Advice for Pastors, Bi-vocational and Otherwise, on Sustainable Life

An issue that comes up often among pastors who want to work in a simple/organic/house church mode is the need to be bi-vocational.  That is, since you're unlikely to get enough income (let alone health insurance) from your pastoring work, you need a second (or third) job to cover that.  This immediately leads to questions about how to manage it all and have some kind of sustainable life, all the more so if you have a family to tend as well.  Maybe it's no surprise, but the struggle for a sustainable life is a major challenge for full time professional clergy as well.  The depression statistics suggest it's a struggle we aren't managing well.

I came across a conversation on this topic back in November '09 that had more frankness and transparency than usual.  But perhaps the best post just showed up there the other day and I wanted to share it with you here.  I commend to you, and to myself, the wisdom and experience of bi-vocational pastor and church-planter Mark Woodruff:

Tim

MARK W. WOODRUFF, MD SAID...

25

I was cleaning up old email and this was sent to me by a church planting friend who has planted 4 churches in 2 countries over the last 20 years.

I myself finished my medical training in 1989 having been an elder and assistant pastor and built a church planting team in parallel from 1981-89. We moved to Omaha, NE where I started working full time as a doctor and quickly began to church plant. After 3 years in the Air Force we had established a leadership team(3 elders but unfortunately only me as pastor)and I moved to working part time in medicine(ED shifts, usually 2 12 hr shifts a week, including some nights).

Over the subsequent decade I continued this bivocational lifestyle while my children went from ages 11/7/5 to 21/17/15. The benefits of the ED were short hours but the disadvantages were increased stress and shift work.

At that point I had to make a change in my medical career and joined and subsequently bought into a medical practice. As that practice built it became increasingly obvious that I could not do a 60+ hour a week job and continue to pastor a church of about 75 people. After a 3 month sabbatical during which I sought the Lord I turned the church over to the other two elders and became “pastor emeritus”.

Here’s is what I learned about bivocational ministry:

1. You must be truly part time in both(or all 3 in your case): you can’t expect to work 80 hrs a week at 2 full time jobs, maintain your health and build your family(which is your primary calling/ministry in this life stage);

2. You must have a Sabbath!!!!!!! God established the Sabbath, and we neglect it at our own peril. I don’t know how to put this any stronger: I believe this is the primary cause of burnout, not working too many hours or church problems or anything else. That day must be a day refreshment, deep communion with God and rejuvenation(see Bill Hybels’ sermon tape: “Gifts, Gauges and Playing Games” about maintaining/filling your emotional tank; on my best days I would play some golf, read, nap, study just for the sake of studying, not sermon prep; also write, journal, ponder, think, fellowship with my wife and children, and share my heart with them; but I was not faithful to this, especially after I went back into family medicine and a full time job;

3. You must fight ministry maintenance at every turn; the benefit of newer church models is less maintenance, but you still have to delegate; you should never be doing cleanup,not because its beneath you but because others can do it and they can’t do what you are supposed to be dong when you are doing it!

4. You have to avoid the Superman syndrome–”I’ll do it”; think rigorously about whether “it” is in your calling/role/job description;

5. You must have as clear a delineation of your role/responsibilities as possible; I believe there are 3 primary leadership responsibilities in the church: a. vision casting and mission progression(seeing, articulating the vision and moving people to pursue it), b. pastoral care of the people, c. outreach leadership(leading others as they outreach, serve, care for and incorporate new lives into the Body of Christ). Discipleship is involved in the last two. If you have a 40 hour a week job(s) you will be lucky to do one of those well; at 20 hours a week you can probably do 2; to do all 3 you have to be fulltime(and it makes much more sense to split these tasks 2 or 3 ways anyway–there is quantitative research out of Fuller that shows 2 planters working half time will be more effective than one working fulltime); of note, anything not directly included in the above 3 is the responsibility of the deaconate, leading the people in doing he work of the church; also of note, much of this doesn’t fit the American culture nor the American church model;

6. You must have a pastor’s heart, particularly toward your wife and children; you don’t have to pastor(provide pastoral care) for the church, but you must have a pastor’s heart toward them, or you become a hireling; you must actually pastor your family, and given your busy schedule and your lifestyle, I recommend you be intentional in this(my wife used to sit down for an evening 2-3 times a year, discuss our children individually, talk about our vision for them, and write down a goal for each of them in the following three areas: body, soul and spirit; doing this for them at a young age when its easier incorporated it into our thinking when they were older, so it became almost automatic;

7. You must live a fairly spartan lifestyle; the amount of discipline in terms of exercise, rest, healthy eating(not gaining weight over time)does not leave a lot of time for secular pursuits(TV, following college/pro sports, hobbies–except as it relates to #2 above). One of my mistakes was thinking I “deserved” to watch football on Sunday afternoons(and Monday nights, and Saturday afternoons, etc) because I had “worked so hard”; this is unfair but an elite athlete gives up a lot of things his friends do because he’s “in training”; you are perpetually “in training”;

8. You must have focused one on one time with your wife, where you can shut out the other aspects of your life and focus on her; I recommend a 3 day weekend every quarter if possible; if you can’t afford to go anywhere, see if someone will take your kids(individually or corporately, you can return the favor) and see if anyone you know has a lodge/cabin/vacation home you could use for a weekend; don’t hesitate to talk to faithful pastors of larger churches who may be aware of this kind of thing and will be willing to share it with you;

9. You must have your own pastor/mentor; whether this is someone local with whom you develop an intimate relationship, or a denominational leader(if you are part of one) or another pastor who is translocal, you must have someone with whom you can be transparent, and it can’t be your copastor(s);

10. You must have plenty of grace for yourself and your limitations and the limitations of your lifestyle; God gives grace for your calling, but that grace is for you doing it in your weakness, not in perfection(ism).

These are the lessons I learned over more than 20 years of bivocational ministry.

I am not a prophet, but I do believe that full time paid ministry will ultimately disappear; it may hold on for a long time in the US, but it is already not part of the picture in much of the rest of the world; the American Church model of the 20th century is not sustainable in the 21st, for a variety of reasons.

"Greenhouse" Organic Church Workshop offered in Minneapolis, March 2011

If you are interested in the simple/organic/house church movement and live in or around the Twin Cities there's an excellent opportunity coming up quickly for you.  Church Multiplication Associates is holding a Greenhouse Training March 18-20 in Minneapolis. It's a Friday evening, Saturday morning and afternoon, and Sunday afternoon.  

What's a Greenhouse?

In a nutshell, a Greenhouse training does two things:

• Helps participants to reground their thinking about Church in "organic" terms as a simple, living organism that readily grows and reproduces. Much of the time at the training is spent exploring how that looks in practice, both as outreach and as discipling believers.
  
• Invites participants to follow up on the training by gathering monthly through the following year for encouragement and supportive accountability as they begin to pursue this kind of "missional living" in the context of natural relationships.

I attended a Greenhouse some time ago and highly recommend it from that experience. The cost ranges from $110 to $150. It's worth it.

For more specific information, contact my friend Katie Driver who is the local coordinator and will be one of the presenters.  You can register here.  For more of my thoughts and opinions about it, read on.

Although the Greenhouse training has good content in several areas, that's not the main reason I suggest you go. Frankly, good content isn't that hard to find these days and you can buy a lot of books for the price of this registration. What makes this worthwhile is that it pulls together three things that I think are key to Kingdom work - whether you're talking evangelism, discipleship or social ministry for that matter:

Simplicity.  Lots has been written about simplicity.  That's ironic, that is. Simplicity is vital for something to be easily transmitted and replicated. That goes for churches as well as viruses. The Greenhouse training works with a very simple expression of church, simple in both written and in human forms. That's good.

Substantive Relationships.  Relationships where people feel safe enough to get below the surface of life are foundational, both for people to come to faith and for believers to mature in faith. This is one reason why conventional congregations struggle so much under the burden of maintaining a weekly large group gathering that inherently can't facilitate those kind of relationships. The Greenhouse training focuses on equipping people for exploring faith together in groups of 2 to 4 as normative. It offers one simple tool for people to use in self-facilitating such groups, but only as an example or as one resource they recommend.

Intentionality.  This truly is the linchpin. Even mediocre ideas that actually get implemented will probably show more results than great ideas that are left on the shelf. I think the Greenhouse folks know this, which is why the real goal of the training is not simply to deliver good content to people. It's to lay a foundation for the formation of supportive accountability groups. (That's my term. They call them Greenhouse Monthly Gatherings which sounds much more fun and friendly and is probably a better term for that reason.) At the end of the training, they invite those who are interested to begin meeting monthly to encourage each other as they work to live out what they have learned. And note how the monthly meeting is not the main event. Rather, it plays a supportive role to the weekly gatherings of people in groups of 2-4, most of whom have not had the Greenhouse training. That's the kind of flip-the-pyramid strategy that sent me off to learn about house churches in the first place, two years ago.

This is good stuff and these are good people. If you can get to a Greenhouse I think you'll be glad you went.

Navigating the Asteroid Field: Spiritual Growth Practice

One metaphor I keep returning to in my thinking about how to pursue the life of faith with intentionality is the asteroid field.  I haven't yet written about it here. but did bring it up recently over on Felicity Dale's Blog.  The topic there had to do with the tension between tending internal relationships vs. outreach to others, but that raised the question of whether there is a regular "sequence" to these things or not.  (E.g. "FIRST we get close, THEN we can reach out to others.")  In that context I dropped in my thought about navigating in the absence of a stable sequence or pathway.  I think it applies both to groups and individuals.  At any rate, here's the comment from that conversation which will at least introduce the metaphor for us here.

The critique of "sequentialism" resonated with me. It's like the traditional way of navigating where you have a map and a route and just go step by step. But that only works if the terrain stays put! These days I think navigating as a faith community is more like flying your moving spaceship through a field of randomly drifting asteroids. There is no "path," and if you start trying to chart one the asteroids will have moved before you get it finished so it's obsolete before it's done. Navigating in this environment is, I think, done by quick orientation followed by incremental movement, then repeat. And orientation means knowing what's right next to you as well as where you ultimately are trying to go.

In practice, I think that calls for the listening to God and each other that others have mentioned. We Refresh our awareness of where we are and where we are going, then Respond. So the path forward isn't laid out in advance as a sequence A to B to C to D etc. Rather, the sequence is replaced by a discipline: "(Refresh, Respond) Repeat."

I think, if we do that, then the original question about community vs. mission gets answered over and over as God leads.

Thoughts on an (R,R)R practice for faith life?  I'd love to hear them.

Visual Census Data

Interested in race, income, education, and housing diversity in the US or your local community?  Check out this fascinating, interactive map based on census data.

Community Pot Luck Accountability Experiment

Back in September I launched a little experiment in supportive accountability with some friends.  The idea was very simple: gather once a month for three months for a pot luck dinner, followed by a conversation.  The conversation was an opportunity for people participating to share some goals for their family faith life for the month, then report back at the next gathering.  I knew that was something I was wanting for my own family life so I was hopeful some others would want to give it a try as well.  I invited three other families, friends of ours with children around the same age as our daughters, and they all three signed on!  Woo-hoo!

Well, we finished our 3-month a couple weeks ago and will be re-upping for another round shortly which is a good sign.  And this time we're going to look for ways to gently lean our conversations towards more depth.  It's not like we were talking about the weather before, but it was clear that we were all drawn to the deeper sharing when it came about.  So rather than just let that happen whenever, we'll be looking for ways to nudge ourselves that direction without locking into anything rigid.  One idea that's been floated is to view the conversation time as a pot-luck too.  There's still an element of unstructured freedom at the core, but we would come to it "bringing something that we have prepared," be that a prayer, a question, a song or a thought.

This simple no-pressure accountability scheme of our first round really helped me to move on some of the things I've wanted to do, but never quite got started.  The simple presence of a kind of "due by date" on the calendar got me to follow through on my desire to have a monthly service project of some sort as a family. That part worked well.

Another part didn't work as well, and that turned out to be very instructive.  I kept setting a goal for having one or two intentional faith conversations per week with my daughters - to talk about different ways to pray for example - and those conversations just weren't happening.  And of course, by the end of the month it was too late to "catch up" before the pot luck!  (After all, what's a deadline for if you can't cram everything in just before it hits?)  So I changed the goal.  Rather than a goal to have conversations, I made the goal to set target dates for the conversations.  And the key here was to link the scheduling task itself to a fairly stable weekly event which we had in place around the Monday grocery shopping run.  So it went like this: once a week when my wife and I sat down to figure out the family schedule (who's home which nights; who's cooking what for dinner...) we also looked for two days per week to have a conversation, typically at dinner.  The goal was simply to plan which days we were going to shoot for having the conversations.  If they actually happened, that would be good too but the main thing was to have them in sight - it was what we needed to move our desire into a specific intention.

Well, it worked pretty well!  Most weeks now we are having these conversations on purpose with the girls and that's been a real treat.  And I've learned some good points about intentionality and the value of building off of existing schedule patterns.  But I probably wouldn't have gotten that worked out if not for trying and failing and reporting on it for three months in a row.

It's just a pot luck and a conversation, but it makes a difference.

Twin Cities House Church Coalition

David Brown

I recently met David Brown, a UMC Pastor who has launched "A coalition of house churches across the Twin Cities living in the way of Jesus" called STORM Faith Community.  At some point I'd like to post a little profile/interview with him here but for now I suggest you visit his website if you are interested in House Church groups in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul Area.

I would add though, that this is one of only a couple of cases I know of where a mainline denomination is actually investing in a home-based faith community as a missional strategy.  (If you know of others please let me know!)  The proof of that pudding is that STORM only gathers for large group worship monthly.  That may sound familiar if you've been reading my blog from the beginning since that pattern was part of my very first musings:

I began to wonder… what would it do for the life of the people if they met weekly in small groups, and then monthly, perhaps even quarterly for a rip-roarin’ pull-out-the-stops large group, corporate worship celebration? I thought about the possibilities for spiritual growth and evangelism. I thought about the time and the money it would release. I thought about the amazing celebrations we could do if we had a month or more to prepare for each one. I thought about the enormous decrease in the facilities needed. Then I realized, there is a name for the kind of congregational life where the small group is the main thing instead of an extra thing.

It’s called the house church.

Blessings, Dave.  May your house increase!

Felicity Dale: House Church Going "Mainstream?"

Felicity Dale

Tony and Felicity Dale are prominent voices in the House Church community in the US, and good folks in general I've had the pleasure to meet and talk with several times.  In fact, their annual House2House conference was my first substantive introduction to HC, back in 2006.  So Felicity's blog is one I follow routinely.  Her most recent post, copied below, gives a nice snapshot of their early involvement in House Church in the UK, but more importantly provides a look into where the movement is at now in the States.

Note how her choice of "Option 3" at the end reveals a lack of competitive or us vs. them spirit.  I'm pleased to say that I have found that to be common among the HC folks I've encountered.  Also, if you go to her post and look at the comments, you'll see some good discussion around the poll numbers re. HC involvement.

If you want to keep an ear to the ground on HC developments, Felicity's blog is a good place to go.

TT

How do we respond when our radical thinking becomes mainstream?

This post is a follow up on trend number 4 from the last post, that we will see an increasing acceptance of simple/organic church principles across the legacy church spectrum.

Back in the UK, in the 1970s and 80's, we were involved in what was then known as the "British House Church Movement."  It was a heady, exciting time taking place against the backdrop of the charismatic renewal that swept much of the world, and it transformed the church landscape of the UK.   Although it became a megachurch movement because we did not have a theology of multiplying the small, for its day it was a radical, forward-thinking movement embodying many of the principles we now hold dear--things like non-religious Christianity, every member participation etc.  We reckon that about one third of British evangelicalism was transformed by that move of God over the next decade or so.

Fast forward a few years to 1996.  We are now in the States, having gone through 9 years of God's favorite training school on the backside of the desert, and God starts speaking to us after 9 years of silence.  The first thing he says is,"You'll be a part of a move of my Spirit again."  The implications of this as we asked the Lord about it is that we would see a  move of the Spirit that would have a similar impact on the church landscape of America.

When the simple/organic movement began to gain momentum a few years ago, it was generally dismissed as, at best, irrelevant.  We were the radicals, the minority with some crazy ideas.  We never dreamt that these ideas would become mainstream. But this is happening right in front of our eyes!  For example, Austin Stone, one of the 100 fastest growing churches in the country, is a megachurch here in Austin.  Earlier this year they held a conference called Verge.  It was sold out within a few short weeks.  Around 2,000 people attended, almost all from mega- and legacy churches, with more than 4,000 joining online.  What is interesting is that the majority of the speakers were simple/organic/house church proponents--people like Neil Cole, David Watson, David Garrison, George Patterson, Alan Hirsch.  They spoke about missional communities, Luke 10 principles and church planting movements.  This coming year, Verge is joining with Exponential for the largest church planters conference in the country and the theme will be similar.

Not only that, Austin Stone actively encourages their people to start missional communities with unbelievers, not insisting that those people and those they reach, come back to the mother church. Maybe because of this relaxed approach, most choose to stay in close relationship with them.  Here in Austin, several of the mega churches are actively seeking to reach out with the missional community approach.  They recognize it as the only way to effectively touch every part of society.

The Lord has given Joel Hunter, the senior pastor of Northland: A Church Distributed, in Orlando, a new task.  They are to facilitate the start of 1 million house churches around the world.  In typical Northland fashion, they are doing this by partnering with other groups who are more directly involved in missions or house churches, and they seek no credit for their part in what is created.

Like it or not,  (and personally I am very excited about it even though I recognize some of the potential pitfalls)  simple/organic church concepts are in the process of becoming mainstream. Many mega- and legacy churches see this as the way forward. God is speaking to them, and he's saying the same things to them that he is speaking to those of us involved in simple/organic churches. And to be honest, as some of these churches embrace the principles of reaching out to the world via missional communities, they have the potential to change our cities even more than we do because many of them have large numbers of young, radical, on-fire disciples who are longing to reach out into their communities.

The secular media is taking notice.  There are an increasing number of articles such as this one about house churches.  According to the latest Pew Forum figures, 9% of Protestants worship in their homes. Legacy churches of all kinds are embracing simple/organic church principles and attempting to implement them within their context.

My question is, how are we going to react?  Those of us in the simple/organic church movement have several options:

1. Are we going to criticize because they aren't doing everything right (according to our thinking)?  That we have the "pure" form of church and unless they do it our way, they are taking a lower path.

2. Are we going to cheer them on from the sidelines?

3. Are we going to work cooperatively with them, rejoicing in all that God is doing in their midst, helping where we can, accepting their help where they offer it? 

Personally, I'm for number 3.   What could happen in our cities if we all work together and nobody minds who gets the credit?

Love in a Glovebox - part 2

Recently I wrote about a service project, assembling "gift bags" that can be given to homeless people when you see them along the roadside. Today we followed up on that in my home and made ten bags containing the following:

Scarf, hat, headband, or a pair of gloves

2 granola bars

Small box of raisins

10 cough drops

Chapstick

Travel Kleenex

Comb

2 extra Ziploc bags

The cost for each bag came to $4.50 and half of that was for the item of clothing. We're planning to add a note to each bag, just to give a word of encouragement to the recipient and to let them know that this little act of love was done in Jesus' name.

I took my two daughters and granddaughter along to shop for these items, and had two of their friends from the neighborhood helping as well when we assembled the bags. Each of the neighbor friends got to take a bag home for their parents to give away, and we sent two bags home with my granddaughter. So the project is touching a couple of bases: blessing the poor, reinforcing our value of compassion in my daughters & granddaughter, and even letting the neighborhood know, if subtly, what kind of household we are (or at least are trying to be!)

One last idea that I may follow up on as well. I'm thinking of including a stamped postcard, addressed to my church, with a note inviting the homeless person to share any thoughts they wish. If they want to say something to me or to the church - even about what kinds of "giveaways" are helpful or insulting - that would be great. If they want to say something to the Church at large, or to society, or to the Governor or President, I'll promise to deliver their message as best I can. It may well be that some of those messages might end up on this blog. If nothing else, it will let them know that someone thinks their voice is important and is trying to listen. I think any of us would appreciate that.

Someone Saw This Coming

I recently came across this striking quote about people leaving institutional forms of Church for the sake of their faith, rather than as an act of moving away from faith. I first encountered this idea in Reggie McNeal's book The Present Future, but the quote below predates that seminal 2003 work by, um, a fair bit.

Multitudes of Christians within the church are moving toward the point where they may reject the institution that we call the church. They are beginning to turn to more simplified forms of worship. They are hungry for a personal and vital experience with Jesus Christ. They want a heartwarming personal faith. Unless the church quickly recovers its authoritative Biblical message, we may witness the spectacle of millions of Christians going outside the institutional church to find spiritual food.

Care to take a guess as to who said it and when? I'll post the answer in a couple of days. If you can't wait, just go ahead and Google "the spectacle of millions of Christians."

Love in a Glovebox

Here's a great little service project from my friend Steve Bonesho and River of Joy community.

They call it "Love in a Glovebox" and all you need to do is gather a few items to have on hand in your car to give to homeless people as you encounter them at intersections. Hats, mittens, scarves; maybe a bus pass or gift card to a restaurant e.g. Subway; maybe some food items like granola bars. Put these into a little box or bag and have it ready in your car for the next encounter.

If you want, you can join them this coming Sunday as they gather to assemble gLoveboxes after their worship service Sunday October 10th at 10am at the Spring Lake Township Hall.

I'll be elsewhere with my family that morning but we are going to do this as our October service project anyway & send them an e-mail to say thanks for the idea & for being a good example. I encourage you to do the same! You can shoot Steve an e-mail at steve@rojlc.org.

Sunday Services: the Blind Spot and Sacred Cow in Church Decline

Dave Householder has written a bracing post about the decline of the Lutherans in North America that is well worth reading. He gets extra credit for leading off with this; "This article is not just for Lutherans. It applies to most North American faith families." I expect the comments are really good too, but with 90 at last count I confess I lacked the fortitude to actually read them all!

He cites ten factors contributing to decline, including:

• Low birth rate
• Poor retention of the babies we do have
• Staggering ineffectiveness in evangelism
• Unwelcoming if not toxic parish communities
• Little or no effective use of media

Decline has been an ongoing topic of my blog. I've integrated several of his points into the "pond metaphor" where you can easily see why the church used to grow but is in decline now. I even threw together a metric for "evangelical effectiveness" that is pretty jarring to look at.

But after reading David's post I still think that one of the most significant issues is going unnamed: the inherent ineffectiveness of Sunday morning gatherings, both for discipleship and for evangelism. Yet we persist in making these gatherings the centerpiece of our faith-life culture, and investing the vast majority of our time, energy and money in maintaining them as I've discussed here. Sunday morning, large group, presentational, professionally led, property-dependent worship services are, I'm afraid, both our biggest blind spot and our most sacred cow.

And this central assumption about the way to "do church" is perhaps the most unifying feature of North American Christendom. It can't be much of an overstatement to say that we all do it that way. No wonder then, that the decline spans the decades so readily and cuts so easily across denominational lines, and the liberal/conservative divide.

Large group gatherings are not bad. But as the centerpiece of faith practice they can never be effective in spreading or nurturing the faith. That requires face to face, heart to heart conversation, which is notoriously difficult to have in a pew, disrespectful during the preaching, and drowned out by the performance be it the organ or the band.

Evaluating Wellbeing - a Tool for the Church?

Gallup has launched a new book and program focused on Wellbeing. Their StrengthsFinders work has been extremely valuable to me so I expect this will be good stuff as well.

It uses an online assessment questionnaire that you can take repeatedly in order to see changes in your wellbeing over time and the influence of events and actions you take. Suggestions are provided for making improvements in the five "Essential Elements" of Wellbeing their material presents:

• Career
• Social
• Financial
• Physical
• Community

A couple of things come quickly to mind:

No "Spiritual" aspect to wellbeing? I can't imagine that's an oversight, so they must have reasons for not going there. I'll be interested to learn what they are.

Social and Community Wellbeing are two different things. The fact that I was surprised to see them listed separately is telling evidence that I really am a part of my Western culture, which is generally so focused on the individual that issues around community are generally off the radar.

What if your congregation picked this up and ran with it? Suppose your congregation made intentional, ongoing work with this tool a core practice of your community life (after adding in a Spiritual Wellbeing component, of course)? Imagine adding a faith-based perspectives to conversations on Career and Financial Wellbeing? Do you think this might be something your people would value and benefit from?

Do you think they might, just possibly, mention it to their friends, neighbors and coworkers?

Suppose you offered workshops and support groups around this to the community around your church... gave them the books for free as a sign of your commitment to the practice of being a blessing to others... made the sessions completely non-religious but offered an opt-in conversation after each gathering for those who wanted to add the faith dimension... I'm just thinking out loud here...

Do you think people outside your church might begin to see it as an asset to the neighborhood, a partner in the community?

I wonder!

Kiddie Pool Community Gardens?

Is your congregation looking for a way to serve - and meet - your neighbors? Interested in a ministry to help feed the poor or welcome immigrants from foreign lands?

Here's an idea - offer free garden space to the community in kiddie pools!

The materials are fairly cheap and reusable. You could probably get a grant for a project like this from any number of community-building or hunger related groups. (Know a good one? Please leave a comment!!)

Got apartment dwellers on the block? There have got to be some frustrated gardeners living in there! Give them a reason to cross the street and then go meet them as you garden together.

Does your local food shelf need fresh food? Why not grow some for them?

Are there immigrants in your community who are still trying to develop a taste for Mac'n'cheese but really miss the flavors of home? Offer them a place to grow the vegetables they are used to eating. Imagine what you might pick up from swapping recipes with them!

Maybe a small flotilla of tomato-laden kiddie pools isn't quite what you had in mind when you thought of ways to make your church landscaping more attractive. Of course, there are different ways to think about "beauty." Is Jesus really that big into well-mown grass? Or is a community meeting place a more likely field in which to sow the seeds he favors anyway?

As they say, it's all in the eye of The Beholder.

Ownership vs. Posession

I had occasion to give my personal perspective on stewardship recently at my church and it was videotaped so I though I would share it here. The key moment is when, after placing my wallet, mortgage, car title, marriage certificate etc. on the altar I simply ask God; "What do you want me to do with your stuff?"

The video starts with the distinction between ownership and possession, covers my personal family journey into tithing, and affirms percentage-based giving as a grace-filled approach. It specifically advocates a three step process: start where you are but look at your giving from the percentage perspective, set a goal, then make a plan to grow towards it.

Plus, you get to see me ask my friend Rick to hand over his wallet to me in front of the congregation.

Pastor Tim on Stewardship from Gethsemane on Vimeo.

Why I Believe

My friend Jonathan posted an interesting question on Facebook yesterday:

Curious: Christian? Why? Or... Non-Christian? Why? Would love to hear your answers. Don't try to convince anyone of anything. Not a debate. Just interested in YOUR response, your story, your heart.

I've though a bit about that over the years, and more so recently, so I wrote a reply which I thought I'd share here too:

Christian. To be quite frank about it, I am a believer because my parents raised me in belief. As Christof says in The Truman Show; "We accept the reality with which we are presented."

More to the point, though - why do I continue to believe? As I have looked at that, two reasons are the most influential.

First, I have an actual sense of the presence of an Other, that resonates with the God of the Bible as seen in the person of Jesus.

Second, the whole belief system that is grounded in my relationship to that Other is something that I find comforting, inspiring, intellectually and emotionally compelling, and integral to my sense of living a life that has meaning.

I guess that's the short answer. ;)

As Jonathan, I'm also curious to hear from others. Why do you believe what you believe?

The Curse of Abundance

Am I corrupting my children?

Recently one of my daughters came home from school and announced that she was hungry. I told her that she could have some fruit, or veggies and dip, or the vanilla yogurt that she likes. She was very displeased with these options. I was very displeased with her displeasure. In my standard scolding tone I informed her that having three choices of what to eat was nothing to turn one’s nose up at, and that furthermore, one of those options was in fact a category with six options within it. (Through unusual circumstance, we happened to have an excess of fruit in the house. I impressed this upon her by providing the list.) With great resignation and some irritation, she announced that she would suffer an orange.

Dissatisfaction is the curse of abundance.

On another occasion, with my other daughter, I found myself going through the morning “What Do You Want for Breakfast?” routine. Cold cereal? No thanks. Oatmeal? Cream of Wheat? Nah. How about some eggs? Fried? Scrambled? I could make an omelet… Nothing sounded good to her. “What else do we have?” was the question hanging in the air.

It occurred to me later on that by constantly presenting options and asking her to weigh them in her internal Desirability Center, I was training her to focus on her preferences, to keep on exercising the “want” muscles. And over time, this was resulting in more wanting, as well as a belief in the existence of The Magical Food that is so delicious, so wonderful, so special that it actually can fulfill all of one’s desires. I don’t know what it is, and neither does she, but hope springs eternal that if I can somehow speak its Name then she will recognize it and exclaim; “Yes! That’s it! That’s what I want!” So there we were. Me training my daughter in how to want, and her unable to revel in the astounding goodness of simply sitting down and having a hot meal appear before you that you didn’t even have to prepare for yourself, much less milk the cows and bake the bread.

From here it is a straight line towards the yearnings for The Magical Toy (adults: gadget) that is endlessly fun, The Magical Job that fulfills all your vocational and financial desires, and The Magical Spouse. Whatever you have now may well be good, but belief in the Magical will always invite you to wonder if there might be something – or someone – better.

How far our lives are, in the land of plenty, from the life Paul lived that led him to say; “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances” and “…if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.” (See Philippians 4 and 1 Timothy 6.)

Those of us who want to be followers of Jesus should be mindful of two things: abundance and purpose. Constant abundance becomes invisible to us as we get used to it. We need to see people who have actual needs or we’ll lose sight of how much we have to share and instead fall victim to our endless wants. And the purpose of God in the world is something much broader and much deeper than fulfilling our desires. If we are not devoted to that purpose, it will be no surprise if we end up devoted to our preferences.

I know I have a need to see my abundance and to renew my purpose. And as a parent, I need to help my children find this life as well. The Land of Plenty, it turns out, can be a tricky place to live.

Welcome to PostChristendom

Here's a quote that caught my eye:

"We had numerous Catholic churches praying for us, a Buddhist temple, a bunch of Lutherans, a pagan sect and at least two Satanists that I know of, so we were pretty much covered."

I ran across that in a Star Tribune article about a guy who found a kidney donor for himself through Facebook. I'd say that's putting the "S" in "social networking!"

I know this is old news for many of you, but worth repeating especially "for some have never heard," that the world around us in the US is no longer saturated with Christianity, if indeed it ever was.

Of course, you can still simulate a Christianity-dominated culture quite easily. All you have to do is surround yourself with nothing but other Christians in your social world and be sure to rarely venture out. Listening solely to Christian music, Christian radio, and reading nothing but Christian books can also be a big help with this.

But do take note. If a collection of Catholics, Buddhists, pagans and "at least two Satanists that I know of" doesn't bear at least some resemblance to the world you live in, then you are probably living in a religio-cultural ghetto.

From which position it will be very, very, very hard to do effective mission.

Very.