When Dwelling Looks a Lot Like Walking Around

I've spent the past six months on a leadership team for a new worship gathering at our church (www.fpcsd.org), and we have wrestled with the question of how/ where/ when to encounter the people who spend time downtown.  We opened up the chapel for worship on Sunday nights.  A few people wandered in, usually because they were looking for another church that they couldn't find.  We tried to invite people in from the sidewalk, but most were on their way to somewhere else.

I should note that none of us leading this service actually lives downtown.  Ironic, right?  Most of us feel strongly that we are in our respective neighborhoods for a reason, and to be honest, we share some perplexity at why God has asked us to be involved in revitalization of a downtown congregation.  But there we are, trying to figure out how to connect with people, and it dawns on us: we need to walk.

In our situation, the reasons are several-fold.  We need to get outside the walls of church and stop assuming that people will come to us.  We need to see who the people around the neighborhood really are.  Sure, there's the assumption and perception that we're set up centrally as a resource for people who are homeless (the San Diego Rescue Mission is less than 3 blocks away).  We could hope that some law students might drift in (Cal-Western law school, 2 blocks down the hill).  But we don't really know until we get out there.  Who else is walking around?  Where are they going?  What kind of time do they have?

But as I've thought about walking over the past few weeks, mulling on why we should do it this way, I usually come back to a very simple insight: Jesus walked.  Jesus walked a lot.  If he wasn't on a boat, many of his significant moments of ministry came on foot.  He encountered people who needed him, people who interrupted his plans, people who caused him sorrow, and people who threw parties with him.  That is what I hope and pray will happen as we walk in the coming weeks.

What I am NOT implying is that this is what everyone everywhere should do always.  No.  We discerned walking as a way for us to be present and learn God's heart in a neighborhood where we don't live day by day.  (Though as much as some people are at the church, it could feel like living there!  And I do highly recommend walking in the place where you do live.  It is a crucial - and favorite - spiritual practice for me.)  Who knows, after a month, or after 8 months, our task may change.  Strategies should change as you become more familiar with a people and place.  In other words, dwelling is a process, whether the context is a college campus, an urban neighborhood, life in Christ, or a forest grove.  There are initial steps, often different from later ones.  Sometimes those steps are literal ones, so we lace up our shoes, and ask Jesus to teach us how to walk.

Vision Enhanced: Dwelling deeply...

Dwelling Deeply in Christ and in the City...

A person can easily live in a place without dwelling there.  To dwell somewhere implies a sense of rootedness... you are going to stay for a while.  In religious language, we can group dwelling and abiding in a category that contrasts with sojourning.  Either may be embraced for different times and callings in a life of faith, but they have different requirements and consequences.  (As a fun fact, there are more than 6 times as many references to dwell/ dweller/ dwelling as to sojourn/ sojourner/ sojourning in the Bible, spanning the Old and New Testaments.)

At this point in my life, I believe I am called to dwell.   Now, I don't necessarily know or think that San Diego is my final promised land in which to stay.  The jury of discernment is still out on that one.  However, I am convinced that my work is intimately linked to this act of dwelling.  I have always believed that context is critical, and now I choose the context of a dweller, rather than a pilgrim or a sojourner.  I am not someone who swoops in, consults, and helps churches with their outreach program for a week only to hop on a plane.  I do not want to serve as someone who is on the road (or an airplane) 20 weeks of the year.  My life has a home.

That home is first of all in Jesus.  John 15:4-- "Dwell in me and I will dwell in you... you cannot bear fruit unless you abide in me."  Even when that home isn't exactly what I imagined, it is where I stay.  For the height of clarity and joy as well as the discipline of faith amidst uncertainty, I seek to daily deepen my abiding in Christ.  Ministry flows first out of that-- before any crafted expertise or methodology.

Secondly, I minister out of the context of living in the city.  Our world is undergoing a dramatic shift as the majority of its population moves to urban centers.  Unfortunately, it is the church in the American city that has experienced the sharpest decline in the past 50 years.  Yes, it is possible to care about the city and its residents from the outside, but that would be a different ministry.  Living 5 miles from the center of downtown San Diego in a dense, urban neighborhood affects the ministry I do.  The geographic proximity means that my involvement does not require a long commute.  I can easily take the bus or bike.  My neighbors and I use (or avoid) the same public services, and our relationships give me greater compassion and understanding of challenges faced in the city.  As a result, I facilitate a church's urban engagement plans with a personal perspective.  Outreach is not for "those" people, but for US, the ones who live here.

I seek depth in all my relationships.  At my best, I am operating out of the depth of who I am and where I live.  So I don't want to be sort of hanging out with Christ-- I want life deeply lived in him.  I am not satisfied with life on the edge of God's work in the city, either.  Everything that ensues-- the reconciling, revolutionizing work of Jesus, loving and changing the Church-- flows out of deep living.  It does take work, but I see it as the non-negotiable prep-work for what I want to do.  Like cooking a fine dish, there may be hours of un-glamorous chopping and whisking, but that is where quality is decided.  I want quality, sustainability, and depth.

Catching Vision

Without boasting, it is fair to acknowledge that I am a visionary leader.  I care about where things (and people) are headed and I thrive on planning ahead.  When vision is lacking, I get uneasy.  However, I am undoubtedly a beginner when it comes to trusting God to provide that vision.

When I became Urban Mosaic's team leader, some part of me assumed that I would sit down for a day or two, look at the information before me (regarding the needs of city churches and the gifts of our personnel), and piece together God's intended purpose for our team.  You're chuckling, aren't you?  Thus began a lesson in listening, waiting, and letting God give fresh vision.

One tool that I used for the development of my personal sense of mission (which, it turns out, is essential if you want to be leading other people somewhere!) was a 6+ week process called Life Compass.  Joining a group of other local CRM staff, apprentices and neighbors, each week brought us questions and exercises to tease out a response to What should I be doing with my life?

The process looked something like this: gathering and learning together in a living room.

 We took tests about our personalities and spiritual gifts.  We looked at the overall story of our lives and how God had taught us and brought fruitfulness in different situations and seasons.  We each met with coaches and talked in small groups to get feedback.  And at the end, we each produced a vision statement.  Here is mine:

I will take the next few weeks to unpack this statement in segments, line by line.  It is quite dense, and I will admit that it is far more powerful than I expected.  Though it took hard work to get here, I am still convinced that vision is more "caught" than created.  In drafting this culminating statement, all I had to do was pull in the stray threads of my life and my passions -- what was already there -- and start weaving them into a single work.  Stay tuned for those parts that make up the whole!

Lessons in Generosity: A Handful of Rice

A Handful of Rice from International Steward on Vimeo.


I am not generally impressed by big numbers, big churches, or big growth.  Yet, this story stirred my heart and made my jaw drop.  I am inspired by the reminder of how POSSIBLE and how BEAUTIFUL it is for everyone to offer something to contribute in the family of God.

Sources of Inspiration:
1. "If you can eat, you can give."
2.  People naturally understood that they could give more if they were able (upping it to a cup of rice, some wood, some cash).
3.  Undeniable evangelism:  95% Christian population in their state and a church of 500,000.
4.  Intuitive support of mission: 1,800 mission workers supported.

Reasons I Still Wince:
1.  The poorest of people have contributed to the building of a fancy church.
2.  The church's generosity was not cited for changing quality of life in a very poor region.  Has access to drinking water improved?  Has hunger/ starvation waned?  Has healthcare been provided?
3.  Do these misgivings undermine the inspiration I  described above?

What helps me cope with discomfort and tension, and causes me to still share the video:
Generosity is meant to be this joyful and this fruitful.  It is meant to overflow and blow away the odds stacked against an underestimated population.   Generosity upends the myth of helplessness and testifies to the abundance of God's kingdom.  That is easier to forget when we're cutting checks and balancing spreadsheets, as opposed to putting aside a handful of rice with every meal that the Lord provides.

Prodigal Nostalgia

Loving this excerpt from a colleague's reflections on the story of the Prodigal Son:

The awareness of the brevity of my life invokes a longing for something more. Everything has a hint of pig-pod in it. My marriage isn’t quite right; I impart to my children things that aren’t quite right; I hide significant portions of myself from others. The good that I do is tainted by self-serving motives; I’m frustrated by my lack of spiritual growth; I am dissatisfied with my lack of depth.  There exists a heightened hunger and thirst for something that causes me to look back and, at the same time, pulls me forward.

All of us are prodigal sons and daughters. Our life-long nostalgia—our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have only seen from the outside—is no mere neurotic fancy; it is the truest index of our situation. This is what the Bible tells us is true about our situation in life. The beauty of nature that is just out of reach, the experience just behind the door, instills a yearning for something that this world cannot supply. Like the prodigal son, I have to come to my senses to return to the Father. He waits for me. 

(Read the full devotional meditation here.)

Stretch to Fit

reposting the Lent devotional entry I wrote for CRM:

The Calling of Levi the Tax Collector   Mark 2:14-22 

Fitting in. Finding a good fit. Doing what fits you best.  

I admit it.  I've looked hard for it: this magic of fit. I talk about it in regards to the places I work, the kind of church I attend, the people I spend time with. Yet it's clear that Jesus is addressing the things and people that don't fit. First, the Pharisees ask the disciples why Jesus is with the wrong people, with the oddballs and outcasts. Then, they want Jesus to tell them why his disciples aren't like other religious folks. It's all very confusing to them, and to us.

I've learned quickly that if you want more oddballs in your life, the best place to find them is somewhere that has something to do with Jesus. Start a Bible study, join a prayer group, or just walk through the doors of a church building, and strange people and stories will gush forth. I'm not talking about the oddness of believing what you don't see or any of the accompanying theology. Plain and simple, people who hang out with Jesus can be strange. Why?

“People who are well do not need a doctor, but only those who are sick. I have not come to call respectable people, but outcasts.” – Mark 2:17 (Good News Translation)

Though we may be unfamiliar with mending clothes and wine preparation, there is still a visceral familiarity in what Jesus teaches here. It's about attaching, filling, being where you belong—where the feast continues and the holes are completely patched. It's avoiding the tearing, bursting, and ripping of a bad fit, and it doesn't happen in the way one might suppose—with exact calculation and measurement. The only solution Jesus offers is to stretch.

My honest response to this is often along these lines: “I am a problem-solver, and I do not appreciate such an imprecise answer, Jesus. I prefer that you fix the funky people who come my way.” I would rather know a clean stitch for getting someone integrated into a community whether they are socially awkward, economically disadvantaged, or otherwise marginalized. I resist being stretched. I prefer to come up with other containers for that expanding wine.  

But when I get over all that dodgy ambiguity, I recognize good news. Wait, there's a wedding? You mean you're bringing in people who don't belong? Hold on a second... that means there's no way to crash the party? No limit? No fitting in or being sent out. No waiting in line. No division. No shame. No disrespect. No fear.  

It's the good news of a fresh wineskin, ready to stretch.  It stretches us and it stretches for us.  

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1. What is the new wine—the unexpected, expanding good stuff—that Jesus wants to pour into you?

2. Where and how is God inviting you to stretch in these days leading up to Easter?

Wor(l)d Map: the Global Church

A few months ago I received what seemed like a junk email from another missions organization.  I'm kind of a sucker, so I read it. (I don't know why, but I read almost every email.  Even when I know it's probably useless.)  They asked me to describe the global church in 2050 in one word, and they offered to send me the map they created with the results.  I got the map the other day, and I have to say, as a person who likes maps, really digs words, and cares deeply about the growing church worldwide, it's pretty great.

Caveat: I can't find any data on how precisely they represented the words on this map.  Most word maps of this sort follow the pattern of making the most commonly used (submitted) words larger and bolder in color.  I am assuming that the arrangement of words in particular places is not linked to their country of origin, but to artistic license.  I also wish I knew how many countries were represented in the making of the word map.  If you find answers to any of these questions, share a comment!

Even so, enjoy.  It's a fascinating, conversation-prompting piece.  And it's hopeful.  The way many of us talk about our churches, these are not the first words that come to mind.


GMI [Global Mapping International] is a faith-based nonprofit organization dedicated to furthering God's mission in the world through research, mapping and information technology services.

Lenten Belovedness

During those 40 days of preparation, [Jesus,] your soul was nourished and your belovedness deeply affirmed. You were not alone in the wilderness. With such a clear sense of belonging, you were immovable, unshakable.

Just read this in CRM's Lent Devotional (Day 4), and it struck me in a new way: what the time of preparation in Lent can be about.  Not just deprivation.  Not just clearing things out of your life.  (Those things can be vital, as well.)  But also nourishment.  A different kind of nourishment, far removed from power bars and scrambled eggs.  The nourishment of Lent is God's love.  


You and I are called to great and marvelous things.  But we are called to God first.  We are called to God's love.  We are prepared for all kinds of wonderful possibilities-- yes, through training and difficult preparation, but more directly through deep belonging in Jesus as he leads us to his Father.


May this Lenten season nourish your soul and affirm that you are God's beloved.  From there, may you find immovable, unshakeable mission.

Personal / Professional

In some ways, this season of life has brought clearer boundaries for ministry and my personal life.  Clearly, my fiancé is not my work project, and as much as he supports what I do, he patiently asks that I put work aside when I'm "off the clock," so to speak.  Yes, I have protested: "There is no clock for ministry!"  Everything is a potential opening and everyone a possible colleague.  Yet, exhaustion and disillusionment had begun to creep into a life of working all the time.

Slowly, I stepped back.  I realized how much I needed to rest.  I realized how many things I did out of professional ministry obligation -- especially things that, from the outside, probably looked social and fun. How many gatherings I would go to because I'm a natural networker, because I need to know people in the city, because I thought there might be a lead to pursue for future ministry, because I am truly a dork and think it might be kind of fun to talk about urban development strategies.  Yet, with more and more to occupy my personal time, I had to crack down and be honest with myself.  Am I doing this because it's fun, or because it's strategic, or even because I think I need to work more?

In a recent newsletter, I mentioned stopping to take stock of what ministry GOD had prepared for me.  Though it sounds obvious, it has been significant for me to stop trying so hard to plot and earn and administrate my time doing ministry.  (Take a quick look at Ephesians 2:10.)  God didn't do what I expected.  God pointed me towards downtown and its marginalized populations.  God invited me not just to serve on a team in CRM, but to lead one.  God gave me a place to not only belong in worship on Sundays, but to invite others to find home and community as well (future blog post: Sunday night worship services, explained).

What that has to do with personal and professional boundaries... is that despite all the books, essays and advice on the subject, I am am learning to trust that God can lay out those lines.  It turns out that God shepherds me well, when I stop being headstrong and trying to plot things for myself.

So I try not to mentally calculate my hours too often.  Sometimes it's helpful to keep myself accountable and have an idea of what I'm putting into my job.  However, it gets dicey when I start wondering if the conversation with the gardener on the street corner "counts" for work.  I don't want to be caught in thinking that I'm either banking time or wasting it when I chat with my neighbor or I pray with a friend or I send an email to a pastor I know.  The bottom line is that God is fully capable and fully understanding of what I need.  God appreciates good, hard work, but He also appreciates a woman who knows she's not the Creator, that she needs to rest, and that even missionaries take days off.

Blah Blah Blogging

I can get off track easily.  No sooner have I typed the first line of a blog (for example) than suddenly I remember three other things I need to search for in my inbox.  Contact info, touching base, reminding someone of something to be done.  The scattered focus has become all too common.  And then, here I am, a month later, so many potential blog entries come and gone.  So much 'normal' life that I meant to share.

Here goes.  Setting the bar.  Aiming for more than one short entry each week.  There is definitely that much to talk (type) about--- and more.

Diversity's Symphony

Diversity's Symphony from Emanate Media, Samson Varughese on Vimeo.

Reminiscing

There are all kinds of things on my list to blog about... prayer, fundraising, the joy of the season... but I find that what comes to my fingertips this Friday afternoon has to do with Christmases past.  It seems like such a flurry of winters have come and gone-- amusingly different every year.

Let's start with last year... 2010

       A good chunk of time at home, playing with horses and donkeys, my first Christmas back after moving to San Diego.

2009
  Getting ready to move to San Diego-- a Christmas tinged with anticipation, as I finished raising support, packed up the Corolla and started across the country on December 27th.  It was also the first Christmas after the death of my aunt Becky, so we were all navigating holiday grieving.  But on the plus side, Jack graduated from college!

2008
 Just coming off my first big house-sitting gig (of several) in Tennessee, I was trying to figure out what on earth to do with my life.  I had just visited San Diego and started conversations with CRM; I was enrolling as an Inquirer for ordination with the PC(USA).    I worked part-time doing odd jobs-- everything from farm work to office help to Spanish translation.  (I think that was the year of 5 or 6 W-2 statements!)

2007
 I needed a break from Miami sunshine.  And a break from an exhausting job in economic development, serving with the Young Adult Volunteer program. (In the picture you can see, celebration of winter holidays is a strange, strange affair in South Florida.)

2006
 I had just finished my final semester at Williams!  I spent January doing a horse-training internship.  I thought I might get a nonprofit job in the northeast.  It wasn't to be.  I moved back home to Tennessee, worked part-time, and started going on adventures...


Zooming back to the present-- 2011
  I'll be returning home to Tennessee with the man I'm going to marry.  Seriously.  The man I didn't know existed a year ago.

Conclusion: Life is funny.  I feel better having all that in perspective now.  Next post: on cyclical spiritual development and patterns that God weaves into the daily details.

What if... An Advent Conspiracy

[AC] Promo 2011 from Advent Conspiracy on Vimeo.

Resetting

When I first moved to San Diego, I felt strongly that the best thing I could do most of the time was to pray.  Many days, that was the most solid and promising option in front of me.  My job, as it was written, was to follow leads and nudges from the Holy Spirit, hoping to find the transformation of people and cities in the process. 

Almost two years later, I find myself back in the quiet place of waiting.  Appropriate to Advent, it seems that new things are growing - gestating - mysteriously bulging... yet staying out of sight.  I've ridden out a circuit on the missionary roller coaster, and now... I'm waiting for a track change.  I've done the adventure of getting settled and learning my way around.  I've jumped in and plunged my hands into the muck of urban ministry work.  I've traveled and made the rounds; I've learned names and collected cards; I've introduced myself and said goodbye as friends left town.

Now what?

Now, I have had a few successes and I have run into my limits.  Now I have watched as the rules to the game changed, as congregations shifted, and as people made discerning decisions.  Now, I'm getting married.  Now I am leading a ministry team. 

Now what?

Now I pray.  Now I wait.  Now I follow in trust and hope, remembering that with God nothing is wasted-- prayerful waiting included.

Giving Thanks in a Historically Based Sort of Way

The past couple of days, it's crossed my mind a few times to write a bit about Thanksgiving.  Not my list-- though I have plenty to be thankful for.  Not my plans-- they aren't terribly creative (turkey, potatoes, family, friends).  Not my diatribe about how you can't jump into the Christmas season until we've passed this critical juncture in November-- I don't think I'm winning that battle.  Rather, what I want to say on Thanksgiving is pretty simple:

Thank you.

I am thankful for those who knew this land (North America) and were willing to teach very strange, pale people how to survive in it.  I am grateful for this beautiful place that was cherished long before I got here. I am grateful for the legacy of Native North Americans, and I am grateful that racism and genocide did not have the final word in their history-- our history.  

Spurred on by words from Mark Charles, I want to thank those Americans who've been ignored and shut away for most of our national history.  Especially as a follower of Jesus and reader of the history of a persecuted people (in the Bible), I join in mourning and prayer for renewal of indigenous populations. I offer thanks for undeserved generosity and welcome in this land.  Especially on Thanksgiving, I choose to remember things that would be easier to forget, people who have been told they are unwanted and forgotten, circumstances that make it hard for many to be grateful.

When Things Seem Mundane

I admit I've been reluctant to blog lately.  But then, one of those profound thoughts hit me-- the kind of idea that only comes at strange moments like walking to your car or getting out of the shower or peeling a potato.

Regardless of whether my activities feel profound and meaningful, they are still the things that I do for a living.  And the people who support what I do for a living might actually want to know those things too, right?  As Oswald Chambers reminded me this morning (My Utmost for His Highest),

"The tendency is to look for the marvelous in our experience; we mistake the sense of the heroic for being heroes.  It is one thing to go through a crisis grandly, but another thing to go through every day glorifying God when there is no witness, no limelight, no one paying the remotest attention to us.  Even if we do not want medieval halos, we want something that will make people say-- What a wonderful man of prayer he is!  What a pious devoted woman she is!  To the contrary, if you are rightly devoted to the Lord Jesus, you have reached the sublime height where no one ever thinks of noticing  you, all that is noticed is that the power of God comes through you all the time... The test of the life of a saint is not success, but faithfulness in human life as it actually is."

Lately, there's been a lot of 'human life' going on.  Not only the realities of my own life preparing for marriage, but those of my roommates, bopping in and out of our apartment; those of my colleagues in ministry who are re-financing and renovating and sending kids to college; those of my family members searching for and acquiring new jobs; those of my neighbors and friends having birthdays, going to the grocery store, celebrating, mourning, etc, etc.

And in the midst of it all, I don't have many amazing moments of revelation with God.  Most of the time when I peel potatoes, I am just peeling potatoes.  Yet, every now and then, I remember that I live an extraordinary life.  Its extraordinariness does not come from my travels or adventures or brilliant ideas, I hope, but from devotion to God.  To be truly faithful, patient, loving, kind, self-controlled, and submitted to God is an extraordinary goal in life.  And that goal gets played out not at conferences or big events, but in my daily relationships and choices.

Maybe not marvelous, but perhaps not so terribly mundane either.  It's life.  By the grace of God, a life becoming more devoted to Jesus.

By Candlelight

 I hope to attend this on Sunday.  Please pray with me for the men and women who face death on San Diego's streets.

I think of Saints

I promise... my blog has not been captured by a Sara Groves promoter.  But seriously, this woman can write and sing my heart.  I was thinking of this song all day... and then it was the first thing that popped up on Pandora!!!!  So in honor of All Saints Day...

"When the Saints"

Awakening

lyrics by Sara Groves
 
Dress down your pretty faith, give me something real
Leave out the Thee and Thou and speak to me now
Speak to my pain and confusion
Speak through my fears and my pride
Speak to the part of me that knows I'm something deep down inside
I know that I'm not perfect, but compare me to most
In a world of hurt in a world of anger I think I'm holding my own
And I know that you've said there is more to life
No I am not satisfied
But there are mornings I wake up and I’m just thankful to be alive
I've known for quite a while that I am not whole
I've remembered the body and the mind, but dissected the soul
Now something inside is awakening
Like a dream I once had and forgot
And it's something I'm scared of and something I don't want to stop
I woke up this morning and realized
Jesus is not a portrait
Or stained glass windows
Or hymns
Or all the tradition that surrounds us
I thought it would be hard to believe in, but it's not hard at all
To believe I've sinned
And fallen short
Of the glory of God
He's not asking me to change in my joy for martyrdom
He's asking to take my place
To stand in the gap that I have formed
With His real amazing grace
And it's not just a sign or a sacrament
It's not just a metaphor for love
The blood is real and it's not just a symbol of our faith

Memories

"Memories are stacked to form the walls of a history that is both personal and collective.  More like a sandcastle than a fortress, these walls shift... reshaped by the tides of observation.  Within our memories are clusters of events, places, and people that we may at once long for and retreat from."

-Taken from the opening words of an art exhibit in the Albany Airport called "Keeping Time"