they would not work, all the while knowing that they were a patchwork of different philosophies and ideas. I was not able to understand the strategy that would work here. (By work I simply mean achieve the goal of the church, making more and better disciples of Jesus)

The issue is largely an issue of a misunderstanding of reality. Many planters use borrowed visions...we all know that will never work. Almost all planters use borrowed strategies...these will often work because the place where we are using them is much like the place where they were developed. Planting a Willow clone in another midwestern city will yield good results as long as you have Hybels-style passion and a Hybels-style communicator. Launch a willow clone in an environment like this one and you are in trouble.

For years I knew that fact but did not know what would work. But I was disciplined and careful in my understanding of the reality in which I was dealing. It took at least 4 years but I have come to understand the culture here enough to feel confident that we have a strategy that is born from our vision and is based in reality.

Many planters are afraid of accountability. Not personal accountability, "have you lied, looked at another woman inappropriately...blah, blah, blah..." but accountability as to their work performance. They are afraid of it on the surface because they don't want to feel controlled, but underneath it is a fear that either their vision or their strategies are borrowed and they have no personal passion or skin in the game in either area. They don't want to be accountable because they don't know if what they are doing is going to work. They have a vison or a strategy that they read in a book or picked up at a boot camp and they know that it is not theirs.

They also reject accountability because they don't love the place where they are enough to come to the conclusion that if they can't get it done it is better to know it sooner than later so that someone who can is put in place. Most of us are just looking for a way to make a living and that package is more important than any effectiveness that may need to be measured. (sorry if that stings a bit)At the end of the day seeing God's vision for this place is more important than my role or yours it is the most important thing, if it is not that way for you than you are wasting someone's money and you should find a place that you love that deeply.

After 4 years of scratching the surface I have a strategy born in reality and born of pain and prayer. I am confident that it is from God and so accountability as to its execution is not only natural, I crave it. I long to have others holding us accountable because I long to see people from this county entering the kingdom of God

So...the art of getting things done is the art of hearing a vision from God and living in reality long enough to create a strategy to accomplish that vision and an accountability around that strategy to kick my ass when it needs to be kicked.

Some will ask, accountability to whom? After you live in a place long enough to understand your reality and create a strategy around it you will also have found a group of people who understand the vision, are excited about the strategy and who love you enough to hold you accountable on a list of deliverables. It is a good thing. There is one more thing that these people must love. They must love their neighbors, if they don't they will settle for a strategy that satisfies their needs and the needs of their children and will quickly forget about the thousands who make up the reality that we are in.

As I have understood it this last piece is an important one and I will talk about it later in a post that I will call "The Beauty of Living in Between." Right now I have to go take my adderall...

Embracing mystery as the way of Jesus

There is a depth to what Jesus said that was as refreshing to the newly formed heart as it was maddening to the heart that was crusted with stale religion. One has to wonder what it was that made his sentences have a life and texture that no human tongue could produce?

"Unless something takes place in you, you will never see the Kingdom of God." Jesus conversation with Nicodemus is remarkable. He seems to be saying that unless the Spirit of God...the great mystery of God...comes and does something in the essence of a person there is no kingdom sight, no kingdom hearing. The best you could hope for is a cold logical religious system...

The one who is trained in religion has a very had time understanding mystery. He has spend his "god brain time" thinking logically and systematically about theology and so when mystery or faith are introduced as ways of thinking they are like weedy streets that are not frequented by the traveler. The religious thinker is unable to process these new thoughts because these channels have not yet been cut into his brain, there is no way to think and hold these things in his mind. He cannot live with mystery, to him mysteries are to be solved. Jesus tells him that he must become like a little child...

The suggestion of metaphor language or mystery seems so foreign that he must draw attention to it and cast it to the floor where he would kill it with the boot sole of sarcasm. "Can a man enter into his mothers womb and be born a second time?" Nicodemus answers back with a guarded sarcasm that lets us know that he is not thinking like Jesus is thinking. Nicodemus thinks with the cold logic of a trial judge...dealing with "the doubtful balance of right and wrongs, with weary lawyers with endless tongues." Jesus talks of wombs and wind and water, it all seems like nonsense to the theologically trained mind.

Nicodemus and the systematic religion thinker feels that simply by casting the light of logic on mystery that he will expose some part of it, not only to his eyes, but also to the eyes of the speaker. If he is willing to see what is happening, however, or even if he is willing to be willing, he will see the solid beam of his logic-light become refracted by the metaphor and be exalted, prism like, into all of the colors that his gray thinking could never dream possible. New channels could be cut into this brain if it was just willing.

The one who hears and holds the metaphor becomes like the metaphor and will not make good sense to the one that has not been living in this mystery. He will be mysterious in his activity and in his purposes. He will not seem to be thinking correctly about all of the things that may be important to the one who has not embraced and been embraced by the metaphor. He will in effect be living in a new place, the Kingdom of God.

He will be looking at "a Kingdom not made with hands whose builder and maker is God." This is why it is so difficult to be in relationship with this one if the other has not experienced this transformation.

Every principle or paradigm that one uses to process all of the events of his life are morphed by coming in contact with the One. Nothing is as it was. He has been reborn into a life that he never dreamed possible. He now sees something others around him do not see. Up is now down and losing your life is now saving it...mysteries are not to be solved but to be embraced. This is the way of Jesus.

What is leadership?

So I am wondering what leadership is really all about. I used to read Hybels and Warren and the rest and thought that they really knew how the church should be led. Then I read Collins and began to understand that business principles may not be the best way to organize the thing.

I use to think that I was a leader but some of the business guys in my church feel that I have no natural leadership ability. I wonder if they are talking about management as leadership skill? I don't have a lot of management skill...I have a hard time managing myself actually. Does that disqualify me from leading a church that is missional and innovative?

I am a planter in a very tough area, one of the lowest churched areas in the country...and it has taken a long time to get traction. In fact we may not have traction yet after 4 years. There are 150 adults attending on a weekend, about 90 children and students combined.

I guess this blog is going to be more about questions than answers. I read other blogs and the writers have witty and profound things to say...I have mostly questions.

I have been floundering a bit over the last few years trying to learn what might work here, but without a comprehensive plan...until now.

So...did it really take me 4 years to figure out this people group and contextualize the church or is this just another gimmick that sounds good but ultimately won't pan out in the end? How can I keep from second guessing my leadership ability...ability that has been proven in the past as effective?

I do believe deeply that God sent me here and that I am a modern Patrick. A Patrick in the sense that I have come to a very hard place to bring the gospel and I have fallen in love with the place. I have come to believe that if we can understand this place and how to translate the gospel here that there will be a great deal of hope for eastern Europe and for the pacific northwest in our country.

I have adopted the moniker Monachus Bellator, warrior monk, which some have used to refer to Columba and others in the Celtic tradition. I feel that I am here in that tradition to do what those men did where they were.

I find that I don't really like hanging out with Christians...that is the type that I grew up with. I don't like their language and I don't like their feelings for people that are different than they are. So...either I am completely delusional...completely possible...or i am beginning to see what God is doing here and am in the process of joining him in this work.

I guess time will tell and there is not a lot of time left really.