This week I went to the local Passion play with my mom. I wasn’t going to go, but decided to because my dad had a big part in the play and I wanted to see him with his hair down and glasses off. I have nothing against the play itself, but I find myself these days attending less and less traditional church events.
As I sat there, I became more and more uncomfortable. This event was, of course, a very concerted effort on the part of the churches involved (including people from ours) to reach people with the message of Jesus. For some reason, however, I felt weird--like I didn’t belong there. It wasn’t the people--they were friendly and genuine. The actors were sincere and I could tell they were there for the best possible reasons. It was me. There was something about me that felt wrong in that place. I thought about how long it had been since I’d been in a church building (the place we meet doesn’t have the same feel as a normal church along with the fact that we only meet there now once a month), and I began to reflect on my life and relationships.
I spend less than an hour a week--if that--in my church office. In fact, if you went in there, the only evidence that I have anything to do with that office is a small book shelf in the corner with the hat I inherited from my grandpa that says, “if you ain’t chicano, you ain’t caca.” I don’t have a staff, so there are no staff meetings. I work more hours at The UPS Store than I do for the church (I get paid far less--nothing--for the church work as well). When I hear my kids answering the question “what does your dad do?“ I hear them say I’m a raft guide or a substitute teacher. My weekly spiritual interactions consist of a small group that meets in my house and a bizarre group of guys who meet in a bar to talk about the Kingdom on Wednesday afternoons. Most of the people I am around throughout the week are not church people--James, my homeless friend, angry people at the UPS Store who think that as a cashier I have some secret plan to rip them off on their shipping needs, raft guides, coffee shop people, elementary school parents, neighbors, etc. The phone number for our church in the yellow pages is the number to my cell phone. Once a month, if that, I get a call that has to do with the church--usually asking if we’re the false prophets who use the devil’s NIV version of the Bible, or demanding that we change our name because the Lutheran church had it first. When I meet with a couple who want me to do their wedding, I get to share Jesus with them, but I don’t get to tell them what they need to do with any authority because I’m just the preacher, not any person of authority in their lives. The people in our church community are different than any church people I’ve ever known. Our conversations are more about things going on in their life outside church than things that happened at a service or something I said when I was preaching. The people in our church have all experienced some pretty deep levels of pain--much of it self-inflicted and a lot of it out of our control.
As I thought through my life as a pastor, it become harder to identify it as the life of a pastor as I‘ve understood it in the past. In fact, as I sat there watching the youth group kid in front of me trying to put a piece of duct tape down the front of a girl’s shirt, a sickening sensation began to swell in my stomach. “What if I’m no longer really a pastor?” What if I’m doing it all wrong? Am I living out some weird pseudo-pastoral fantasy? Could I be leading this group of people way down the wrong path away from what God has clearly established as the way of doing church? I began to have a little panic attack in my seat--until a roman guard ran by me complete with plastic helmet and surfer sandals.
I came out of my head for a moment and was able to watch the play for a while. My dad was a high priest trying to plot the murder of Jesus. I watched as Jesus cried out to God in the garden, was arrested, and then nailed to the cross.
I continued to think about what I thought being a pastor was supposed to be like. My friend, Joe recently asked me if I had written down what I thought God’s calling on my life was. He said it would be good to have it written down to go back to when I had doubts about what I was doing. Since this was definitely one of those moments, I walked through, in my mind, the ideas I had been thinking of in terms of what God was asking me to do here in Durango.
There is a phrase that’s been going through my mind when I think of what God has called me to do in my life and here in Durango. My calling, as I see it, is to lead in poverty and weakness those who will not be led by strength and competency. There are people in the world who need a strong leader to guide them. They need pastors who will take the reigns with confidence and lead them where God wants them to go. These people are looking for leaders who know where they are going and how to get there. They want to hear what the plan is and then follow that plan--success is making a decision, following through with that decision and seeing it happen the way it was envisioned. There is another kind of person in the Church, however. Often, this other brand of Christian has been hurt by their past church experiences. They’ve been abandoned or betrayed by confident and driven leaders. Sometimes, they have been told that they don’t measure up to standards of excellence, or that their struggles and shortcomings were too much for that particular community. These people have a difficult time with strength and confidence. They are turned off by anyone who appears to have it all together or knows all the answers.
This is where I come in.
I have no doubt in my mind that God has gifted me as a leader and as a shepherd of people. It is as much a part of my DNA as anything. The problem is that I am extremely relational and emotional. I don’t fit the profile of a typical pastor. I’m not driven to excellence--I like to do a good job, but the experience is often more important to me than the goal. I don’t command decisions and follow through with them--I try things. I often try things that don’t work out the way I intended, and yet, God always seems to accomplish something in the midst of my imperfection and weakness. I am discovering that there is a section of society that is looking for this kind of leader--my kind of leadership. They want to know that their pastor is their friend and that he is more interested in their heart than their behavior. They need a shepherd who will walk with them through weakness and failure and not abandon them when they blow it or fall short. These people are not hard to find--they just aren’t at church. Many of them have been on hiatus from going to church for quite some time, or have quit altogether. They tend to struggle with the idea that God doesn’t love them because he doesn’t seem interested in miraculously delivering them from their problems.
As I continued to tune in and out of the Passion play I realized why I felt strange in the church world I had grown up in. It wasn’t because there was anything wrong with Passion plays, or youth groups, or traditional church--or me. It was because I have been designed for and called to reach out to a group of people who exist outside that sphere of reality. They are being left behind and abandoned or disqualifying themselves from church altogether. I’m not just called to be with those people, I am one of them. I don’t fit in that world. I’ve been hurt by it. I don’t fit it’s standards of leadership. I don’t go about business in the same way. The things I keep telling my people about how God can meet them even outside the “normal” church goes for me as well.
I watched Peter run into the empty tomb and listened as he sang a song I had heard for the first time as a small boy. I smiled as I remembered Speedy Ramirez singing “He’s Alive” in the Easter pageants at the church we went to when I was a kid. I had come to a good place--fully appreciating, both the excitement of the church presenting Jesus’ resurrection in such a creative way and my own reality as the bastard preacher with the strange assignment in God’s upside down Kingdom. At the time, I didn’t even know that, 24 hours later, I would be sitting in a sweat lodge praying with an accompaniment of Native American chants and drumming--fully completing the picture of what it means for Chip Johnson to be a pastor.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Thursday, April 02, 2009
New Adventures in Church Experimentation
In the midst of economic upheaval and difficult times for many people, our church community at CTK Durango is doing some really cool stuff! When our budget tanked in January, we realized there wasn’t going to be an easy solution. Several of the families in our church were/are dealing with extremely challenging financial realities. Recovering financially as a church wasn’t going to be a matter of people digging deeper.
The first question we asked ourselves (it seems like we ask a lot of questions--more than we have answers, usually!) was, What does the church do in a time like this? We decided we could do one of two things: we could disband and have every man fend for himself and come back together when things were better, or we could come together and see if God would be willing to work in and through us as a community to move forward. Naturally, none of us wanted to be sissies, so, scared as we were, we decided to come together and seek God’s direction. In this process over the last couple months, we have seen God really come through for the people in this church. No instant fixes, or outrageous resolutions, but more an experience in life amidst difficulty. We’ve seen great movements in generosity, gratitude, and grace (the g thing was accidental, I promise!). We’ve seen people making room to take care of the people around them and God has used this family of believers to reach out to the people around us--even when circumstances are not ideal! We’ve also had the opportunity to experiment with church.
Our conversations over the past several months have led us in an interesting direction as a church. We started talking about worship. The question was, What if my attitude about worship was more about what I bring to God in community and less about what God and community have for me? Our conclusion was that we each bear the responsibility of worship and the result was a renewed attitude of focusing on God in our worship meetings and taking the focus away from ourselves. We defined worship as acknowledging God for who he is out of our brokenness and gratitude--as a community of Christ-followers.
It wasn’t long before we felt the need to carry this movement of worship to the people around us. We asked, How do we communicate this idea of worshipping God in brokenness and gratitude to the people around us in Durango? We concluded that focusing on authentic relationships was extremely important to moving our life of worship out of the church meeting and into the community. This presented us with somewhat of a dilemma: how do we strike a balance between worshipping God in community and building meaningful relationships with the people God wants to reach without simply trying to get people to attend church. We’ve decided against church attendance as a primary means of evangelism because we’ve noticed that there isn’t really enough opportunity at a worship meeting for us to get to know each other better, let alone new visitors.
We have recently begun to experiment with new ways to accomplish our goal of worship and reaching out. We retrofitted our small groups to become teaching groups. We decided they would meet for six weeks at a time with a focus on different teaching material--theology, Bible study, biblical world-view, etc. By meeting for a limited period of time, we would give people a chance to get to get to know each other as well as the opportunity to meet others as the groups mix and change over time. We are also trying a different way of doing Sunday Worship. Instead of meeting weekly, we are meeting once a month for community worship. This leaves us with the weekends in between Sunday Worship to develop meaningful relationships with the people we work and live with who might never “attend church”. It has been fascinating to see how people are using this free space to develop relationships. Personally, I have already spent time getting to know people from inside and outside our church community that simply wasn’t possible before. We are encouraging people to go camping and have bbqs and invite friends over for dinner or go to shows late on Saturday night!
Time will tell whether or not this works for us. So far, the biggest complaint has been, “I miss meeting regularly” which rarely means they miss preaching and stuff so much as the regular time spent with people--something I think they will value over time when they realize the possibilities for creative time spent together outside of the context of a church service.
So, this is pretty much what we have going on right now at CTK Durango. The last thing I want to talk about now to catch this blog up completely is the idea of calling and what I am discovering as a pastor on the topic, but that’ll be another post.
By the way, thank you to all of you who have been tracking with us and praying for us. I hope to keep better connected to you all now that we’re all caught up!
The first question we asked ourselves (it seems like we ask a lot of questions--more than we have answers, usually!) was, What does the church do in a time like this? We decided we could do one of two things: we could disband and have every man fend for himself and come back together when things were better, or we could come together and see if God would be willing to work in and through us as a community to move forward. Naturally, none of us wanted to be sissies, so, scared as we were, we decided to come together and seek God’s direction. In this process over the last couple months, we have seen God really come through for the people in this church. No instant fixes, or outrageous resolutions, but more an experience in life amidst difficulty. We’ve seen great movements in generosity, gratitude, and grace (the g thing was accidental, I promise!). We’ve seen people making room to take care of the people around them and God has used this family of believers to reach out to the people around us--even when circumstances are not ideal! We’ve also had the opportunity to experiment with church.
Our conversations over the past several months have led us in an interesting direction as a church. We started talking about worship. The question was, What if my attitude about worship was more about what I bring to God in community and less about what God and community have for me? Our conclusion was that we each bear the responsibility of worship and the result was a renewed attitude of focusing on God in our worship meetings and taking the focus away from ourselves. We defined worship as acknowledging God for who he is out of our brokenness and gratitude--as a community of Christ-followers.
It wasn’t long before we felt the need to carry this movement of worship to the people around us. We asked, How do we communicate this idea of worshipping God in brokenness and gratitude to the people around us in Durango? We concluded that focusing on authentic relationships was extremely important to moving our life of worship out of the church meeting and into the community. This presented us with somewhat of a dilemma: how do we strike a balance between worshipping God in community and building meaningful relationships with the people God wants to reach without simply trying to get people to attend church. We’ve decided against church attendance as a primary means of evangelism because we’ve noticed that there isn’t really enough opportunity at a worship meeting for us to get to know each other better, let alone new visitors.
We have recently begun to experiment with new ways to accomplish our goal of worship and reaching out. We retrofitted our small groups to become teaching groups. We decided they would meet for six weeks at a time with a focus on different teaching material--theology, Bible study, biblical world-view, etc. By meeting for a limited period of time, we would give people a chance to get to get to know each other as well as the opportunity to meet others as the groups mix and change over time. We are also trying a different way of doing Sunday Worship. Instead of meeting weekly, we are meeting once a month for community worship. This leaves us with the weekends in between Sunday Worship to develop meaningful relationships with the people we work and live with who might never “attend church”. It has been fascinating to see how people are using this free space to develop relationships. Personally, I have already spent time getting to know people from inside and outside our church community that simply wasn’t possible before. We are encouraging people to go camping and have bbqs and invite friends over for dinner or go to shows late on Saturday night!
Time will tell whether or not this works for us. So far, the biggest complaint has been, “I miss meeting regularly” which rarely means they miss preaching and stuff so much as the regular time spent with people--something I think they will value over time when they realize the possibilities for creative time spent together outside of the context of a church service.
So, this is pretty much what we have going on right now at CTK Durango. The last thing I want to talk about now to catch this blog up completely is the idea of calling and what I am discovering as a pastor on the topic, but that’ll be another post.
By the way, thank you to all of you who have been tracking with us and praying for us. I hope to keep better connected to you all now that we’re all caught up!
Getting up to speed
I can always tell when I’ve become lax in my blogging when Will sends me a message pleading for a new post. It’s more than a simple desire for good reading material for Will. He knows that, as a pastor, missionary, or whoever, staying out of touch could easily mean that things are really hectic, or that you are burning yourself out, or that you can’t think of a positive spin for your readers on crappy life circumstances. In response to this welcome accountability, then, I will try to catch you all up with how life has been for us over the past few months. In my next post, talk about church stuff--this is the family stuff.
In January, our church was hit with the financial issues the rest of you are all facing as well. We didn’t bring in nearly what we had budgeted and immediately blew through our savings, etc. The immediate action I was forced to take was to cut my salary completely and trim what was left of the bills. This left our family with a 40% cut in income over night. Since we were already on a tight budget, we had to think creatively. We were already in the process of refinancing our house to pay off some debt and take advantage of the better rates, so we decided to follow through with that. The down side of the refi was that it took about three months to go through (gone are the days of stated income!), which caused us considerable stress. I had recently begun to work for a couple in our church at the UPS Store (no, I can’t tell you off the top of my head how much it will cost to ship your dog overnight to North Carolina). We also decided to try and sell Jenn’s car. Since it was new and paid for, we saw it as our only asset. In the end, after driving it to CA and back to try and sell, we ended up just keeping it anyway--great blessings on Mick Longley who put in many hours trying to help us sell the car only to have me come and take it back!
As I write this, looking back, it does not seem all that bad! I can assure you, however, it was pretty stressful for us! It was exhausting trying to figure out what to do to make ends meet. The refinance process was grueling as every time we met requirements, the bank decided they wanted something else from us. In all, I made three marathon non-stop drives to CA which worked me over in the sleep department--Starbucks double shots and audio books literally saved my life!
When the refinance finally went through and I had paid off all our debt but one car payment and the house, thought we were going to get a chance to breathe a little. That brought us to about a week ago when Jenn found out that she was not going to have her teaching contract renewed at the high school.
As things stand now, we are too exhausted to panic which has probably been the greatest blessing so far.
Jenn and I sat down and decided that, not only do we not have the energy to freak out about this new development, but we wanted to choose to respond differently. We looked back at the past 14 years of our marriage and saw that we have been in situations like this on many occasions. Not only have we been through times like this, but God has always been faithful to us--we’ve always appreciated where we end up more than the place we were before. We’ve always had food to eat and a roof over our heads. We have always had good community and precious family around us. In short, we’ve decided that our best guess (and therefore what we will choose to expect) is that God will only continue in his pattern of provision and we can simply wait for him to show us where to focus our energy.
Jenn has one potential job prospect in a new program starting at the high school. I can continue working at the UPS Store and have just been offered more hours if I want them. The church is slowly getting back on it’s feet and I am expecting to be able to draw some sort of pay from it four or five months.
Blessings: There is a lot to be thankful for in the midst of this hectic season…
We are debt free--besides a car payment and our mortgage, we were able to get rid of all credit card debt which frees up our cash flow a little and helps us feel a little less “tied down”.
My job at the UPS Store is a welcome provision. There is nothing like being the pastor preaching a sermon on Sunday and then being berated by an angry customer who is being forced to spend all their eBay earnings on shipping on Monday! My hours there will also still allow me to guide raft trips a little this summer.
Jennifer took her competition cheer squad to the national competition in LA and they took3rd in their division. To put this in perspective, the team that took first had gone to ten competitions this year to prepare for the national event--Nationals was the third competition ever for Jenn’s girls!
There is some really cool stuff going on with church which I’ll talk about later
My sister has made some amazing progress in her recovery. I think AA is one of the best vehicles for Christ to impact people ever and I’m so proud of her for working hard and not giving up. It has been good to have her in town and get to spend time with her. In our adult life, I have not ever been close enough to her to be able to grab breakfast or coffee. I love it.
My brother and I are staying in touch even though he is still in CA working for Google. I am incredibly proud of his success there and am enjoying having a relationship with him as well.
Oscar and Piper are amazing little beings. OJ and I have almost made it through the entire Star Wars series of movies and he is proving to be a good Padawan. Piper is an artist--I love her spirit and we often sit in coffee shops and draw pictures in these weird stream of conscious doodle conversations.
I love my wife. Jenn has proven to be a fantastic partner and a great mom. I love the way she takes care of our kids. She spends hours reading to them and teaching them how to be good humans--which really balances out the bizarre ways I have been twisting their minds!
I have some good friends. There are guys I have in my life who I can smoke pipe with and ponder the universe as well as men who I can make myself accountable to and a great group of guys who meet for “Pub Church” every week to discuss matters of the Kingdom--beer in hand.
To top it all off, I’ve managed to lose about 35lbs over the last couple months (no in any unhealthy way) which makes me feel much healthier and hasn’t hurt my love life either!
Anyway, this should catch everyone up on the life stuff for us. I’m excited to get you all up to speed on the church stuff too!
In January, our church was hit with the financial issues the rest of you are all facing as well. We didn’t bring in nearly what we had budgeted and immediately blew through our savings, etc. The immediate action I was forced to take was to cut my salary completely and trim what was left of the bills. This left our family with a 40% cut in income over night. Since we were already on a tight budget, we had to think creatively. We were already in the process of refinancing our house to pay off some debt and take advantage of the better rates, so we decided to follow through with that. The down side of the refi was that it took about three months to go through (gone are the days of stated income!), which caused us considerable stress. I had recently begun to work for a couple in our church at the UPS Store (no, I can’t tell you off the top of my head how much it will cost to ship your dog overnight to North Carolina). We also decided to try and sell Jenn’s car. Since it was new and paid for, we saw it as our only asset. In the end, after driving it to CA and back to try and sell, we ended up just keeping it anyway--great blessings on Mick Longley who put in many hours trying to help us sell the car only to have me come and take it back!
As I write this, looking back, it does not seem all that bad! I can assure you, however, it was pretty stressful for us! It was exhausting trying to figure out what to do to make ends meet. The refinance process was grueling as every time we met requirements, the bank decided they wanted something else from us. In all, I made three marathon non-stop drives to CA which worked me over in the sleep department--Starbucks double shots and audio books literally saved my life!
When the refinance finally went through and I had paid off all our debt but one car payment and the house, thought we were going to get a chance to breathe a little. That brought us to about a week ago when Jenn found out that she was not going to have her teaching contract renewed at the high school.
As things stand now, we are too exhausted to panic which has probably been the greatest blessing so far.
Jenn and I sat down and decided that, not only do we not have the energy to freak out about this new development, but we wanted to choose to respond differently. We looked back at the past 14 years of our marriage and saw that we have been in situations like this on many occasions. Not only have we been through times like this, but God has always been faithful to us--we’ve always appreciated where we end up more than the place we were before. We’ve always had food to eat and a roof over our heads. We have always had good community and precious family around us. In short, we’ve decided that our best guess (and therefore what we will choose to expect) is that God will only continue in his pattern of provision and we can simply wait for him to show us where to focus our energy.
Jenn has one potential job prospect in a new program starting at the high school. I can continue working at the UPS Store and have just been offered more hours if I want them. The church is slowly getting back on it’s feet and I am expecting to be able to draw some sort of pay from it four or five months.
Blessings: There is a lot to be thankful for in the midst of this hectic season…
We are debt free--besides a car payment and our mortgage, we were able to get rid of all credit card debt which frees up our cash flow a little and helps us feel a little less “tied down”.
My job at the UPS Store is a welcome provision. There is nothing like being the pastor preaching a sermon on Sunday and then being berated by an angry customer who is being forced to spend all their eBay earnings on shipping on Monday! My hours there will also still allow me to guide raft trips a little this summer.
Jennifer took her competition cheer squad to the national competition in LA and they took3rd in their division. To put this in perspective, the team that took first had gone to ten competitions this year to prepare for the national event--Nationals was the third competition ever for Jenn’s girls!
There is some really cool stuff going on with church which I’ll talk about later
My sister has made some amazing progress in her recovery. I think AA is one of the best vehicles for Christ to impact people ever and I’m so proud of her for working hard and not giving up. It has been good to have her in town and get to spend time with her. In our adult life, I have not ever been close enough to her to be able to grab breakfast or coffee. I love it.
My brother and I are staying in touch even though he is still in CA working for Google. I am incredibly proud of his success there and am enjoying having a relationship with him as well.
Oscar and Piper are amazing little beings. OJ and I have almost made it through the entire Star Wars series of movies and he is proving to be a good Padawan. Piper is an artist--I love her spirit and we often sit in coffee shops and draw pictures in these weird stream of conscious doodle conversations.
I love my wife. Jenn has proven to be a fantastic partner and a great mom. I love the way she takes care of our kids. She spends hours reading to them and teaching them how to be good humans--which really balances out the bizarre ways I have been twisting their minds!
I have some good friends. There are guys I have in my life who I can smoke pipe with and ponder the universe as well as men who I can make myself accountable to and a great group of guys who meet for “Pub Church” every week to discuss matters of the Kingdom--beer in hand.
To top it all off, I’ve managed to lose about 35lbs over the last couple months (no in any unhealthy way) which makes me feel much healthier and hasn’t hurt my love life either!
Anyway, this should catch everyone up on the life stuff for us. I’m excited to get you all up to speed on the church stuff too!
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