Going to the Deep End

We have come to an important crossroads in our journey. Part of our process in moving to Durango was to raise enough money for Steve and I (and my family, of course) to live on for about a year. We had several reasons for this. The main reason was to allow ourselves some time to establish this church community at its own pace. We didn't want to equate people showing up with a paycheck. Another reason was that it gave a small group of people an opportunity to partner with us in this project. It has been a beautiful thing to see these people continue to pray for us and support us--for me personally it has helped me not feel so lonely in a new place to have such a great network of friends keeping up with us.

We've come to the place now where we will be able to stretch our financial support for another four or five months. Six months into our work here, some amazing things have happened. We are meeting in a restaurant which has worked well for us--in fact, the owner is thinking of remodeling the area we currently rent to be better suited for our group, opening the door for us to lease it on a more permanent basis (think office space and not hauling equipment every week!). About a third of the people worshipping with us on Sunday nights are locals and they have come to the point where they call CTK their church. One of these women has become involved in our budgeting and marketing and another guy is part of our worship team! We have also grown our small groups to the point where more people are in these groups than show up on Sundays (reflecting our high value on small groups). These are just a few of the exciting things that serve to affirm our decision to come to Durango and now our decision to deepen our commitment.

Jenn and I are in the process of selling our house. We bought it this past summer with the understanding that if we needed to, we could sell it and move to a home we could afford without a mortgage. We figure we can cut our living costs substantially by eliminating the house payment. Jenn is also applying for teaching jobs in the junior highs and high school. A job with the school district would give us much more affordable medical benefits as well as a greater earning potential than I am making working part time at minimum wage. If all this comes together, I will be staying at home with the kids and focusing on pastoring while Jenn teaches. Our goal is basically to be able to live on 25%-50% less than we are now. This would allow us to continue our work with CTK as well as keep to our principles in terms of letting our community grow at its own pace.

I am as confident as ever that we are exactly where we should be and it is exciting to see things developing the way they are. We love Durango just as much as we did six months ago, only now it is more about the precious people God has led to us than the mountains and rivers (even though they are still magnificent!). I am incredibly grateful to all the people who have supported us in this endeavor. Your feedback and friendship have strengthened and encouraged us over the last six months. Steve and I are looking forward to visiting California in May to connect with you all and give a better report of what God is doing here.

Jake is Pulling Through

I visited Jake in the hospital yesterday and he was awake and coherent. I think today they will be moving him from ICU into a regular room for a few days. He doesn't remember anything after eating some pizza about a week ago, but he apparently overdosed on something. Continue to pray for him and that we are able to help care for him and communicate Christ's love for him.

Pray for Jake

Jake is one of our friends at Manna Soup Kitchen. Last week, he apparently overdosed and is now in the hospital on life support. He is improving slowly, but they are still keeping him on a breathing machine and unconscious until his body recouperates. Even though the prognosis is favorable, he is in really bad shape and nothing can be guaranteed. Please pray that he heals quickly and is able to regain his strength once they bring him back to consciousness.

Jake is estranged from his family (who live out of state) and only has a couple friends in town. The thought of this guy dying alone with no one to mourn for him breaks my heart. Pray also that our CTK family can support him now and after he is released from the hospital.

We also long to see Jake come into a relationship with Christ--especially because we don't know all the circumstances surrounding his overdose.

Mission.

There is a school of thought that says the more prepared you are, the more God will bless what you do. There is also a line of thinking that believes God's blessing and involvement in an endeavor can be measured in terms of how few "unpredictables" occur.

I don't buy that for a minute.

No sooner had Jesus humbled himself to the point of being baptized than he was tempted to give up his mission and inheritance for food and earthly riches. At the very point that Jesus' ministry was building on the momentum created by John the Baptist, John got his head cut off. When Jesus was confronting the fact that he was about to give up his life, making his way toward the people who hated him most, his friend Lazarus died. He spent three years falling deeply in love with twelve disciples only to have one of them betray him to the cross. Part of Jesus' human life was dealing with the uncontrolllable, the unexpected, and the junk that happens in life. He endured the temptation after fourty days with no food and water. He had to let John die. Lazarus' sisters were angry because they knew he could have healed Lazarus if he'd been there in time (and he could have been there in time). These things must have been incredibly difficult for Jesus--especially when people who didn't understand his love and mission criticized or abandoned him. Since preparedness and lack of "unpredictables" weren't going to herald God's blessing and direction, there must have been something else that Jesus looked to in measuring the success of his mission.

He definitely had a mission. He was there to sacrifice himself for love of people. He was also there to love people--to be the model of how God feels about his most prized creation. His accomplishment in sacrifice and love would mean redemption of sin and the establishment of his church that would continue his mission to the world. There were some prophecies to be fulfilled and, at times, Jesus seemed to be very directed and intentional--but he talked too much about his obedience to the Father for me to believe that he knew where he was headed every step of the way. I think there were times when he was just going--unwavering in his mission, but not clear on where it would take him at that moment. For me this gives great meaning to his ministry. There is such beauty in his spontaneity with the woman at the well--incredible depth in the time he spends thinking and writing in the dirt with the woman caught in adultery--wonderful intimacy in dealing with the woman who touched his robe as he walked through the crowd. At times, I wonder if Jesus' understanding of his movement toward his mission had more to do with looking back than knowing where he was headed next.

This is, perhaps, the point where I most identify with Christ. To be where we are--doing what we are doing is nothing short of God's direction and mission for us. I could not have devised a plan to move to a little town in the mountains where it snows for months on end. I wouldn't have elected myself as the leader of a tiny community of believers in a church that can barely afford the cost of renting the back room in a restaurant. But I know my mission. I know full well that God has called me to sacrifice myself for his church. I have been raised to shepherd people to places where they can serve the hurt and broken-hearted--sacrificing themsleves on behalf of this great love God has extended to us. I never imagined that answering that call would lead me here, but I can't measure my pursuit of God's leading by making sense of circumstances and I can see things coming on the horizon that will not make sense in conventional terms. I can only assume they are part of God's plan that I cannot see because when I look back on our journey so far, I see some amazing things God has done in the midst of experiences I didn't understand or plan for.

God give me the ability to respond to the path you have chosen the way Jesus did--with spontaneity, depth, thoughtfulness, and intimacy. Make us bold and relentless as we pursue your mission in spite of circumstances.

Moving Forward

This is a big week in the life of CTK Durango. This week (or next week) we are kicking off our new small groups. Each group is different. We have a group of married couples, a group of women, a group of 20-somethings studying Ecclesiastes, and a group that simply describes themselves as sinners! As these groups start up, we will be arriving at something I've been interested to see--we will have more people meeting in small groups than we have attending Sunday services. This is interesting to me. I'm curious to see if the people who don't attend Sundays will start coming or not. Many of the people joining the groups are people who would not necessarily visit a church, but are willing to meet in someone's living room. Personally, as much as I would like to have people showing up on Sundays to worship with us, I my preference is that they be in small groups.

I'm anxious to see how the groups develop. I'm also excited to see what the experience of leading a group will be like for some of the people who are taking a real step of faith to be facilitators. Mostly, I'm looking forward to seeing how God transforms people's lives through the relationships that develop in each of these unique groups. Pray for us!

Top 25 Most Innovative Churches

Outreach Magazine recently made their list of the top 25 most innovative churces in America. CTK made the list at number 22. It is pretty amazing to see us listed with communities like Erwin McManus' Mosaic and Rob Bell's Mars Hill. In the article, CTK earns its spot in the top 25 because of the fact that we are a church made up of small groups. This reality has got to be my favorite thing about CTK. Small groups are not a program or an element of what we do, it IS what we do. Our entire goal is to lead people into deeper relationship with Christ in the small group context where I believe spiritual growth happens best.

Our three focuses/values at CTK are Worship, Small Groups, and Outreach. With the exception of our weekly worship services, all of these things are designed to happen in people's living rooms and in coffee shops outside of church buildings--or in our case Pickles Restaurant!

Here's the link if you're interested: http://outreachmagazine.com/Library/features/JF07ftrMostInnovativeChurch.asp

A CTK Christmas

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

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

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

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

Go Ahead, Treat Me Like Garbage

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

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

My Friends On The Hill

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

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

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

The Hansel and Gretel School of Outreach

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

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