I felt him sailing away
Last summer,
Going back
To places he knew, but we didn’t.
If you think demons don’t have power,
You are wrong.
We begged him not to go.
His rope broke free from our shore,
And he is over the horizon now. Our world is so much
Darker today. He took his lantern with him.
Friend. Ambassador. Encourager.
I will hear his laughter echo in my dreams
For a long time. I know he is in
A better place. But I am not.
I am still here.
Here it is folks, we don’t do “Outreach”. One truth: “Outreach” done the traditional way will wreck your church. If your pews are funding your outreach, you don’t have enough money, and you will drain your budget. If your pews are staffing your efforts to do “good” in the world, you will burn your people out and have little or no fruit to show for it. Getting your congregation outside the walls is important…crucial, in fact…but it’s also not enough. Missional is not what we do. It is a way of life.
There are a lot of things that I don’t know anything about. In fact, you’d be shocked at what I don’t know. Just ask any of my teachers who have suffered through having me in their classes. I am definitely not the sharpest crayon in the box. But there are a few things that we have invested years in and now know a few things about. Our community was a dying traditional church with empty pews and no money 15 years ago. I don’t know when the last time a disciple was made at that time. We started living missionally with a few people and literally a few dollars. Over the years, some things worked, some things didn’t. Some mustard seeds grew into bushes, and others had to be pruned. But we now have Kingdom contact with over 18,000 people a year. We are regularly seeing third and fourth generation disciples being made. Those are measurables. We have planted four communities in other cities that are thriving and doing effective mission work. Those are measurables. We also see people get clean and sober. We see souls that can only be described as “lost” be found and filled with light. We see the homeless make their way off the street. We see miracles. Those are not measurable, but we see those things all the time. So, we have learned a few things about small church transformation and missional church impact over the years.
As I listen to the woes of small church pastors trying to get their churches turned around, my heart goes out to them. I know personally the slings and arrows that they take, and the terrible price that they and their families pay. And as I listen, I hear echoes of some of the mistakes we made early on that nearly killed us, and took us away from the gospel. I think we can get at those things by highlighting three little things that can make a giant difference in living missionally.
1. The most important transformation in the people we’re trying to reach is the movement from being the object to being the subject of God’s mission.
What does that mean? It means that we do not ever try to staff our missions solely with people from our pews. We invite the world to not only be served, but to serve alongside of us. And we invite the first few to invite their friends to serve, and them to invite their friends to serve. All of our missions are staffed by people who were either once served there, or are currently being served there. Being a part of the mission of God is transformative. Our role is to help those that serve to see what they are doing through a gospel lens. And our role is also to invite them into our lives. If you are not understanding this key principle, you are not understanding what it means to live missionally. If we are doing good in order to stay out of hell, then we have missed the point of grace altogether. Yes, go and do good as a community because doing good flows out of the joy that comes from the grace we’ve received. But the greatest goodness you can do is to relinquish control of the good you’re doing, and to invite others who have never been reached to participate in God’s mission with you as equals. If you are only staffing what you do with your own people, you will burnout your people and quit the mission. I have seen it happen more times than I can tell you.
2. Missions that are solely funded from your pews are not sustainable. Sustainability comes from diversified income streams.
The needs outside of our church walls are huge. And if you’re like our community was, we didn’t have the kind of money that it takes to have a real impact on those needs. For years, folks had just wrung their hands and said, “What difference can a little church like us make? Forget it.” I went to my denomination a few times early on, because that was what they taught me to do in seminary…that was the mental model they had for everything. The first thing I learned was that the denomination didn’t have any money to give either. The second thing I learned was that it was extremely hard to get the denomination to give the money they did have unless we were expert in knowing the political and bureaucratic ins and outs of the system. And lastly, I learned that the denomination has its own agenda and if we didn’t wear the right t-shirts and front the right agenda, funding would not be available. Again, the temptation was to throw up our hands and say, “I tried. I quit.”
Just like with inviting people to participate on the subject side of the mission with their hands, we have learned that the mission must also be funded from the mission field itself. There are people who have never been reached who have financial resources that they truly want to invest in doing something good. These folks often have financial resources, but do not have a lot of time. Giving to support a compelling vision of goodness might be just the thing that they have been looking for. Swap some PR for some funding. We get financial partnership from all kinds of secular sources. Biker groups, bars, local businesses, Boy and Girl Scouts, local sports programs, caring individuals, and civic organizations all help to fund what we do. And those who give end up being changed by their giving. Your pews don’t have enough money. But the harvest itself has more resources than I could ever have imagined. All you need to do is to have a compelling vision, and the boldness to go and ask.
3.) It’s not about “What” you do. It IS about what you are participating in.
I know this is a little hard to grasp. But our food pantries are not about food. Well, they are about food, but they are also about something much bigger than the food we are able to provide. Sometimes our perfectionist and task-oriented tendencies end up alienating and subjugating the very people that we set out to reach. If we aren’t careful, we end up condescending, and condescension does not heal the world. It robs it of its dignity. Our missions are not about food or clothing or efficient processes. They are about the present Kingdom of God. In God’s Kingdom, there is always enough if we share. In God’s Kingdom, the least are greatest. In God’s Kingdom, people are treasured. It’s never about the right food or the right way to give food out. It’s always about right relationship. So, WHAT we do builds a bridge to relationship with the people that we serve and serve with. But WHAT we do is a means to an ends. The ends is participation in God’s Kingdom and being intentional about doing that. Served and serving, we are all equals and of equal value in that Kingdom.
Food, water, clothing, housing, visitation, justice…all of these are characteristics of what Jesus meant when he prayed, “…on earth, as it is in heaven”. This mission is pointing out the places where God’s reign is breaking into the world, participating in that Kingdom, and inviting others to participate in it with us.
Sometimes we have to see one in order to do one. I don’t want to come off as arrogant. If I have, I heartily apologize. We are all learners here. But I know that in my own case, I needed to get a mental model for missional church in order to envision how to live missionally here. If you’re struggling to get a mental model for what this might look like, please consider coming and spending a week with us in mission. What ends up happening in your community most likely will not look exactly like what happens here. It will take some Spirit-guided adaptation and innovation. But the principles are transferable between urban, suburban, and rural mission fields. We learned in a rural setting, and now apply what we learned to both urban and suburban mission fields. We will learn from you as well as you learning from us. And we end up encouraging each other in the process. If you’re interested, you can contact us by replying to this post, or visiting us at http://www.growingintochrist.org.
I was
Wrong. I thought
It was about leaving
Breadcrumbs…like Hansel and Gretel…but
Following those breadcrumbs will only lead you
To the witch.
The grackles have eaten the damn things anyway.
The Way
Forward can only be
Found in imagining
With Jesus…
Asking…
Begging, pleading with Jesus
For a Way
Forward.
Imagining
With Jesus…
The real one, the Living One…
The Way
Forward.
There is
No other way
Forward.
Our food pantries use a term, “Ladders of Peace”. Some folks struggle with what it means. Like anything that is truly human and truly real, it resists simple definitions. It is who we are in our pantry communities. It is best understood in experiencing it. Like so many things that are bigger than we are, we are sometimes unable to talk about the ways that they have touched us and changed us, because we just don’t have the words to fully convey the experience. All I can say is that you understand it when you see it come to life…when you see it in the flesh.
After we close our pantries, we gather our volunteers for a time of reflection. You have to understand that for us, these aren’t merely food pantries that distribute food. These, to us, are churches of Christ. They are sacred places where the “least of these” can be found. And where the least of these can be found, so can the Lord. They are bushes where the birds of the air come to find shelter. In our reflection time, we ask people to tell us about their experience, how it changed them or made them think differently about something. Sometimes, the answers are simple: “I had a good time.” But sometimes the answers are profound.
He is from Myanmar, though I think he might say that he is from Burma. He is from a persecuted people group there, the Chin. He has spent a good part of his life as an IDP, and then as a refugee in a camp outside his country. He immigrated to the U.S. fairly recently. If I had to guess, I would guess that he is in his early twenties. His English is broken, but we can communicate. He brings a group of about twenty other Chin young adults and teenagers once a month to serve with us. He has a light in him that is infectious. He has a joy that is overflowing out of him. He has every right to be an angry and bitter young man, and he is not. I don’t know why. What I do know is that I count him among my friends, and I am grateful.
As he began to speak that day (it was his turn), I struggled at first to understand what he was saying. I think he was a little nervous. But after the first few sentences, I understood what he was saying. He said that since coming to the U.S., he has been treated badly because he looks different, and because his English isn’t good. He said that people look down on him, like he is less than them. He told us about the struggles that he’s had in finding a job because of prejudice. The “American Dream” has been elusive for him. He told us these things while all the while smiling. It struck me that his smile was transcendent, from a place not of this world. And then he said something that was both simple and profound. It pierced me. He said, “In my life, everywhere I go here I am looked down on. But not here. Here is different. Here, I am an equal.” He smiled. He sat down. Tears began to well up in my eyes. The room was silent…holy, if only for a moment. The Kingdom of God had drawn very near to us, and we had the incredible opportunity to participate with him in it.
Ashes to ashes. From the dust do we come and to the dust shall we all return. No matter how far along the road we get, Ash Wednesday reminds us that we all have a common starting point on this earth, and a common ending point. These bodies are made from the dust of the earth, and one day these bodies will be returned to their lender. It still freaks me out a little bit to be reminded that house dust is mostly dried skin, our flesh carried off by the wind only to find a new home in the television vents and strewn across the coffee tables and dresser tops. It is a healthy reminder of just how insignificant we are…and how fleeting and fragile this life is. The paradox of insignificance…the crazy incongruity of being nothing and yet being treasure. In and of ourselves, we are dust and ash. Yet, connected to something inexplicably bigger, we are also breath and all that goes with it.
It is likely that today you will see a dark smear of ash on the foreheads of some of our neighbors, a reminder of what we are without that something that gives us breath…that something that gives us hope in the reality of the dust from which we are made and to which we shall return. Why has the God of Love chosen to form us from the earth and to number our days? Why must what begins here also end here among broken hearts and broken things?
Today, I do not have an answer. But as I look at the black smear of ashes on the foreheads of so many people seeking answers to so many unanswerable questions and solace for so many still-open wounds, I am compelled to think on these things. What are we really if we are truly more than the sum total of our carbon matter and firing synapses? Do we really belong merely to the earth from whence we come, or is there more that we come from than dust and water? And what about the breath? What about the love? How do we explain the love and the hurt and the joy? Where do those come from, and what do we owe their author for visiting them upon us? I have never seen a tree weep at the loss of another tree. Outside of poetry, I have never heard a wheat field roar with laughter. And I have never seen a mountain lay down its life for another mountain. Of what are these? Surely these will not return to the earth because it is not from the earth that they have clawed their way into us. What ends must end. There is no changing that. But sometimes I think that end must be real in order for all that has led up to that end to have real meaning. Without claiming our beginning AND our end, can we really claim that anything that we choose or experience between those two banal commonalities really matters at all? Ashes to ashes. From the dust do we come…or do we? I will dwell on that…today.
In my study and prayer time this morning it came to me how little Jesus had to say about what happens to us after we die. He says a few things, but not a lot of things. And it also struck me how much Jesus had to say about how we live in this life. He said, “The Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near to you this day.” His teachings were all about living a life of heaven in this life…heaven’s economy, heaven’s ethics, heaven’s priorities. He prayed, “…on earth as it is in heaven.” His message was about God’s Kingdom at work in the world that we can participate in, and invite others to participate in with us. So…as I eat my “fat Tuesday” pancakes tonight (actually, no carbs for me right now ), I’m going to think on those words, “…on earth as it is in heaven”. Lord, hear our prayer…
When the crisis became a reality for him, he took me up on the offer, but I think it was because he had absolutely no other offer. I don’t think he really wanted to live here. He liked the way I knew him. He liked that I knew him for the guy he wanted to be. The face he showed me was the face he strove for. He didn’t want me to know everything about him. Not everything about him was what he wanted to be. I think he needed somebody to know him as he wanted to be known. I think he really needed somebody to see him that way. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t fully real. I don’t know anyone who can bear having their whole selves revealed in the full light of day. We all have really ugly places that we have to deal with every day, and that we just don’t want others…people other than God…to know. He needed a place to stay, though. So, I let him stay here. It’s hard to hide when you live in close proximity. I helped him solve one set of problems, but I may have lost something precious in the process.
There is this guy that he wants to be. And the role I played in his life was to know that guy, and to reflect that guy back to him. He needed to shine somewhere because there are so many places where he doesn’t shine…and he knows that so excruciatingly well. I was the guy who knew him at his best, who saw him only at the times of his choosing. I was the guy who saw the person he wanted to be. That was a “holy” role…that was a holy space. It was a place of hope for him. I wish I had understood that. I hope now that the truth of unconditional love will have taken root in his heart. I hope that he comes to know that even though I now know the other sides of him, I still am the guy who sees him the way he hopes to be. I hope that the grace of God can overcome my failure to see the holy space that he had created for me in his life. And I hope that that same grace helps him to know that the space between the person he is and the person he hopes to be is becoming shorter with each passing day.
on, truth, warrants, wisdom, youth }
Here’s how it happens. You can’t get a job because you don’t have driver’s license. You don’t have a driver’s license because you can’t afford to get one. You finally save up enough money from doing odd jobs to learn how to drive after saving for two years to do it. Then, you can’t afford a vehicle. So you save for another two years to come up with $1,100 to buy a clunker, except you can’t afford the insurance. So you drive without insurance because it’s your way to get to the legitimate job you finally got that will allow you to get insurance. Then your tail light goes out because a mouse ate through your wiring. The repair will cost a couple hundred dollars that you don’t have because you owe $3,000 to the utility company who just turned your power off. You owe $3,000 because you didn’t have a job for four years while you were scrounging enough money to get a driver’s license and a car so you could get a job to pay your utilities before they get turned off. Your pay goes to paying that off so you can cook the food you can’t afford and have to get in inadequate supply from the food pantry. But…at least your working, so you have hope.
Then, you get a ticket for your tail light being out. And you get another ticket at the same time for driving without insurance. You couldn’t afford the light repair, so you sure can’t afford the tickets. So you start saving to fix the light, and you have no choice but to drive anyway because that’s your only way to get to your job, and your job is your only hope. Meanwhile, the time is ticking on paying your tickets. Then you get a letter from the DMV saying that your license has been suspended for failure to pay the tickets that you can’t afford to pay for the tail light that you still can’t afford to fix. You need the job, so you drive anyway…just to work and back. You walk miles to do everything else.
Then, on your way to your job which is your only hope, you get pulled over again for the tail light. They find out that you’re driving on a suspended license and they impound your car and give your another ticket that you can’t afford. The impound lot charges $50 a day. You don’t have $50 so it sits there adding up $50 a day to the point where you owe more than the car is worth. And you try taking two buses to get to work, and get there late. Twice. And they fire you. Now, you’ve lost your car, your driver’s license, AND your job…which was your hope. And you have tickets that aren’t getting paid because you’ve lost your job and don’t have any money to pay them.
The power gets turned off again because you don’t have a job any more to make payments to keep it on. Then your rent is late for the same reason and the landlord is calling and screaming at you and calling you a deadbeat and threatening to put you out on the street. The stress starts to build. And build. One day, you’re trying to get some groceries after walking to two miles to the nicer store with better prices, and the clerk treats you rudely…the stress catches up and you respond rudely even though you know you weren’t raised that way. The clerk escalates the confrontation with a more rude remark. You then respond in kind. The off-duty policeman in line behind you who has no idea of your life situation and didn’t hear the clerk’s first remarks sees only a customer who is causing a scene. He decides to intervene and calls in your information after pulling you aside for a “stop and frisk”. He’s only doing his job. He just thinks it’s simple…and there’s nothing simple about poverty or despair. The dispatcher informs him that there is a warrant out for your arrest for the unpaid tickets. So, he arrests you.
You don’t have the money to pay the ticket. So you sit in jail because you have more time than you have money. Your four kids are at home without supervision. Oh, did I forget to mention that in the midst of all of this, you’re trying to raise four kids? Where’s the dad? Oh he’s in prison. One of the kids acts up at school. Social Services find out they’re living at home without an adult…looked in on by a sympathetic neighbor. They take your kids. When you finally get out of jail after serving 30 days among murderers and gang members, you still don’t have a driver’s license because you don’t have a job to earn enough money to get it reinstated. You can’t get a job because no one will hire you without a driver’s license. You have no electricity at your apartment. Your landlord started eviction papers on you while you were in jail, and you will be on the street in about five days. You can only get five days worth of food once a month from the pantry because somebody figures that’s all you need and any more will enabling you. You could probably sell that, but it wouldn’t cover what you owe the landlord. Your car is now hopelessly owned by the impound lot owner. And your kids are spread between three different foster homes and are acting up in them and getting in trouble with the law. Their own spiral into poverty has begun in another generation, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
And then, you are approached by a gangster who says he feels your pain and has a solution. If you just sell a little pot for him, you will have enough money to get the license out of hock, get the power turned back on, pay your rent in cash, and get back on track to getting another legitimate job so you can get your kids back. You can make enough in five days to stop the eviction.
At first you just sell to people you know. Then one of them brings someone you don’t know. She turns out to be an undercover police officer. You get busted with possession with the intent to deliver…and that means prison and criminal record. Nobody hires people with criminal records anymore, and everyone now does a thorough background check before they hire. You are done. And you aren’t even forty yet.
Oh, this is an extreme case, you say? Oh, this is the exception and not the rule? No, it isn’t. And it all started with a tail light being out and not having the means to fix it. It takes more than boot straps.
He’d been there at the front door handing out numbers and joking around with Harold for about six weeks straight. Tats from neck to wrist, leather café jacket. Scraggly beard, Young, but old. That’s the part the gives it away. Young, but old. The old is in their eyes…maybe in their bones, too. There’s a way that they carry themselves. There’s something else in a recovering heroin addicts eyes, too, that I can’t explain. There’s more to it, but you get to the point where you just kind of know who’s using and who’s recovering. Crack has its tell-tale signs, the jaw going side-to-side, the skin on the hands picked raw. Heroin has its tell-tale signs, too. He’d been referred to us by Justice 2000 for mandatory community service hours. When he came he was pretty sketchy. And I’m pretty sure he thought we were, too. He didn’t know what all this “Kingdom of Heaven” stuff was about, not sure he wanted to either. But he kept coming back. And his guard came down. And we came to know him. And he came to know us. He finished his community service hours, and he kept coming back anyway.
He had been doing so well. Despensa de la Paz had become more than a place to him, just as it has for so many people. People who don’t understand spiritual things think we hand out groceries. Yes, it’s about groceries, but it’s about a whole lot more than groceries. I always make it a habit to say, “Love you, brother” or “Love you, sister” when they leave. I said that to him every week for a long time. I think at first he was kind of weirded out by it. But I remember the first day that he said, “Love you, too.” His eyes welled up with tears as he said it.
The Teacher said one time that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed. It’s the smallest of all seeds. But it grows into a huge bush where the birds of the air come and take shelter. He had to take multiple buses to get to Despensa. He probably had to start riding about six in the morning. This had become a bush where he could come and take refuge. It started so small for him. A cup of coffee and just a break from somebody. And it became huge. For many people, Despensa is their refuge. You can’t quantify that. There’s no number for that on a form. But for him, this is the closest thing he’s known to home and safety in a whole lot of years. God is here, and no one contests God’s presence.
A couple of weeks ago, I got to Despensa and he wasn’t there. I figured maybe he missed a bus, but that he’d be along. His girlfriend came in very upset, and said she hadn’t heard from him, that he’d disappeared, and that she was worried about him. She knows him. They used together. And they were recovering together. She said he’d told her that he was thinking about getting some crack. I know this is jaded and horrible, but I actually felt a sense of relief that he wanted to get some crack, because at least it wasn’t heroin. So many people are dying out here from that first return visit to heroin when they relapse…too many to count. What crossed my mind was that he might mess himself up, maybe even get himself thrown in jail, but he wouldn’t be dead with a needle sticking out of his arm. Don’t get me wrong, I know the monster that crack is, and I’ve seen it devour households. I’m just telling you what went through my head. I have become what I’ve become. After years of this, it just is what it is.
I was excited to see him today. Joy. The real kind. He was back. And he was clean again. And he was alive. It’s funny how quickly we get into each other’s hearts here. I’ve seen so many people not make it, so many people die or end up in prison forever, or just disappear…I just thank God every day that God has not allowed me to become hard. I don’t ever want to get to that terrifying place where I am afraid to feel anymore…where I am afraid to let people like him into my heart. The metaphor isn’t lost on me, “a heart that’s broken, and yet is also resurrected.” As I walked away after catching up with him, I said, “Love you, brother.” I heard the catch in his voice, holding back tears, and he said, “Yeah. Love you, too.” One day, this friend might not make it. One day it might be this one that his mother finds dead in the bathroom, or who washes up in the Milwaukee River, or who dies in some Godforsaken abandoned warehouse. It might be him one day. But, not today. Today, he was here. Today, he was our gift. And I am grateful.
1) It seems to be about an invitation. We see a lot of disciples made. We don’t use fancy discipling programs with three-fold color glossy curriculum. We don’t use video-based tier-one programming with slick marketing and marquee-name speakers. Programs have never borne fruit in my community. And we have never been in the position to buy expensive stuff. And yet, we are seeing fourth generation disciples being made now. We don’t use the latest techniques. We don’t use anything that requires a lot of training. We use prayer and fasting and getting in the Word together. And we engage with God’s mission. We change what we do, and it changes what we see and what we think. We seek the Kingdom with all of our hearts. Where we find it, we participate in it. And we invite others to participate with us. We invite those coming out of the harvest to labor in the harvest with us right from day one. People want to be included in things that make a difference. When we invite our unreached friends into the mission with us, something happens.
2) “Pray the Lord of the harvest to send more laborers into the harvest…” WITH YOU: When we put a disciple side-by-side with an unreached person, and they are laboring together in a mission that represents the present Kingdom, something happens. Jesus told his disciples, “When two or three are gathered in my name (or as Jesus would have gathered), I will be among you.” So…there Jesus is…among us…doing what he did when he was in flesh. When Jesus is among us, something happens.
3) People need a new pair of glasses in order to see the Kingdom: When we tell a Gospel story before we start doing a mission, and we don’t announce that it is a Gospel story, those who have not yet been reached by the Good News of the Kingdom but are laboring with us still end up viewing their participation that day through a Gospel lens. And something happens.
4) Real Friends. When we labor next to each other in the mission, we become friends. I’m not talking about worldly friends who we choose because they can give us some advantage, or because we “like” them. I’m talking about the kind of friendship that forms when people are struggling together in something that is bigger and more important that either one of them. I am talking about the kind of friendship that involves having each other’s backs. I’m talking about the kind of friendship that can weather accountability because what you are engaged in together matters. When we start to have those kinds of friendships, something happens.
5) “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road…?” Experience doesn’t seem to make disciples who make disciples. But when experience is put together with intentional reflection, something happens. We have a brief-back after every mission, and we ask people to tell us what they took away from their experience and how it changed them. When people have the opportunity to both experience and reflect, something happens.
6) It’s not about us. When we truly don’t care who gets the credit, things grow. When we can truly give up agendas and the desire for personal accolades and recognition, and work to make sure that others get the credit, things grow. It’s deeper than that, though. When we don’t care who gets the credit, then it’s not about us. When it’s not about us, we can put down our masks and just be the flawed and vulnerable humans that we really are. People are starving for a place to just be wounded and vulnerable, and have that be enough. If it’s not about us, we don’t have to be in control and we don’t have to be perfect. If we don’t, neither does anyone else. Being able to be vulnerable and authentic allows people to grow. When people grow and missions grow and lives are changed right before people’s eyes, something happens.
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