Job Interview

I have to say, as much as I believe in working outside the church whenever possible, it has been a rough transition back into the world of counting hours and getting paid by them! $9 an hour just doesn't go as far as it did in college (I was going to say high school, but that was $5.75 an hour).

This morning I'm going to the Durango Mountain Resort Job Fair. The ski resort, formerly known as Purgatory, is one of the largest employers in the area for the winter. The good news is I would be working with a lot of local people and get to snowboard for free all winter. The downside would be the drive (25 miles) and that it probably won't be paying much.

If you would have pulled me aside 10 years ago at Pacific Wave Surf Shop where I was folding t-shirts and selling surfboards and told me that in '06 I would be applying for a job at a ski resort I would have slapped a PW sticker on you back while I laughed you out the door! I love to see God's story unfolding in the most unlikely of places, and yet, it all seems to connect somehow.

I'll keep you posted on the results--I'm guessing I shouldn't wear a tie to the interviews, but there's that little part of me that still wonders!

Speechless

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about my love/hate relationship with transportation. A lot has happened since then. After coasting my Jeep the four miles down the hill to my mechanic (he's mine in the sense that I've invested enough money into his shop that I feel some ownership), we decided it was time to sell off my beloved machine and try to replace it with something that would tempt me less to drive over rocks. It was a difficult decision, but a wise one, so I solemnly made up some For Sale signs for the windows. After two agonizing days of driving around with the For Sale signs, we got some incredible news. Someone who was aware of our transportation calamities had given us an extravagant and generous gift. The only stipulation that came with the money was that we buy a NEW car...we were happy to oblige! After hours of research, I think we found the only car in America that we could drive away for the amount of money we had. We are now the proud owners of a Suzuki SX-4! Imagine a large egg with four doors and all-wheel drive. It's a great little car that fits our family and will have no trouble making road trips and driving in snow. The best part is Jenn is driving the Suzuki, so I get to keep my Jeep!

We are incredibly thankful to God (and our anonymous donor) for taking such good care of us and answering the many prayers grunted out from under cars on wet pavement!


The world is as it should be.

We Relish Your Worship!

Well, we just finished our first meeting at Pickles Restaurant! It was great to meet in town. I'm not sure why, but it just felt more real to me. I think Pickles is going to work out well for us. We may not fit for as long as I'd like, but they were pretty accommodating for us.

We had a few visitors, which was exciting as well. It is so cool to see people starting to show up. I can't wait for more people to be able to experience what we have been living out these last several months.

Church as it should be

Sunday night, we celebrated our last living room church service! Starting this weekend (Oct. 22nd) we will be meeting at Pickles Restaurant in town. We decided to have a BBQ to make things more festive (and because Joe Daniels makes the best pork chops in the world). The whole evening was fantastic. Joe came over early with his son and a friend of his. I sat in the back yard with this guy while he smoked a couple cigarettes talking about fishing and churches that meet in living rooms. Our whole group was there, milling around the house, kids running rampant, eating, laughing and generally enjoying themselves. My favorite moment was sitting next to my neighbor, Dana--each of us with a pork chop in one hand and a beer in the other--when it dawned on him that he was at church. "What kind of church did you say this was?" I will never get tired of answering that question! There really is nothing as inspiring or worshipful to me as hanging out with a group of friends, eating a good meal, talking about what God has done, and worshipping together. It didn't feel like "Christian" fun, either--you know, where you get the feeling that this BBQ is the most exciting thing anyone has done outside the Fellowship Hall in years and people use words like "fellowship" and the men and women don't sit next to eachother. We are not a polished group of people. There are some tough things going on in the lives of my friends (two people had actually got into car accidents on the way to our house!)--but we all know about it. We talk about it, and help eachother--we have hugs and crying at our BBQs to go with the laughter. Toward the end of the evening, I overheard the smoking kid from the beginning of the evening trying to articulate to Joe how he couldn't help but sing along with worship--he couldn't find the words to describe the fact that he had just worshipped the God of the universe for the first time in his life!

Pickles will be fun--a good place to meet that will seat more people than my living room. I only hope we are able to maintain that sense of family and worship I felt so intensely on Sunday night. I am literally desperate for more messed up people in this town to find us out so they can experience what we are so blessed to live with.

Come On Over To My Place

There is some news for us Durangatans with CTK...we are deep in the throes of trying to find a place to meet. I believe it will add credibility and legitimacy to our gatherings if we are able to invite people to a neutral place for worship. Inviting a friend to my house for a BBQ or a small group isn't that big a deal, but somehow telling someone about our worship services and then inviting them to my living room doesn't go over as well.

I've held off on talking about this because we've hit some snags in several places and I keep celebrating finding a new place and then having to take it back when it falls through. At first, we thought we might meet in the Community Rec Center, but it turns out there are already two churches meeting there and I didn't want to create the first church shopping mall. Then, we tried for a movie theatre in town, but they didn't want to rent to us because of cleaning issues from the bands that play on Saturday nights (yes, we offered to be the cleaning crew). An elemetary school gym became available, but after we went through the whole process there, we discovered an unwritten, but non-negotiable rule banning food and signage.

Where we stand now is my favorite place so far, but hard to explain why. I'm working with the owner of a local resaurant who seems willing to rent us a back room that could easily fit 30 people. It is a place I've been going frequently to study because there is hardly ever anyone there. The name of the restaurant is Pickles--they relish your business. I love this place because it is right on the main drag in town--every person in Durango (or who has driven through Durango) knows where this place is, however, very few people have been inside. It's sort of a "Denny's" type place, and with all the fantastic resaurants in town, it tends to passed over in favor of more stylish places.

I'm really hoping things work out at Pickles. I don't know if it's an underdog thing, or the humor of telling people to meet me at a place called, Pickles, but I think it would be great to meet there. So, as a matter of prayer, I submit our search for a place to worship...Pickles or no Pickles!

My Love/Hate Relationship...

I love cars. I am completely infatuated with anything that has wheels...not just Ford or Chevy, but everything. A pile of rusted parts on the side of the road is a "classic with potential" in my eyes. So how can it be that a man who deeply loves all things transportation can be in such a constant state of crisis with his vehicles? This doesn't have much to do with our ministry here, except that it proves to be quite a frustrating distration from the task at hand. I'm searching for wisdom on how to solve these problems--especially since they illustrate a principle of balancing/coping with the mundane of life while attempting to dedicate one's existence to something much higher in value and eternal implications.

I have dreams of bringing Christ to people--sharing the hope I have and the vision for God's church I've received. I find myself in the role of leader. My heart is bent on bringing people together in their own circles of influence for the cause of Christ. However, I get this horrible "cut off at the knees" feeling when the greatest obstacle between me and my mission seems to be physically getting the six miles down the hill into town! It has begun to represent to me the paradox of serving a Spirit-God from the confines of the material world. The positive points: I am compelled to be creative, I am forced to look to God for answers to seemingly impossible dilemmas, at every point of provision I experience profound gratitude. The downside: I can't get to town!!! I feel like I'm spending valuable time/energy under a car that has no hope of salvation and only promises to break at the next weak link as soon as I get it back on the road. I am finding it impossible to live on a tight financial budget with the costly repairs.

In conclusion, I feel that all I can do is trust that God has a greater plan for me than isolated shadetree mechanic. I have to submit to the process of allowing God to work in and through me in the midst of the mundane (and enfuriating). I will take the required time prostrate on the pavement scratching my head and express my gratitude to God when yet another solution presents itself. I will ask God to speak through me in spite of the fact that I had to get dropped off at the coffee shop an hour early or ten minutes late with grease under my finger nails and leaves stuck in the back of my hair. I will accept the reality that God does not require these things to fit my standards of order to accomplish what he has in mind on his schedule.

However, it IS raining outside and I still have to crawl under a car! *%^$#*@#!

Sweet Resolution

I've mentioned earlier about the name controversy for CTK. It was difficult for some of the members at CTK Lutheran church to embrace the idea of a CTK Community church moving into Durango. I got calls from several people--my favorite was a woman who said it was a fire hazard to have two churches with the same name because the fire department might not know which place to go to in an emergency.

I called and left a message with the pastor of CTK Lutheran asking if he would be willing to meet with me sometime. Long story short, I went in this week and sat down with Pastor John. The man I met could quite possibly be one of the most gracious and authentic people I have ever met. He was not only supportive of our endeavor, but affirming of our calling and quite willing to share the name. I was impressed with his heart and focus in Durango and imagine that he will be a real resource to us as we begin our work here.

I want to thank those of you who were praying about this specific situation. I am pleased and humbled to see that a situation I thought would be characterized by fear and a "scarcity" mentality was met with grace and generosity. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with God's capacity to do things in ways I could never imagine--especially since, in the words of Han Solo, "I can imagine quite a bit".

One person showed up--so, why am I smiling?

I had lunch with Dave Browning, the founder of CTK who is visiting us. We had a conversation about perspective and attitude when it comes to ministry. One way of leading in ministry is to hedge your bets. In this leadership method, you try to anticipate the story God is developing and smooth the road as much as possible by forseeing every contingency or potential interruption and dealing with it ahead of time. I come from a bet-hedging background. I feel immense pressure to anticipate problems and deal with them before they ever become an issue. My natural tendancy is to deal with things as they come--unfortunately I've become convinced that that is the wrong and borderline lazy way of doing business.

Dave and I talked about approaching things differently--his point was that maybe we should allow God's story to unfold as we participate and respond as opposed to trying to "steer" history toward what we guess God is doing. I found this conversation profoundly fascinating and curiously validating. Not only was it validating, but a concept-come-to-life within hours.

I talked to Vi on the phone about a week ago. She was the one person who answered our CTK ad in the paper who wasn't upset about our name. Instead, we had a lengthy (and fairly one-sided) conversation about everything from how political a church should be to why the NIV Bible translation is evil. She promised to be at our information meeting so she could deliver an article on the evils of NIV, but I half hoped she wouldn't show. I never thought (even with all the potential tragic contingencies that kept me up all night all week) that she would be the one and only person to show up to our information meeting last night.

I knew it was her the minute she walked in the door. She had that look of "I'm coming to a meeting, but I have a mission" on her face. She walked directly up to Dave Browning (I guess he looked more like a pastor than anyone in the room) and introduced herself. When all was said and done, without question, we had ourselves an information meeting last night! It was CTK Durango, however, that was being informed. We decided to forego the planned presentation and the ten of us (our team and Vi) sat in a circle.

On the surface, Vi is an abrupt and fairly abrasive person. She talked a lot about all the evil in town and how she hasn't been able to get the church involved. Her vocabulary and methods were what I would expect from a narrow-minded conservative Christian. As we talked, however, I began to realize that Vi has a heart of gold. Better than that, she authentically loves people--all people. When I asked her what she thought should be done with regards to the people she was mentioning (mostly homosexuals and drug dealers), her response was that we should love them, care for them, and most importantly pray for them. My assessment of Vi is that she has Christ's heart for the lost, but all her vocabulary and equipment is all wrong. I came away from last night's meeting with clearer insight and vision for the direction of our church.

We were suspicious from the beginning that information meetings and newspaper ads might not be the best way to bring CTK to the light in Durango. This is a small town driven by word of mouth and a "show me who you are, don't tell me" attitude. I have a feeling it will be the slower (by my preference) relational path to church growth for CTK Durango. In the mean time, I got a kick out of Vi and every person on our team agrees we were exactly where God intended us to be.

A Big Night

Tonight is our first informational meeting for CTK Durango! I am really excited about this moment, even though I have no idea what to expect. I don't know if a ton of people will show up or none--I have plenty of coffee and pens, though! I'm mostly looking forward to an opportunity to communicate our vision for communicating God's good news to people in Durango. I desperately want people in this town to see our heart. I'm anxious to get past name trauma, arguing about what version of the Bible we use, and tracking down sound systems. I cannot wait to see small groups begin to grow and hear stories of people who have been unable to worship God for whatever internal or external reasons and find their place in our community. I'm confident all these things will happen--we just have to get through tonight first!

We've come to this point with interesting opposition. I don't know what to label spiritual opposition or simply life as usual, but it's been an interesting week. Within one 24 hour period this week Jenn's car broke down with a cracked head (the one we just bought three weeks ago to replace the Suburban that broke down three weeks before that), I bought some expensive software that didn't work on my computer and can't be returned, people were telling me I couldn't call the church Christ the King, and Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter) died--not to mention anxiety about tonight's meeting and our difficulties finding a permanent place to meet for church stewing in the back of my mind! Looking at these calamities from this distance, they don't seem unmanageable, but let me tell you, it was heavy load to bear in the moment.

My goal right now is to try and focus all this energy toward being authentic and clear at this meeting tonight. This is what we came to do and it will play itself out one way or another.

Some things I'm excited about this coming week are a couple of meetings with local pastors (no, the CTK Lutheran pastor has not called me back yet) who I've met along the way. One of them is Joe Beckler who was key in our process of moving here--very encouraging and enthusiastic about the potential for ministry in Durango. I am hoping these meetings will be the beginning of solid "other pastor-type" relationships that I am really missing right now.

What's in a name?

Friday is on the horizon--newspaper ads have been published, I have boxes of coffe mugs in my hallway, our plan has been set--we are anxiously awaiting our opportunity to introduce our new community to Durango. The phone calls and emails are starting to come in...one problem, though...the phone calls and emails I'm receiving are not curious locals, but patrons of another church. Apparently, there is another Christ the King Church in Durango--a Lutheran church. They have been around for 42 years and have built a good reputation as a place of worship as well as making their facility available to the public. I noticed this church in the phone book a year ago and (perhaps naively) decided it would not be that big of a deal--since, we are part of an organization, we don't have a lot of choice in the name selection. If we were operating on our own, I would be more inclined to try and choose a different name for the sake of distinquishing oursleves, but the nature of our organization is that we are a campus (albeit several states away) of Christ the King Community Church in Washington.

The people I have talked to seem nice enough, but extremely concerned that our presence might be confusing to the people of Durango. My initial thoughts are these:

1. I'm pretty sure someone looking for a Lutheran church will find CTK Lutheran church easily in the phone book and be able to distinguish between it and CTK Community church.

2. Someone looking for a facility to rent called Christ the King will find the correct address since we will most likely never have a facility of our own and CTK Lutheran does.

3. I am confident that our basic mode of operation--worship, small groups, and service will not tarnish the reputation of any church--if anything it will enhance the standing of all churches in Durango to have a community of people pouring their lives into any cause which promotes and serves Durango.

4. Reversing roles in my head, if I were to notice a church start up with the name Christ the King I would, in fact, be interested to see that they were interested in "keeping the main the the main thing" in terms of their faith and mission--that settled, I would want to welcome and promote them as much as possible, not pressure them to change their name.

Something I may regret in this process: as naive as I am, I wonder if I still should have forseen this and contacted the pastor of the Lutheran church before hand to, at least, explain who we are and possibly forgoe some of this awkwardness. I plan to contact him now, anyway--I just hope it doesn't amount to too much too late in his/his congregation's eyes.

My worst nightmare is that this would become such an obstacle to our counterparts in Durango that a God-seeking and upstanding church becomes distracted from their mission (one we share, by the way) by the likes of us.

Time will tell. My goal at this point is to do whatever I can to guide this small community of believers in such a way so as to please and delight Christ the King--oh, and Christ the King Lutheran too.