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!

Benediction

I recently had an interesting experience. Someone out in internet-land found a blog post I'd written in May of 2007 about being gay in church. The basic jist of the post was that we had decided, as a church, to love people first and worry about behavior second. We were choosing relationship and allowing God's Spirit to lead people beyond that.

Apparently, Fr. John took great offense to my stance on homosexuality. I wasn't so surprised that someone might disagree with my thoughts so much as I was floored by how he responded. He threatened me with a liturgy of malediction. In the middle ages, a liturgical malediction was where a group of monks got together and described in graphic detail how they wanted God to afflict someone they were unhappy with. I don't know if Fr. John was calling out boils on my body or just making a point. In any case, it ocurred to me that such a thing as malediction exsits. A benediction is a blessing. Often, at the end of a worship experience, the pastor will speak a blessing on the congregation--you might also extend a benediction to someone as you try and encourge them in pain, or intercede on their behalf before God. I am amazed that there would be people out there who would see a use for the antithesis of benediction.

As this has been sinking in with me, the concept of benediction has become increasingly important. As a pastor (and all of us as Christ-followers) I cannot affford to waste time not blessing people. I must use every connection and influence I carry with God to extend his blessing to the people around me. Not only because I know God longs to bless people through me, but now, because I am aware that there are people out there, calling themselves Christians, who would employ the anti-benediction in an effort to curse and confound anyone who doesn't agree with them.

So...God bless you all!

The Office

Every once in a while, I realize that it has been several weeks since I have set foot in my church office. This usually occurs to me as I walk into the Irish Pub and the kids working there yell, "Pastor Chip!".

Back on the Mountain

This winter, I've had an intersection of two things I am really excited about. In my last post I talked about Eddie and how our church is beginning to reach into the community of people with disabilities. This is largely due to the fact that Jason Uhl (married to Ruthie, for you Salinasites) works with them as a career and their family caretakes for Eddie. Several others in our church have also begun volunteering in respite care for the families of people with disabilities. I have been looking for a way to get involved on some level in this area which leads to it's intersection with something else I've been missing. Our first winter in Durango, I worked at the ski resort (Purgatory)as a ticket checker and snowboarded a ton. Last year, I didn't get to go up to the mountain once because of my schedule. This year, I am getting involved with an organization called Adaptive Sports Association. They are a group that helps people with all kinds of disabilities participate in outdoor sports: river rafting, water skiing, snow skiing, camping, etc. Now that I've completed my training, I can start teaching snowboarding to ASA clients. I'm excited to get to play with people like Eddie, and the fact that I get a free pass for every lesson I give doesn't hurt either!

Olympic Gold

This past weekend, Eddie went to the Special Olympics. I know this because he showed up on Sunday and he couldn’t wait to show off his gold medal for volleyball. Eddie is almost sixty years old, which is pretty advanced for someone with down syndrome. During our worship service, I had him come up and tell us all about it. He told us how much fun he’d had and how he won and got the medal.
There was a man I used to look up to in youth ministry named Mike Yaconelli. In the heyday of the megachurch, Mike used to brag about his church that had never grown in numbers over sixty. He described a church where people often spoke up and asked questions in the middle of sermons…where several people with down syndrome were members and felt right at home in the little church. His great pride for his church and his description of the atmosphere there seemed incongurent to me at the time. People who didn’t know how to sit still or who interrupted the preacher hardly seemed to fit into my idea of excellence and honoring God. I realized on Sunday, how my perspective has changed. I was as proud of Eddie as he was of his gold medal. I am delighted in our church service of twenty-five people. I love the fact that we can move the chairs to face eachother if it benefits our conversation. I love cancelling the normal program every few weeks so we can just have breakfast together. I don’t even mind when Eddie’s friend, Travis visits and yells “scrotum” in the middle of the service.
I think we are honoring God with excellence. I think coming before God and allowing him to shed light on our quirks and inadequacies gives him great joy because that’s where he loves to be—in the place of redemption—in the place of bridging the gap between our fallenness and his perfection. I love our church.
Eddie got a gold medal, but it somehow belongs to all of us.

Key Ingredients to True Community

Over the past few months, we have been talking about what it takes to engineer a culture in our church that reflects the community Jesus taught about and that developed out of his disciples after the resurrection.

My favorite place to look for cues on how the community of believers should operate is the book of Acts. There are a couple key passages in chapters 2 and 4 that describe the community of Christ followers that grew out of Jesus' ministry and sacrifice. There are two elements from these pictures we have been focusing on lately. One is the idea that people seemed to be willing to do whatever they could to take care of the needs of others. The other element is that it seems people's needs were being brought before the community (otherwise they would not have known who/how to help). We have decided that, for us to function as the community of Christ, we must be willing to not only sacrifice for each other, but live with a transparency that enables us to share our needs openly with each other.

Our particular community has no trouble with the concept of helping--even sacrificially. We have seen people making heroic efforts to meet the needs of others and we have seen God multiply what we have to accomplish more than we could have imagined. Where we hit a snag in all this is when it comes to being transparent enough to share our needs in community. There are several barriers to this kind of disclosure: fear of being judged, fear of appearing incompetent, fear of exposing our sin, etc. It has been interesting to see how God has been stretching us as a group in becoming more comfortable with each other. We have had to work hard to establish a trust that we will be responsible with the things others share. We have had to establish a culture that supports the idea that when someone shares a need, we will all embrace it together and submit to what God is willing to do with that need in and through the community.

The results have been fascinating. For one, we have had needs come up that have gone beyond the "baby steps" I envisioned. The first person to put their need on the table was Peggy. She had an extensive back surgery this summer. Her back is fine, but the quad muscle in her leg mysteriously died--it actually atrophied and she had hardly been able to walk well or even stay upright at times. Medically speaking, she could do some things to strengthen the surrounding muscles to compensate, but there was nothing she could do to revive the nerves--they were either going to come back to life, or she was going to have to cope. Needless to say, this was a little bigger than what I had imagined us taking on in easing into this idea of a community coming together around shared needs. I sort of thought we would help pay someone's electric bill or fix a car--this was in a whole new league.

We agreed to take on Peggy's issue as a family. We decided that we would approach God in community, submit to his movement on the issue, and embrace the results together. We prayed that God would heal Peggy's leg. We wanted to see her miraculously healed...but it didn't happen, at least, not like we imagined. The beauty of it, however, is that we had to learn how to cope with disappointment as a community. We came together and agreed, before God, that we were bummed she didn't just get up and start dancing. We continued to pray over the next few weeks and we all felt the frustration of no immediate results. We also celebrated together when, after a few weeks of praying for Peggy, she got the encouraging news that the nerves in her leg were beginning to fire again and the muscle was slowly coming back to life.

Since then, we have had some big stuff come up in our worship together. The pattern seems to be that someone who has a need, shares it with their closest friends, calls me, brings it to their small group, and then they share it in community worship on Sunday. It has been an amazing process of people becoming more comfortable showing up to church and saying, "I didn't want to come today because ______________ is going on in my life, but I wanted you all to be able to pray for me." It's amazing how our first response to hardship is often to keep it a secret until it is "taken care of" and then we want to go to church to share the victory. We are beginning to realize that sharing the victory in community is much sweeter when you have all shared in the struggle and pain from the beginning. In fact, the impression we are getting is that God intends to provide for us and deliver us from the stuff in our lives through community. Maybe that's why followers of Jesus are referred to as the "body of Christ". When God wants to give you a hug, he does it through one of his children. When he wants to provide for your physical needs, he multiplies what one of his people is willing to give to do it. Keeping struggles and needs secret actually blocks God's main means for meeting need!

There's no denying that this is a messy precedent we have set. It means that we can no longer hide the fact that we are broken people who don't "have it together". We can't pretend that everything is ok. We have to embrace the reality that there are heavy and profound problems all around us and that they don't just go away after we pray for the "unspoken request". I am convinced, however, that we have taken a big step toward the picture of community painted in the scriptures. I am also convinced that we are beginning to see what Jesus intended to teach us when he approached people over and over who could not hide their issues and loved them and healed them.

I'll have to talk more in anther post about what it's like to be the leader of this kind of community--"WOW", is all I can say at this point!

Call Me Officer Johnson

Well, not exactly officer...but I do get a cool jacket and a flashlight! I've recently joined a group of volunteers at the sheriff's department called, Victim Services. The main idea is that whenever there is a death where family or friends are involved, the deputies need someone to be with the family/friend while they deal with the actual death scene. I'm looking forward to being able to help and I think it is very insightful for them to want "pastor-types" in this role since we deal with these issues as it is. I am a little anxious about taking on more trauma, but I think it will be worth investing in in our community.

Call Me Mr. Johnson

So, this year I've started working as a substitute teacher at the high school. I've enjoyed it so far. I didn't realize how much I missed being around students. So far, I haven't had any of the usual nightmares that people talk about. I think the "dude, we were so brutal to that sub" memories become embellished over time and we really weren't as bad as we thought we were.

Anyway, I like the job and it's fun to hang out with Jenn during the day when I'm there.

Catching Up...

Ok, here are some nuggets to catch you all up on what's going on here in Durango...

Oscar just started the first grade/Piper started kindergarten

Jennifer is teaching English at the high school this year--she has a great classroom and is on campus so cheerleading is easier and she still has most of her students from last year.

I am about to start working as a substitute at the high school and junior highs--not nearly as glamorous as river guiding, but it'll pay better and I get to be around people!

Steve is doing well in Boston, although I'm sure a big part of his soul is still feeling stretched being so far away. He and Amy seem to be finding a lot of great opportunities to serve in Boston.

Fall is on it's way--the river is low and the trees are about to change colors.

The church is doing some interesting experiments in biblical community: this summer we had an exercise in generosity where we gave almost $2000 away to two local (and unsuspecting) pastors. We are now trying to develop a culture of bringing needs before God and giving sacrificially to help meet them--more on that later.

I almost got to go to Ethiopia and Kenya to train some pastors on small group-based church, but at the last minute another guy decided he wanted to go and I got the boot--don't ask, I'm still a little bitter!

I am personally enjoying a growing relationship with one of the guys in our church. Stephen has been a new friend who is more than up to the challenge of listening to all my philosophizing and can even dish it out (usually sitting by the river with pipes smoldering, of course). So far we have dreamed up some pretty cool stuff including possibly learning to sew and make clothes and building a bicycle-powered generator to run the TV.

I feel like we have officially made the transition to fall and I am looking forward to what this year has in store for CTK Durango and our family.

I'm coming back!

I haven't forgotten about this blog for any of you who stop in from time to time. Summer has been fun and busy--that's a good thing. This week school starts and I'll be back to blogging about life, church, my trip to Africa, and all sorts of things going on here! Stay tuned.