A CTK Christmas

Well, the dust has settled around Christmas. Only a few random cookies and scraps of ham remain of our celebration--although, I have to say our tree is still going strong...I guess that's the difference when you cut it down yourself in the forest!

Christmas Eve was an experiment for our church in relationship over charity. We wanted to invite a few of our friends from the soup kitchen to celebrate Christmas with us at Pickles. Our goal was not so much to "feed the homeless" that night, but to integrate our community with theirs. It was a good opportunity to spend time with our new friends outside of the soup kitchen. We invited three guys to the service. One of them was able to make it as well as the kitchen director who Ruthie has befriended. We had a great time. One of the activities we did was to split up in groups and each share what we thought the Christmas story would have been like for Joseph, Mary, and Simeon. I was in the younger group (17-20 year olds) and we were in charge of the Simeon perspective. I loved watching them process the Christmas story through the eyes of a character they were never aware of before that night.

We had a great Christmas dinner on Monday (even though I had to work at the resort that morning--long story). Basically, the entire Christmas Eve service people where there again. My friend James (from the hill) came and Ruthie brought her friend the kitchen manager and her son. My parents were there and Peggy (Jenn's mom) as well. It was pretty fun to have that mix of people all playing pictionary and unwrapping a huge ball of scotch tape with presents inside it.

In the end, I feel like we accomplished exactly what we were after. It was so cool to spend that time with James in a place other than the soup kitchen. I loved seeing new characters come into our story and watching the people from our CTK community embracing them as family. In my opinion, this was a great Christmas!

Go Ahead, Treat Me Like Garbage

I've always said having a job outside of my role as pastor is a good way to stay honest in ministry. Today I discovered that it also keeps me humble. I check tickets at the ski resort. Today, as I was checking tickets, I came across a kid with her mom who had a 2-day ticket. She had used her first day yesterday, so I marked it "done" as per my extensive training in the ticket arts. I was shocked to have this woman (the girl's mom) start yelling at me. Apparently, she was under the impression that her daughter had a 3-day pass and I had just ruined their entire vacation--possibly the whole year. I tried to explain about the 2-day thing, but to no avail--the tongue-lashing was merciless, even after it was obvious which of us was in the wrong.

An exprience like this puts things in perspective. The next time I have someone thank me for a great sermon or insightful council I'll remember the great resort rant of '06 and put my pride in check.

My Friends On The Hill

Today my friend James took me up on the hill to show me where he and a couple other guys are camped out. The whole time I visited with him I was trying to imagine myself living there in those tents. There is a grouping of three tents around a small fire pit. The snow from last week is starting to melt, but it's still all around. They don't seem to mind too much, but I'm not sure I could have the same attitude about the conditions. One of James' campmates was up there trying to get a drink of water from a gallon jug but the water was frozen solid, so he couldn't get any. He was shivering uncontrollably and he said when he'd gotten up this morning his shoes were frozen to the floor of his tent.

Say all you want about homeless people and why you think they are homeless or what you think they should do about changing their situation, but I realized today that those things don't matter much when it comes to the reality that my friends are up on the hill tonight trying to sleep in a tent and the temperature is declining quickly from 11 degrees. What they really need right now is a blanket--maybe a hatchet to cut some wood, or a jug that won't freeze solid every night.

In some ways, this reminds me of churches and doctrine. We can spend a lot of time and read volumes of books about doctrine--what we believe about God and how we interpret his word, whether we capitalize the word Word, and so on. The bottom line, however, is that while we try and get our doctrine straight, people are dying because they simply don't have real love. They have no Christ-following friends who love them with God's love and therefore are dying for lack of it. Maybe I'll never be a great pastor becasue I don't have a very complicated or well-defined doctrine, but I hope God holds me in the strictest of accountability if I fail to notice the people around me starving for God's pure love while I try and control and uphold a belief system based on things peripheral or irrelevant to that love.

The Hansel and Gretel School of Outreach

We're beginning to look forward to the new year here at CTK Durango. Besides expanding our small groups and making the technological leap to power point, we are making plans to move forward with outreach. Over the last couple months, we have developed a great friendship with Manna House, the local soup kitchen that feeds homeless people. I've described some of the friendships I've personally developed and there are a few of us from CTK who have really connected there (including Ruthie who is their new Program Director). We are trying to decide where to focus our attention from here. Our goal is to establish relationships in several areas in our community, leaving a few people behind each time. At some point in the last two months, almost every person in our congregation has spent time at Manna House. A few people are connecting there to the point that they will probably remain involved on their own. My hope is that wherever we focus next the same thing will happen until we have people from our church serving all over Durango in different capacities.

The one thing that will make this work is the fact that everyone in our church community is realizing their personal responsibility and opportunity to serve people in our community fulfilling Jesus' instructions to love God and love others. We've worked hard to create this culture of personal responsibility and relational unity. I'm anxious to see it continue to develop.