Is change coming?

Three weeks was a long time to be away. It was so good for me.  I come back to the house, not with a depressed listlessness, but a restless contentment and an expectation of what is to come. I feel alive again.

Elaine and I have called this Summer a time of transition. We have no idea what that means, only a sense that something needed to change. As we spent time together on our trip our sense became more clear. Change is coming and we are both open to it.  We still have no idea what that will look like.  We are not actively looking, the door will have to present itself and open on its own accord by the power of God.

My dad is helping to plant Crowne Pointe church in Bloomington. They meet in the auditorium beloning to Cedar Valley Church (or as I knew it Bloomington AG).  We went with the kids to Real Kids FX (Family Experience) an integrated service before the regular services. I was in love.  Children's Pastor, Jesse Baumgartner, has found a way to put my philosophy of ministry into action!  The service opened my eyes to how my family ministry model can be fit into the expectations of an existing church.  It also showed me how I could feel comfortable being part of the pastoral team in a large church setting. I could totally see being the pastor to the families in the FX service, or even seeing it as a church plant that the big church mothers.

There seems to be a big jump from where we are to that kind of place where I can engage in my passions. Will God transform our church into the place I flourish? or will it be a church plant in Bay City? or will God move us to a metropolitan area like Kalamazoo or Traverse City?  Time will tell. For now we wait on the Lord (Isaiah 40:31).

Listlessness and the Consuming Fire

Lately I have felt listless and depressed. Without the challenge of my Masters program to occupy my time, I have become acutely aware of the tedium and slow death inherent with just hanging on. My feelings over the last couple months are spoken eloquently by this quote via Jamie:

"...it is always easier to busy ourselves than to merely exist. Even important and useful work can distract us from remembering who we are, and what our deeper purpose might be. Monastic wisdom insists that when we are most tempted to feel bored, apathetic, and despondent over the meaninglessness of life we are on the verge of discovering our true self in relation to God. It is worth not giving up, because when we are willing to do nothing but 'be,' we meet the God who is the very ground of being, the great I AM whom Moses encountered at the burning bush." [Acedia and Me - Kathleen Norris].

I want to hide from these words.  I have cherished my darkness, grieving the loss of a stage of life. I have felt unprepared to stare into the burning bush. Yet even in the midst of the paschal mystery, Christ is there.  These last couple weeks leading up to vacation have been an easing of the darkness for me.

Today I retreated into the consuming fire.  I made my way to Northfield and enjoyed an americano in reverie.  I really love Northfield or the romantic dream that is Northfield in my mind. Mom told me this morning that my cousin Jon is talking about planting a church in Northfield with a friend.  Here again I enter the paschal place.  I have long harbored a dream of doing just that.  It doesn't seem likely that we will leave the Michigan District to come back to Minnesota, still it is hard to give up a dream.

I went over to Carleton College and walked the Stewsie Island Labyrinth.  In the center I sat with God and gave up my dreams. As I walked the path out - the path of ministry to the world, I felt God offering me encouragement for ministry in Sebewaing.  I could use my newfound love of spiritual direction when visiting with people, but I have resisted doing it.  God challenged me again to obedience.  This challenge would have seemed convicting, even condemning since fear has made me disobedient for so long, had it not been for God's laughable word a few weeks ago "I trust you."  God trusts me?!  Back in the car, the words of Switchfoot go straight to my heart:

Free,
Come set me free
Down on my knees
I still believe you can
Save me from me
Come set me free
Come set me free
Inside this shell
There’s a prison cell

And today I do believe God can save me from me.

A Monstrance

From the consuming fire of the sun beating on the labyrinth, I went into the consuming fire of Divine Mercy Adoration Chapel.  The Catholic church in Faribault set this chapel up ten years ago for perpetual adoration. It's like the 24 hour prayer movement contemplative style. There I sensed the presence of God  with power.  It made me tremble.  One neat practical application of Catholic Eucharistic Theology is the monstrance.   The believe in the actual presence of Christ in the bread and wine.  The monstrance is a display in which they can place the consecrated host so they can stand in the real presence of Christ.

I am not a practiced catholic, (not really a catholic at all, shh!) I haven't quite figured out how to genuflect.  In the presnence of the monstrance I prayed these words:

You are my King

and I don't know how to honor You

You are my Lover

and I don't know how to love You

You are my Soul

and I don't know how to trust You

I imagined the presence of Christ being concentrated in that peace of bread in the center of the monstrance. (Why not?) If we can see the presence of Christ concentrated in a wafer, how much more in the real and visible body of Christ  - each other.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said,

"If you and I took our theology seriously, this is the point -- we bear God in us; we are sanctuaries; we are temples of the Holy Spirit. We shouldn't just shake hands and greet each other in the normal kind of way. We ought, each one of us, to genuflect before one another." 

Somehow that thought brought me to tears. Perhaps it was a powerful realization that I am not alone, grieving my losses in some corner, but I am part of a living and active body. I have a place and so do those around me that my eyes see with distrust.

I can't sleep

Tonight I enter into the Paschal Mystery as I once again mourn the death of a dream, as the steampunk incarnation of Live Wired Coffeehouse which was to be at The Whistle Stop appears to be laid to rest.  Jesus Christ, draw me close to you in the fellowship of our sufferings and give me the strength to dream another dream.

Study cave proving successful

Called convention and District Council took me away from my studies and consumed my attention. Needless to say, coming back I felt the stress of the final paper in my masters studies hanging over me. Sunday night my family graciously helped me transform my basement church office into a study cave - cleaning it, assembling a new desk chair, arranging a number of candles and stocking the fridge with a case of redbull.

This has done me good. I have been making strides in the last couple days. I have nearly completed my literature review and have a good start on my challenge section. At this pace I am pretty comfortable, unfortunately graduation feels like just another distraction as we plan to leave for the Spring Arbor area tomorrow night.

A week in Lansing

I've spent much of this last week in Lansing. Last weekend was Called Convention, as usual I set up the reflection room. It was neat to see the teenagers worshiping with such zeal. The irony was not lost on me, that as I struggled with restlessness and searched for direction for my ministry, I was tasked with helping students discern their callings. It was helpful for me, too.  I had been in a funk, questioning my effectiveness as a minister.

The David Crowder song How He Loves wrecked me the first night. I was powerfully overcome by a sense of God's love. Lines like, "All of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory," and "And heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss/And my heart turns violently inside of my chest, I don’t have time to maintain these regrets..." destroyed my funk.

Sunday morning I went to an early service at All Saints Episcopal. I found the liturgy and eucharist as nourishing as ever.  Then I high-tailed it back to Sebewaing and managed to make it in time to hear Elaine deliver a killer sermon. It was the first Sunday I had been in church without suit or tie.  I felt relaxed.

Monday we took off for District Council.  We happened to have booked the same hotel that I had stayed in for called convention. I had no luck finding a decent espresso the first time we were there, but Mount Hope had a surprisingly good shot, so did Deckers and Gone Wired.

I greatly enjoyed conversations with friends and the services. God was affirming and it was wonderful.  As Elaine and I were leaving, a pastor of a large church with many daughter churches and author of many books, a guy with whom people are impressed, said he thought we were impressive!  I chortled and Elaine said, "whatever." I felt such consolation on the trip home.  God spoke to me through Dave's words.  It was like hearing God saying "You are my beloved son, in you am I well pleased."  Nice.

Habits of a Child's Heart

Habits of a Child's Heart: Raising Your Kids With the Spiritual Discipline by Valerie E. Hess

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In Habits of a Child’s Heart, Valerie Hess and Marti Garlett present a very accessible retelling of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. They take each discipline that Foster covers in Celebration of Discipline one at a time.  They give an overview of the discipline, providing stories from their own experiences with the discipline.  Then they give the parent suggestions for practicing the discipline. The practices are very practical and often geared toward the challenges faced by parents.  The authors then give age specific suggestions as to how children could practice each discipline.  They offer three categories, young children (5-7), middle childhood (8-11) and adolescence (12-15).

Present in this outstanding work is the assumption that the disciplined life is accessible even to children.  The goal of the disciplines is not simply character development or building a Christian worldview. Rather it is building of experiences with God through God’s grace.  Experiences like these are the stuff of spiritual direction.  Fathers Barry and Connolly point out in their book, The Practice of Spiritual Direction, that with out such experiences there can be no direction.  The spiritual director is primarily concerned with the experiences the directee is having with the Spirit.  Parents have a great resource in the Habits of a Child’s Heart for offering places where children can experience grace moving on them.

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My Philosophy of Spiritual Formation

Definition
I define spiritual formation as the process of being formed by God into the very image of Christ as we are immersed in the streams of a wide orthodoxy, diving into intimacy with others and the Trinity. Or as Robert Mulholland succinctly expresses it, Spiritual formation is the “process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others." To put it in terms more familiar to the church, spiritual formation describes how discipleship happens.

Jesus said he came to bring life and life to its full (John 10:10). Living in the kingdom of heaven means living that eternal kind of life now. There is within us the desire for the depths of relationship with Christ that make this full, abundant life possible.

Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me. Psalm 42:7 (NRSV)

Romantic and Spiritual - a great retreat

This week Elaine and I went on a much needed retreat together. We dropped the kids off at Grandma Carmack's and made our way to Mendon Country Inn.  The first year we were married we spent a Christmas Eve there on our way to Elaine's family get together. Our heating core was plugged and half way there the little electric heater, plugged into the lighter, went out.  By the time we got there our feet were blocks of ice and the fireplace and Jacuzzi in our room was a welcome experience. We loved our stay and the South African innkeepers were charming.

A little over eight years latter we had no idea where we had stayed, and it took some searching to find them. We got into the same room we were in years ago. Come to find out St. Gregory's Abby is only about twenty miles away. We went over there for communion, and I had a chance to show Elaine where I have spent my time when on my retreats there. We had pittance and a chat with the monks after the prayer service.

The weather was rainy and cold. We spent most of our time indoors, though the first night the weather broke, and we walked down by a creek flowing into the St. Joseph river.  The bed and breakfast had a little island with a gazebo surrounded by the flowing brook.  It was lovely to be in creation.

When driving we had some conversations about our frustrations in ministry and what it would take to breakthrough. Elaine and I serve as a tension between my realization of powerlessness and hers of action. The great question we have to live into is - how do we create space for people both in and out of the church to grow in the Spirit.

The innkeepers, Cheryl and Gerard, were wonderful at creating a hospitable space. The last morning we chatted over breakfast for a couple hours. It was a wonderful encouragement.  Hospitality is a wonderful thing.

There was another gran sorprendido.  Across the street there is a small mexican restaurant.  I could smell the hot tortillas. We decided to go there for dinner rather than an upscale option.  We didn't have great expectations - expecting a dive, but what we found was the best authentic mexican food I have had in years. Salud is the name of the place, and it made us wish we were going to be there for another week to sample everything.

Solitude and Community

I value deep relationships. I desire to know and be known in the secret places. Nouwen insists that everyone needs a place that remains hidden and we are often too quick to reveal the inner workings of our lives. I find that difficult to understand. Transparency is a downright discipline for me, and I agree with Nouwen that that which is most intimate is the most universal. Yet, Nouwen also displays an intense desire for community like I do. Nouwen’s life and body of work demonstrates a relentless drive to integration. How then does he integrate the hidden solitary place with a robust community?

Structuring Solitude


I value depth of relationship so much! I long to enter into life giving soul-level conversation with people I meet. I have often felt it ironic that, for me, beginning a relationship is difficult. The shallow small talk causes me to stumble and gives me enough pause to avoid beginning a relationship.

Falling apart

My heart is raw again today.  Kip distributed an email from M— about the lease for our coffeehouse.  She talks about feeling taken advantage of.  Father John said, “I’m only half way through and I’m steaming.”  That is how I felt too. We didn’t ask for any of the generous things she felt were to her disadvantage.  She keeps backpedaling on her verbal agreements and yet seems upset that we need a lease.  She is upset that the process is taking so long when she stalled in getting us assurances that she was up to date on her financial obligations in the building. It is frustrating.  It feels like everything is falling apart.

I know the frustration of trying strategy after strategy and nothing bearing fruit.  That is how I felt on staff at Faribault.  That is how my church feels about the parade of pastors over their 75-year history.   When the coffeehouse seems tenuous, I suspect that if it fails, it may be the cause of my leaving. Defeated.

I am listening to Fee sing Everything Falls.  “When everything falls apart, your arms hold me together.  When everything falls apart, you’re the only hope for this heart.”  God is my hope still.  I am powerless to bear fruit.  And God, at times I feel angry with you for not producing fruit in me.  Then I wonder if in some way I am less connected to the vine than I ought to be. Perhaps it is just a matter of holding on?