Poll

I am interested in the two votes that say every church does not need to minister to the poor? If you voted no, and don't mind sharing why, I'll be glad to hear. It could be the way the question is worded. Or it could be you don't think every church should minister to the poor. INteresting that the poll ran about the same as the last one on the exclusivity of Christ.

Good Book

It's a long, long book, but read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. If you want to know why what has happened to our economy and political system has happened, read Atlas Shrugged. It's uncanny-- down to the very things that are written in the newspapers, she pegs it. Barney Frank is right out of its pages.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em/Snippets of poetry

I am always blown away how no matter how cold it, folks will sit outside and smoke.

Cold, icy weather, or the threat of it, makes me remember my best friend from seminary, David Crow. He died in winter, and I could not get to his side because of the bad weather. The Red River was frozen, and the weather was no good all the way to Harlan. One day I told David that in ministry, we would be like Teucer and Ajax (him Ajax, of course). He was maybe the only person who could get what I was trying to say. And I suppose how things have gone after he was struck down make some prophecy there.

There was worry tonight with the folks coming to the food and clothing ministry that the cold weather was going to make it hard to get home. We had a good meal—meat loaf, corn, green beans, mashed potatoes.

4 people came forward wanting to be baptized.

There’s a guy who has really not liked me for as long as I have been here. No problem, he was at a table, no way he could escape, so I sat down next to him and talked. He told us about some adventures he has had. I ain’t hurtin’ nobody, ain’t hurtin’ no one.

Chaucer said of his Clerk (cleric), “gladly wold he lerne, and gladly teche:”

A few people came up to me and said the service needs to be longer. There was some serious conviction there. Basically, I have been selling the people short. Maybe it’s feeling self-conscious about knowing that the crowd can sometimes be hostile; some people are there just for the food and they wish we’d just hurry up. And then, there are those who simply cannot be in the presence of Jesus. You start preaching and they get up and leave.

At least they’re honest. Good, respectable Christians, now they’re the ones who will glad-hand you after Sunday service and run you down as soon as they think they’re with people who love to complain. What are they so scared of? They can tell me what they think—or perhaps they are ashamed of what they think?

Well, I have to one degree or another considered the service to be more of a talk, more of an evangelistic conversation. Yet, they need the Word and want the Word. And they asked for it. Wow.

Sam came to help. She tried to talk her brother into it, because, she said, “being a Christian means helping others and being in fellowship with other believers.” I hope Sam doesn’t grow up to become an adult. It’ll be all over then. She’ll say she’s too busy to serve and has too much money just to give it away… Anyway, after dinner was served, she took the kids to the library and read them a bit of a book.

After the service, I went to get some milk and bread, wondering why it is so easy for me. I just go and get food. I have the money. It can’t be hard work, because as Merle Haggard sang,

“been workin every day since I was twenty

haven’t got a thing to show for anything I’ve done

there’s folks who never work but they’ve got plenty”

On the way to the store, a song that brings back so many memories and seems so appropriate after some of the folks I sat with at table. “Aqualung:”

Do you still remember December’s foggy freeze?

How the ice that clings on to your beard, it was screaming agony

And you snatched a rattling last breath with deep sea-diver sounds

And the flowers bloomed like madness in the spring?

Chaos, Confusion, Persecution, Creativity

At Third Street, I had a conversation with Jim Embry. It started with wondering about what we could call “community development,” but is really a question about ministry.

You’ve heard me talk about a direction for Christian ministry, where we grow from doing ministry to people (handing out food baskets, clothing, medical care), on to doing ministry with people (getting to know them not only at the point of service, but meeting at home, having dinner, allowing them to do the work alongside you) and then the goal of doing ministry from them, where they develop ministries. It means that you have to let go. You don’t simply teach them to become like you and let them in on your leadership team, you are actively seeking to leave, to let them lead and develop ministries. Then, they, too give up their positions as another group that was ministered to becomes the leaders.

I was telling Jim that this is my philosophy and the direction that I have pushed the church.

Jim started with a low whistle. “As you’re in that turning point, it means chaos, confusion, persecution… but also creativity. So you probably have some people calling you every name in the book? [Wow, is Jim an invisible member of our church?] But I bet you’re also seeing people step up in new ways with new ideas?” Yeah. Not as much as I’d like, but yeah.

In this turning point, on this edge, there is chaos and confusion. That is, worship attendance is up by almost 150 since the beginning of the year. It’s hard to absorb that. Sunday School has ramped up. Monday night missions are a new beast. When so many people and so many new things come up, it’s hard to keep it organized.

Persecution comes in many forms, but the worst one, the most dangerous is when people new in their faith, or stepping out on faith to do something beyond their power get attacked or pushed aside. Sometimes that comes from within the church, as we can’t manage our anxiety about change (thus the amazing conversation I had with one woman who was put out because she did not know “who all these people are,” or where they were coming from). Sometimes it comes from the evil one who wants to torment and discourage. (Thus the conversation with someone on the edge of faith asking when life will get easier. Friend, it won’t. It will get harder. But you’ll have Jesus!)

The creativity makes it worth it. New ways of worshipping, new ways of reaching out, letting God work where He wants to. We have a staff that doesn’t need to be told what to do—they do it. We have so many volunteers (especially the ones who used to be ministered to!). There will come a time, perhaps it has come, where so many forces come together that we can’t resist where God leads; it will be so plain and so clear.

Onion John

There’s a book I read as a child, Onion John. I keep a list starting from a few years back of books I read as a child that I really liked. Now, I get to share them with the boys. Rasmus the Vagabond, by Astrid Lindgren, is a hard one to find. If anyone has a copy… Anyway, Onion John.

It’s a story about a middle school boy who befriends the town eccentric, the title character, Onion John. Onion John is a peasant from an unnamed Eastern European country who has ended up a long-term resident in the boy’s New England village of the 1950s. Onion John grows a great garden, and earns his living that way. He’s known for his apples and, of course, onions.

But he’s a bit of a nut. He lives in a stone hut he has built on the edge of town, in a field the townsfolk let him have. He is one of those “collectors” who has all kinds of stuff squirreled away.

Well, he and the boy, Andy, start a friendship. But the boy’s father is not too pleased. As the story progresses, tho, the father actually comes to know Onion John, even to become something like friends with him. The problem of the story comes when the father decides that the Rotary Club should build Onion John a proper house. The town comes together in a sort of frenzied building. They make Onion John a really nice house. But Onion John is increasingly frustrated—he’s losing the weird touches of his homemade house. He is told that the four bathtubs he uses to store all kinds of stuff need to go. He loses his precious wood-burning stove. All this for a real house—warm, dry, electric appliances. Who wouldn’t want that?

Everyone is rightfully proud of what they have done. They put time, money, effort, consideration into the house. The only one they did not really consider was Onion John. They assumed he wanted and needed what they themselves would want and need.

The way it all unravels: Onion John wants to heat the house up. But instead of turning up the thermostat, he piles some paper on the eye of the stove—makes sense to him, used to firing up a wood-burning stove—and the house burns down.

There are some thoughts about getting the insurance to rebuild, but it dawns on people that maybe they should have let Onion John be. He ends up leaving town—having lost two homes.

I guess I read the story again, read it to the boys as well, for some subconscious reasons. Our work in ministry, particularly at the Rock is about changing lives through the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But what will happen if we believe that conversion, or the work of the Holy Spirit in a believer means that they have to become like us?

Or if we think that a real life is the middle class life?

Or if we think that what we’re looking for is what everyone else is looking for?

How much freedom is there in the Gospel?

An incident: I saw the truck of a fellow who hangs around our ministry. It’s a disaster inside. All kinds of stuff all over the place. Kind of like what Onion John’s truck would look like, I suppose. I wondered, “is there a witness here? A negative witness?” That is, if people saw such a truck with the bible on the dash, would they say, “there can’t be a Christian here, this is too disorderly. Obviously, this guy’s a mess!” Or could it be, “if being a Christian doesn’t change this, then phooey!” Of course, pretty much everything the fellow owns is in this vehicle! Is Jesus supposed to fix that? For whom? Us? The guy? The Kingdom?

There was a tough moment, two tough moments, about two weeks ago. Maybe only three people know about it, because it stayed in the spiritual realm and did not break out and tear people down. It was a moment where I feared that we as a church had pushed some people to take on some things, had offered the opportunity for people to look and act like normal middle class white people. I saw very clearly that we had thus exposed them to severe danger—the vulnerable, when they step up, are in the sights of the evil one and they need special intercession, which I was not giving them! I was in some turmoil, thinking that the shepherd had not prepared the table that exists in the midst of enemies. They were just in the midst of enemies.

And the attacks came hard. By the grace of God, we came through. And we needed to do nothing but pray. It’s never too late to pray, that’s the lesson.

Well, one of the lessons. The other one is exactly the challenge I have posed to the church. Not I, but Jesus. It is the challenge to quit doing ministry to people. To start doing it with them. And finally to let it emerge from them. That kind of church will be… hard. Hard on the face of it because leadership looks different when done by different cultures. And who gives up leadership? What if every person involved in ministry at The Rock right now would have to give up their position and status and sense of approval in order to let ministry flow from the community? Would we? Could we?

That is, can we avoid making them like Onion John, thinking they will be ready to lead when they see things like we do, live like we do, want what we want? At the end of the day, we don’t know how to manage or control people who don’t want what we want. There is no leverage. And then, too, we face a difficulty: who wants to let go of their position? If, as in the case of church ministry, we would be letting go not only of our “say,” but also that warm fuzzy feeling we got when we did something for or to someone, will we let it go?

More Wildness

This weekend, we hit 422 in our services. We have flirted with 400 a few times the past three months or so.

Tonight was huge, too, 88 kids. The kitchen staff worked hard. We have new volunteers in the ministry, so we are absorbing the numbers pretty well.

I knew it was going to be big before it started: there were 11 kids at the church half an hour before the children's time started. As I was letting them in and they were pressing through the doorway, John hollered out, "Orcs must be free!!"

I guess there is such a thing as too much Lord of the Rings.

All kinds of fun

Mary Isaacs, a woman who will make her profession of faith in Jesus this Sunday, made me a jam cake with caramel frosting. It was on the table, close to Joe's wrestling ring, where he was having a match with his figures, Batista and Findlay. Joe looked up at me with those sweet eyes and said, "Daddy, please move your cake. I am about to slam Findlay right there."

On the way into church, Joe grabbed some wrestlers and was frantically looking for the championship belt. I told him we had to go NOW. He kept looking. I said we really had to go and I did not care if he could not find the belt. So he huffed and said, "Fine, I'll just have to have a money-in-the-bank match."