Appreciating the View

Sermon on the Mount--Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness Matthew 5:6 "God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice (righteousness), for they will be satisfied." Hunger is a funny thing in our culture. While we can imagine what it must be like for someone to be hungry, we are not hungry very often. More likely than not, our main goal is to deny hunger--to say "no" to carbs and fatty foods so we can lose weight. One famous depiction of the future in the comic book world is in the Judge Dredd comics where it becomes illegal to be overweight! We wish! We wish a judge on a futuristic motorcycle wearing a bullet proof helmet would burst through the door and demand that we put down that danish or slap the breakfast burrito out of your hand. While we may not fully understand the realities of being hungry, there are some elements of the idea of hunger and thirst that I believe we can get our minds around: We need food. We know we must eat and drink to stay alive. We structure our schedules around regular meals because we know we must eat often to stay healthy. We also know that once we eat a meal, another will soon be necessary--eating is part of living. The place in this passage where we become confused is in the area of righteousness. In most English dictionaries, righteous is defined in terms of doing the right thing--being morally justified, right. Our understanding of righteousness seems to usually come down to being based on how we behave. We make ourselves righteous (or unrighteous) by our behavior. In biblical terms, however, it turns out the concept of righteousness is less about behavior and more about relationship. Relational Righteousness. In the Old Testament, God bestows righteousness on his people through his saving acts. He saves Israel from Egypt in Exodus, not because they are behaving and warrant saving, but because God is bestowing his righteousness upon them. When God calls Abram, he declares him to be righteous. When they first met, Abram didn't know who God was, he hadn't done anything to make himself righteous, God declared him righteous and their relationship produced the subsequent behavior we see in Abraham. God's saving acts of righteousness and his declarations of righteousness on us produce the kind of behaviors we tend to associate with righteousness. Our human response to relational righteousness is compassionate acts on behalf of the people around us. The broken. The unrighteous. Every relationship you find yourself in, from your BFF to the guy walking past you on the sidewalk, makes a claim on conduct. When we enter into these relationships, we are agreeing to a code of conduct. I assume the guy walking toward me on the sidewalk will pick a side and let me pass on the other side--most likely each of us to our right. If I ignore the code of conduct it throws off the whole system. People think I am being rude and there is suddenly a traffic jam on the sidewalk. Jesus tells us we must be righteous and he proclaims makarios blessedness on us when we pursue righteousness as though it was our very sustenance. He is inviting us into a relational righteousness wherein God declares us to be righteous by his acts and therefore the claim of conduct on us is that we reciprocate by extending the same righteousness to those around us. Too often, in church circles, we force people to get their act together before they enter the door. We want proof of righteousness before we are willing to enter into community with each other. Jesus seems to be looking for a community of people, however, who will systematically declare righteousness on each other with the full expectation that this will produce the kind of behavioral righteousness we expect from citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus wants us to chase after this kind of relational righteousness in a way that reflects the consistency and repeated efforts we put into eating food and drinking water to stay alive. The result? God will satisfy our hunger and thirst. Our righteous behavior may not conjure up the good karma we hope it will, but we aren't looking to karma to satisfy our hunger. We depend on God to continue bestowing on us his righteousness as our source for our own righteous living.

The Beatitudes--Matthew 5:1-12, Luke 6:17-25 I think the Sermon on the Mount (or the Sermon on the Plain, if you read Luke) is a great place to start when looking into what Jesus taught. Not just what Jesus taught about, but what his underlying or overarching message actually was. Apparently, Matthew and Luke put together a collection of the things Jesus talked about often. Both of them start with the Beatitudes--a poetically arranged sequence of blessings and woes carefully arranged around the central idea of disciples who are persecuted for Jesus’ sake. Matthew builds up to the persecution idea with a list of 9 conditions or situations that are “blessed”. Things like “blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted” and “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs (NLV Matthew 5).” These states of blessing work their way up to the idea that Jesus’ followers are “blessed” when they are mocked, lied about, and persecuted because they follow him. Jesus points out that a great reward awaits them in heaven. Luke makes more of a persecution sandwich in his beatitudes. He frames his presentation of the blessings associated with persecution with a list of 3 blessings and 3 woes. Disciples of Jesus can expect to be blessed when they are poor, hungry, and mourning (Luke 6). Conversely, on the other end of the spectrum are the “woes” that can be expected by people who are rich, fat and prosperous, and laughing now. Jesus says that those who are indulging in those things now will be stripped of them in the future. The big mistake we often make with the Beatitudes is in thinking that these things listed by the authors should “be our attitudes” in life. I’ve heard (and even taught) often in my years in church circles that I should want to mourn and be poor. I should be hungry and persecuted. Some of us have been taught that the beatitudes are a list of causes and effects. If we want to get a blessing from God, we should not buy food or make money. We should be as sad as possible because people who laugh a lot are going to get shut up by God. Both Matthew and Luke present Jesus’ beatitudes in a creative and poetic way. They each paint a picture with Jesus’ words that is not meant so much as a list of cause and effect, but more to give us a picture in our minds of the perspective and potential experience of the disciple of Christ as we navigate the inevitable roller coaster of life. These are not lists of promises and warnings. We are meant to grasp the intangible and unquantifiable reality of the sense of peace and well-being that the Christian has access to--a sense of supreme happiness that transcends circumstance. In my own attempts to come to terms with the beatitudes as well as my observations of others walking along the same Way, I have see two dominant responses. Some of us lean toward the fulfillment end of the spectrum. We reason, “if God wants to bless those who are poor, I must fulfill that desire of his and be as poor as possible so as to experience his blessings.” Others seem to come at the equation from the opposite end. The thinking there is that God expects us to be happy in all situations. Luke even says to jump for joy! This appeals to many people who are more inclined to denial. Everyone in the room might be mourning the death of someone they’ve loved all their lives and this person will be saying something along the lines of, “well, obviously God was lonely and needed one more friend up there with him, so he brought so-and-so home to be with him”. Aside from the theological problems with a statement like that, it does nothing to bring comfort and, generally, people see it for what it is--a detachment from reality. Denial. I believe some understanding of the language of the beatitudes helps clear up the misunderstandings and misinterpretations. The Greek work we see translated as “blessed” in both these passages is the word, makarios. Makarios is a word that describes a state of supreme happiness. It is a declaration of good fortune outside of present circumstances. It is used in the New Testament to describe the reward given to faithful servants who serve their absent masters regardless of when they will return. Makarios is the word used to describe our hope looking forward to the day when God’s glory will be revealed in Titus, chapter 2. When Mary finds out she is the virgin mother-to-be of the Son of God, she goes to visit her relative, Elizabeth. Elizabeth declares, “You are blessed (makarios) because you believed that the Lord would do what he said” (Luke 1:45). I’ve read a couple Jack Reacher novels. They are present day hero books written by Lee Childs. The main character is a former military police officer who travels the country getting in and out of trouble with horrible villains and nasty criminals. The thing I enjoy about the novels is the character, Jack Reacher. Lee Childs says that he created this character to be unstoppable. Jack Reacher is not an emotionally fragile man who’s had his heart broken by life’s cruel fate. He doesn’t struggle with the decision to use his powers for good and not evil and he is not constantly trying to escape his dark past. Instead, Childs wrote a character that is six foot five and weighs about 220 lbs. At one point, Jack Reacher is described as a condom stuffed with walnuts! This guy is huge and strong. He walks around and saves people and the bad guys don’t want to mess with him. He is unafraid because he is usually the biggest guy in the room and he always wins in the end. Now, for some people this would ruin the whole thing. Many of you want to see a hero who struggles...someone who is vulnerable. Someone who loses all day long and then wins the fight in the last round, defying the odds. While I can fully appreciate the suspense and intensity of the underdog story, sometimes, I want to read a book where I know the main character can handle himself and is going to win in the end. I find I can relax a little with the story. I know, no matter how evil the villain is, no matter what kind of predicament the other characters find themselves in, Jack Reacher is going to show up, kick some ass and do the right thing--and he’s not going to have to go to therapy to deal with what he’s done in the name of justice. I read a Jack Reacher novel with a certain level of makarios. I look at the villain in the story with a sort of fascination. I don’t mind if he’s a real bad guy. The badder he is, the worse he’s going to get it in the end. I can fully appreciate the danger and intrigue of each story because I know Reacher isn’t going to back down or fall apart. There is still conflict. There is action and suspense and danger, but it is filtered in my mind through the general promise of what/who will ultimately prevail. In essence, I believe this is the makarios that Jesus refers to in the beatitudes. Jesus paints us a picture of what our view of the world should be as Christians in light of who he is--who God is. Those who are hungry for food, and those who are hungry and thirsty for justice can experience makarios. They don’t need to be in denial and pretend they are not hungry. They don’t need to seek out hunger. They can, however, endure and even thrive in the midst of that circumstance in the knowledge that Jesus will prevail despite how things look now. We can know that, while we are sad now, we will ultimately be comforted by God himself. We may be lied about, falsely accused of evil things, and persecuted for Jesus’ sake, and even in such horrible circumstances, we can experience a level of confidence and expectation in Jesus’ capacity to win in the end. When we embrace the makarios of looking to Jesus outside of our circumstance, we develop an ability to look at our lives with an eternal perspective while still experiencing the realities of what we are going through. We mourn. We cry and grieve and question why things happen and get angry and feel alone. We have no need to deny the weight and gravity of the situation. However, all along, we rely on an understanding of God that sees beyond the present circumstance. We know that Jesus may not change this situation. We know that God did not choose to stop this from happening. We believe, however, that what God does have planned is ultimately worth our trouble, worth moving toward. The endurance does not earn us the blessing. The blessing is the realization that Jesus is with us. We have access to him even when things are bad and, ultimately, things will not always be this way. I hate water fights. I think it is stupid to be dry and clothed and have someone dump water on you or throw a water balloon at you. I try not to be a party to the water fight (on either side). Occasionally, however, I have enjoyed a good water fight. On a hot day, when everyone is in the river or hanging out at the pool, a water fight can be a lot of fun. There is no question in anyone’s mind as to whether they are going to get wet or not. We are dressed for it, looking forward to it. Under those conditions, it makes sense to me to splash and dump water on each other. In fact, I think if you are sitting by the pool at all, you have made a non-verbal commitment to the water fight. I suppose this is similar to the life-view of the Christian. We have come to the pool assuming there will be an epic battle. We are free to enjoy the surprise water attack because we knew that it was probably going to happen when we put on our bathing suit and went to the pool. Jesus tells us that Christians will be poor. Christians will mourn. Christians will long for justice, seek mercy and peace. They will choose to be humble and be humiliated. There will be times when Christians will be victimized and persecuted--not a question of if, but when. Jesus’ promise to us is that we can choose to approach life expecting these things, yet feel somewhat equipped to deal with them because Jesus is ultimately in charge. The pool is for getting wet. Life is meant to be lived and experienced. We are makarios-blessed because we know we have a stake in God’s Kingdom which transcends the limitations of the tangible circumstances of our daily lives. There is great freedom in this understanding and realization for the individual. There is greater healing and comfort to be offered to the world by a community of Christians who learn to leverage their makarios for the benefit of others.

Raise the Roof

One of the things we are doing right now in our CTK story is trying to re-establish the missional small group as the focus of our church life. We gather for worship every other Sunday night where we have established a strict rule of using the time only for the purpose of recognizing God for who he is--worship. Outside of that, we have two missional gatherings (small groups) that meet weekly in homes. The goal of the smaller gatherings is to get into each other's lives and establish reaching out community within Durango. I am attending a group facilitated by my friend Daena on Saturday mornings. It has been a few weeks and we are beginning to get a bit of a rhythm. Some of the neighbors are showing up and there is real potential for growth in terms of people who are not already in our circle. This week, we were talking about the story in the gospels where four friends tear apart the roof and lower their paralyzed buddy in front of Jesus. I've always loved this story because of the idea that the friends made this heroic act of faith and Jesus healed the guy because of them. I always imagine myself tearing at the shingles--willing to do whatever it takes to help my friend. In our discussion, we went through the typical small group questions...Is there anyone you would be willing to help in that way? Do you have friends like that? To be honest, it was a somewhat predictable discussion. The kind of discussion that can either stay easy and superficial, or God can push it through to a new level. The last question that came up was: What about you would warrant your friends lowering you through the roof to get you in front of Jesus? This morning, as I write this out, I am still grappling with this question. It is easy for me to imagine myself as a friend willing to do whatever it takes to help my buddy. It is a little less easy for me to imagine how grateful I would be to friends who took that kind of initiative on my behalf. I have never once in my life thought about what there might be in me that would necessitate my being laid before Christ in that way. I'm not paralyzed. I don't have any outward or obvious ailments that need to be healed. So, what would it be? What about me needs to be healed so badly that my friends (if they knew about it) would snatch me up, carry me to that house on such and such street and tear the roof apart to get me in front of the only person in the universe who could heal me? My first response is that there is nothing. There isn't anything about me that needs to be healed that badly. There are plenty of people who need Jesus' touch more than I do. After all, that's one of the reasons I have chosen to be a leader in the Church, because I want to help the people who need it the most. As I've thought about it, though, I realize that to be willing to help others, I must also be willing to acknowledge that I need help. It is a special brand of arrogance that believes one can help others yet not need saving as well. The worst part of this whole thing is that I know what the answer to this question is, I'm just not sure I'm willing to articulate it. I think most of the struggle for me in this exercise has been trying to come up with something clever to say about what I need to be healed. Maybe some secret sin in my life--there is plenty to choose from and probably some that I could spin in such a way as to motivate a few of my friends to come to my aid. The truth is, most of that is stuff I approach God with daily. On my own, I am able to seek God's forgiveness and guidance and provision for most of what I have going on. The deeper question is, what is there in me that I am somehow not able to bring before God on my own. I know it's there, but I have no way of getting it before him--or maybe it actually requires the communal effort to be exposed and brought to Christ. When I think of it that way, there is one thing that surfaces almost immediately. I suffer from a debilitating condition of feeling completely unloved and unlovable. I don't really have any good reason for this (outside the way I filter and interpret the world around me to support these feelings), but it is real. Some days, this sense that I am not worth loving is so tangible that I freeze up and am unable to complete even the most benign chores. I can become so consumed by this sense of hopelessness at being unworthy that it bars me from extending my love to the people around me who I care about. I have tried to express this to people, but it just sounds silly--even as the words come out of my mouth. "What?!? How can you feel unloved? You're a great guy...you do all these great things...you're so funny...people like you!" It is almost as if each confidant has been handed the same script to read back to me as I try to communicate this sense of feeling so unlovable. I try to seek God out on my own for this, but it is pretty useless for me to try and sort it out in my own head. There are too many thoughts and feelings to unravel on my own. I'm not sure I can articulate it (even here, now) well enough to truly explain it to get help. It just is. I function, for the most part, in spite of it, but it is always there and often surfaces and overwhelms me. I have no real clue what to do with all this! I'm not even sure that's the point of the exercise or this post. The question is, what is there about you that needs to be brought before Jesus--something you are powerless on your own outside the intervention and intercession of loving and faithful friends to deal with. For me, that's it...I often feel like I am not worthy of being loved. I feel like there is nothing redeemable about me and it poisons my perspectives, stunts my growth, and causes me to damage the relationships I do have. The paralytic in the story could not bodily stop his friends from helping once they decided on a course of action. I wonder how often I find ways to sabotage efforts from the people around me to express their love for me. How much of my condition involves keeping friends from being able to help--reinforcing the condition? How much of my motivation to be the helping friend comes from a fear of becoming the helped friend? I can always tell I'm on to something when I end up with more questions than answers!

Some time has passed since I last updated this blog. The Nazarite vow seems like it was so long ago now--a cool experience, to be sure. I think the highlight was having RM (a 24 year old with down's syndrome) shave my head at the end of the vow. I was working for a local organization with adults with disabilities. RM had a blast with the clippers. Some clients laughed, some burst into tears at the sight of my shaved head, and some didn't even notice. I guess that sums up the moment for me too! My goal in doing the vow was to move toward God--check. I wanted to do something for God with no expectation of what he might do in return. It didn't turn my life upside down, I didn't get struck down because there is no temple to truly end the vow in, and I didn't move into the desert and leave my family behind. A year or so later, here are some of the things that have stuck with me:

A real appreciation for simplicity. I sometimes miss only having three shirts to choose from. I liked the space it gave me to think of other things. I have more clothes now, but I have had a couple of "thinning" sessions to get rid of excess in the past year. I can do stuff that requires discipline and commitment. I've never considered myself (or really been considered) a disciplined person. I live a life full of variety and some spontaneity. Doing the vow was a great exercise in committing to something that takes time and following through with it. In the time since the vow, I committed to lose weight and get healthier and have followed through with it in ways I was never able to before. I started riding a bike and commuting (I live ten miles and 1000feet above town-so that's an accomplishment) to town when I can. I feel like I can make commitments and follow through with them. A greater capacity for constant interaction with God. When there is no one else around you growing out their hair for spiritual reasons or sporting the same three outfits on purpose, you don't have a lot of community to fall back on. I learned to talk to God in a more familiar way--less, "Dear God" and more, "Hey, what about that?". The only downside, which wasn't that bad, was seeing just how many a$#holes there are out there who are just looking for someone to put down and curse and badmouth for trying to do something to move toward God. Sometimes the general spirit of condemnation and malevolence among "Christians" can be depressing. Most of my friends outside church circles, on the other hand, seemed to really respect and be into the vow. So, that pretty much sums up the Nazarite portion of my life. I'm hoping to catch up on this blog in the next couple weeks and start sharing/processing some of the other, newer things going on at CTK Durango and in my life in general.

A New Blog

I realize it has been a while since I've posted on this blog. It seems that, for a time, the ease and access of Facebook seemed to take priority over posting on a blog.

That being said, I have actually started a new blog. I have taken a Nazarite vow and chose to use the blog format to journal through the experience for the next six months. If you've followed this blog in the past, you may be interested to look up the new one at www.modernnazarite.blogspot.com

If you're father John trolling the internet to lambaste people with your ridiculous admonitions, go ahead and schedule your liturgical malediction--nothing happened last time, so maybe this time you should dance around naked and cut yourself or something.

River of Lost Souls

When the Spanish came to this area, they named the river they found (obviously not in late August) El Rio De Las Animas Perdidas En Pergatorio--the river of lost souls in purgatory.

This summer, the Animas (as we call it now) earned it's name. At the peak of the season, on a higher than normal water flow, there was a horrible accident on the upper section of our river and a woman died. It was a terrible day for us at the shop and, of course, for our guides and clients on the trip. One of the girls who works in the office had her parents on the trip which made things excrutiating as we waited for news of what happened and who was hurt. Fortunately for my friend, her mother was safe--unfortunately for another family, their mom was gone. In the end, there was nothing that could have been done differently on the trip. There were two EMTs, a nurse, two combat veteran Marines, and an ER doctor on the trip who, collectively, were not able to save her.

While the accident was terrible and it had a profound effect on our entire company and the family involved, it was a moment that I will forever point to as indicative of why I am doing what I am doing in Durango and how I long for CTK to develop and be characterized. Here's why:

1. I was at the shop when we heard that someone had died. No one, in the whole process, who works for that company would have ever thought of calling a church and asking if a pastor would be willing to hang out with them and help them cope with what was happenning. I was there. I was already part of the community. There was a level of trust already established.

2. When the clients and guests finally got back to Durango I was asked to go to the train station to meet with everyone and help people find a place to stay and cope with the immediate realities of what had happened. In the words of one of my co-workers, "If that happened to me I would want pastor Chip to be there"!

3. I was there when my friend (who's mother was on the trip) came down from everything and just needed someone to hug her and tell her it was ok to be relieved her mother was safe even though it meant someone else was grieving a horrible loss.

4. I had dinner with the rest of the clients that night and was able to pray for them and offer help.

5. The Sheriff's office asked me to be their representative in helping the raft company staff deal with the tragedy because of my background as a pastor and the fact that I work for the company and know everyone.

6. Over the next couple weeks following the accident, I had almost every single person involved in the accident as well as the other guides at the shop approach me and ask to talk or bring up questions they had about the whole ordeal. I was asked several times if I would pray for people.

7. When I had a difficult time digesting what had happened I was able to commiserate with my co-workers who understood what I was going through and appreciated the fact that these things affect "preachers" too!

Not one of these things would have happened if I was sitting in my church office that day writing a sermon. Even if someone had called me as a "pastor" to come and help, I would not have had the inroads or time to be able to really connect with any of those kids. I grieve the loss from that accident. I also look to that experience as evidence that, while God doesn't always stop bad things from happenning, he is in the business of redemption. God redeemed the moment by having me in that place at that time in authentic relationship with those people.

If anyone ever asks me why I believe in bi-vocational ministry...if anyone ever asks me why I believe in relational evangelism, this is why.

Prayer Letter

I remember when I was a kid living in South America, we had to send out prayer letters. These letters were designed to let people know what was going on in the mission field. It seems like for my whole childhood we had these letters laying around from other missionaries. I liked them because they often had pictures and the back side was blank which meant I got to draw on them too.

This summer, when the new brochure came out for the rafting company I work for I was pleasantly suprised to see that my mug shows up in their pictures of guides. My first thought was, "this is my prayer letter!" It's a little under cover, but I think it's kind of funny that my prayer letter for the mission I'm on in Durango for the summer is distributed throughout town in various racks for people to pick up at their leisure. So, if you happen to pick one up, pray for me and the time I get to spend with one of my favorite groups of people--raft guides!

The Down Side

I'm discovering that there is a down side to the kind of leader I find in myself. I feel that I have been called to lead in weakness and brokenness those who will not be led by strength and competency. The theory is that there are people who need a leader who has answers--someone who will direct wtih confidence and demonstrate the strength to move forward when no one else can. There are others, however, who have been hurt by over-confident or downright arrogant leadership. These people have experienced pain. They are looking for leaders who will identify with them at the level of their hurt and are suspicious of anyone who seems to have it all together or who has too many easy answers.

The problem with leading out of brokenness is that, sometimes, it is not a philosophical choice of leadership style, but a simple reality of life. I am broken and weak. I have these glaring shortcomings and uncertainties that affect me. I am no scholar. I wish I knew more scripture and spent more time with it. My prayer is often disjointed and scattered and when confronted with these realities, I wonder if I am doing a disservice to the people I have been entrusted to lead. I ask God to send them a new leader--a better one who has some answers--some plan to lead them out of and away from pain.

This is when I come full circle in my thinking. Becoming strong and competent will not make me a better leader to the hurt and broken. It would make me inaccessible and "other". My only option is to lean into Jesus. I have to beg him to reach into the hearts of the people I care so much about. I ask him over and over not to forget them and not to let my weakness keep me from bringing them to his attention.

Maybe, having so little hope in my own ability to compensate for people is not such a bad thing. Maybe, what I need and what I wish for are at odds. I wish that I could be stronger and, therefore, be able to carry the people God has entrusted to me. What I need is to see that these are actually God's people and the reality that I need to trust him to keep and care for them is just that--reality. I wonder if humble and contrite intercession isn't, maybe, the best kind of intercession.

Hmm.

Passion Play

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.

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!

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.