A Tale of Two Conversations

I had two conversations recently.

One was over dinner with my dear friend. C___ needs to break out of the life place in which she currently finds herself, but the life place in which she finds herself also has the relative comfort that always comes with ruts. A decision to go to ____ would be a huge first step for her, but it's going to take some doing financially.

So, she told me, she laid down a fleece in front of God. If you'll take care of ____ bills by May 1, then I'll know I'm supposed to go.

He hasn't done anything yet. God, that is.

So what does that mean?

***

Earlier that day, I had a phone conversation with my sister Emily. She and her husband Phil are studying to be missionaries. To Great Britain. London, to be more exact.

She was telling me that they have purchased plane tickets for a survey trip to London this summer, and she was ecstatic. "We saved $700 off what we thought we were going to have to spend! We may have to pay on these tickets for two years, but we're going!"

How amazingly cool is that? To know that you're supposed to do something, to own it within your very being so intensely, that life becomes an adventure you take with God, interest rates be darned. To know that you have to do something at your core, to the point that how God takes care of the details of things becomes a non-issue in the blinding light of the journey on the horizon.

***

The two conversations presented an interesting contrast to me. On the one hand was a follower of Christ, kind of wanting to see the pot of gold before walking toward it; on the other, Phil and Emily, charging over the hill headlong, not blindly, but comfortable with trusting God that He was - is - going to hold up his end of the bargain.

God never gave Abraham the fleece deal. Moses neither. The disciples? Nope. They just followed. We could do a lot worse than for the journeys of our lives to turn out the ways that theirs did.

The girl in the first part of the story? She going to be fine. She's got more fight in her than she knows, and she's gonna step out, and it's going to turn out awesome.

Emily and Phil? Those crazy kids are gonna spend two weeks in London, stoking a fire that will burn in their bones until the moment they set foot back on British soil for good. The things they experience will give them dreams to carry them through disappointments, struggles of every kind, and the time-consuming red-tape-ish experience that can be the deputation period. They'll put faces with their calling.

They could pay ten years, and it'd still be totally worth it.

It's got me fired up to help 'em out. So Kristy and I are saving up to help get 'em over there, and be part of God's holding up His end of the bargain. We won't be able to give them a ton of money, but I'll be darned if I'm gonna sit here and not be part of something special.

Godspeed, Phil and Emily. Keep your eyes on the horizon.

Gospeed, C___. The best part of your story - your best sense of yourself - is yet to come.

I'm proud of all of you.

let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
- The Bible, Hebrews 12:1b, 2

Wanna help Phil and Emily? Send letters and contributions in care of "Phil and Emily's tickets" to Bethel Baptist Church, 2720 Broadway, Pekin, IL 61554. They'll see it gets to them.

Chapel, and other things on my mind

So I preached chapel services for ___ Christian School (based out of ___ Baptist Church) today. They have separate chapel services for the Junior/Senior High and Elementary age groups.

I always enjoy the chance to preach to teenagers, and preaching these chapel services has been pretty much the only opportunity I've had so far. My years and relationships with the teens at Bethel taught me so much about integrating the way of Christ into the time/space where God has placed us. I have a lot of empathy for where teenagers are in their journey, and I am aware that many of the spiritual and relational crossroads they're coming to are pivotal ones. I want so much for them to make it as followers of Christ!

With the move to a new ministry and place coming soon, I was aware that this might be the last time I get to speak to them in this way. I didn't do anything emotional or dramatic, but I did begin my time with them by telling them that relationship with God on their own terms exists, and if they weren't at that place, to not give up digging and searching until they began to find it.

The religious experience of parents/leaders is so easy to co-opt as your own, especially in the hermetically sealed subcultures we often create, that finding your own relationship with God doesn't seem to be worth the work. Or surface actions get mistaken for authentic relationship, but by the time the mistake is discovered, bitterness/jaded outlook have set in, and it's too late.

Or, in perhaps the most ironic twist of all, they find the authentic relationship outside the church/relationship circles in which their walk with God was formed. That's just not supposed to happen, it's been dictated by those who've taught us: but it does. And it shouldn't have to.

Two friends of mine, D__ and S__, come to mind. Good kids, brought up in one of the signature ministries of our independent Baptist church circles. Talented, got-it-going-on types. Sincere and dedicated in their faith. And forced to come to grips with the fact that the expression of Chrstianity they were living was a dead end, in every sense of the term. Forced to consider straining - and losing - friendships built over young lifetimes. Forced to consider aligning themselves with local bodies of Christ followers outside the group of independent Baptist churches in which they had grown up. Forced by the intensity of their desire to be followers of God in the way of Christ.

Is it a shame they're considering churches that aren't independent Baptist? You bet it is.

It's a shame because it shouldn't have to happen. As a group of churches, our doctrinal statements are true to the Word of God. As a group of churches, our relational dynamics are haphazard at best, and at worst, they are absolutely detrimental to the development of the generations whose walks with Christ are just beginning.

At least D__ and S__ were strong enough in their faith to continue pursuing it. Most just continue mediocre, brain-dead, irrelevant existences where they are. Or they give up on any expression of a relationship with Christ whatsoever.

These are my observations. They are a big part of my heart for ministry: to be part of creating a whole-life church experience that is an expression of the way of Christ in the time and place in which God has placed us.

Godspeed, teenagers. Just don't give up the search, the journey.

Godspeed, D__ and S__. You're not alone.

Godspeed, independent Baptist churces. The ball's in our court.


Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.
But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. -The Bible, I Thessalonians 4:1,9

The Nays Have It

So it won't be Cincinnati.

After two hours of interview by phone, I waited all day yesterday to hear from __ Baptist Church's pulpit committee as to whether they wanted me to come "candidate" (visit their church, preach, we get to know each other, leading to a vote by the members).

I had mixed feelings. The interview process did not have a great vibe to it. There were seven men on the pulpit committee, out of an average Sunday School attendance of 30ish. That seemed odd.

Then in two hours of interviews over two Sundays, they questioned me for all but ten minutes about the intricacies of standard Baptist doctrine. This after they told me up front that the doctrinal statement I had sent with my resume was the most detailed that they had seen. So that was weird, too.

But the weirdest was the second hour, this past Sunday. __ Baptist Church prints a doctrinal statement on the back of their bulletin every Sunday (indication of priorities), and they wanted to go through it with me and have me state my Scripture proofs for each point (there were ten). So we got started with the first point, and I gave them two Scripture references as my proofs.

"Do you have any more?"

I was not prepared for this. I told them that I didn't have another one off the top of my head, and after a few moments of awkward silence on their end, they said ok and moved to the next point.

It went like that for the entire rest of the conversation. If I offered two refrences, they wanted five. If I offered New Testament proof Scriptures, they wanted Old Testament prophecy. If I gave four Scripture references, they wanted me to quote the Scriptures. And I couldn't give hardly any of it to them - not off the top of my head, not over the phone in some theological pop quiz format. I was honest with them about that.

They resorted to volunteering possible proof Scriptures for me to use, as if they were trying to help me out. One gentleman, after I couldn't quote a proof Scripture word for word, asked me if I knew what Psalm 119:111 said.

After fifty minutes of that, they asked me if I had any questions for them. I said that, after two hours of conversation with them, all I knew about __ Baptist Church was that there were seven men on the Pulpit Committee, so, why don't you tell me a little about the church?

So they did: average Sunday School attendance of thirty, church building, parsonage, nursing home services, yada, yada, yada. I asked them about the average drive time of the established families (trying to get a sense of how connected they were to the church). They said they were all within twenty minutes.

K__, the chairman of the committee, said that they were an older congregation, and they were needing someone to bring in younger people. He got out the one sentence, and then the sound of piano playing in the background signaled that the conversation was over, because church was about to start. They said they'd get back to me, and hung up.

So I left the interview a little embarrassed, but mostly miffed and saddened. In two hours, not once had anyone asked me about the vision God had given me for leading a local body of Christ followers. Not once had they asked me... well, they just hadn't, and it was not what I was expecting.

But K__ had said they needed someone to bring in younger people, and several things were in place that could make __ Baptist Church an opportunity to do something special. I figured that if, after all this, if they still wanted me to come, there must be some level of openness to what God might want to do.

So I waited. I waited Monday, though I wasn't expecting them to call then. I waited all day Tuesday, and no call. After work, I go home to watch the kids while Kristy goes grocery shopping, and I wait, my pulse picking up every time the phone rings.

A little after nine, the call finally comes. It's K__, calling me during a break from his second-shift job. He says he hates to be the bearer of bad news... and I zone out as he finds some nice way to say that they don't want me to come.

K__ seems to genuinely like me. He tells me that he told the committee that if they want a younger pastor, they're going to have to be flexible. (Their previous pastor had been there 20 years before developing cancer and passing away.) K__ tells me that he'd like to stay in touch to see how I'm doing, and that he's genuinely enjoyed the time spent together on the phone.

I thank him, and as I hang up, I'm sad. This wasn't unexpected: if I were any kind of pragmatist, I would have been surprised at any other response. But, for a couple of days, I dreamed of a group of people in Cincinnati who had reached a fork in the road of their journey, and had decided to consider the one more real, more holistic, and in our Baptist churches, perhaps less travelled. For about five seconds, I mourned the loss of that dream.

I would have mourned longer, but at that moment Trey, my four-year-old son, brought a ball up to me and said, "Wanna play soccer?" I almost audibly heard him - or Someone - say: Do you want to keep dwelling on people who are stuck in the past, or do you want to come play with your dreams, your future?

Do I want to play soccer, Trey? Why, yes. Yes, I do.


For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. - The Bible, Jeremiah 29:11

I'm here...

Yes, I've joined the real blogging world.

I hope to use this space to articulate some of the concepts, ideas, reactions, etc. that I work through every day.

I have a livejournal account, as well. Mostly I use that to keep up with other people, in particular, the teenagers and others with whom I followed Christ as Assistant Pastor/Youth Director at Bethel Baptist Church.

This will be my first serious, intentional blogging attempt. I look forward to it.