In the last several months there has been lots of time to think and reflect. It's something that seemed to have escaped me in the last few years. There weren't as many late night runs, day hikes, or solo road trips. The uninterrupted time to question self, and the inescapable daydreaming were replaced by busy schedules and ceaseless concentration on the activity in the immediate foreground.
Well, over these last few months I have driven from Alaska to Utah by myself, spent countless hours hiking, and been on the saddle of a bike for hundreds of miles. As a result, I've spent a lot of time thinking and reflecting about where I'm at, where I want to be, and who I am in the midst of it all.
I have re-discovered in these last few months that I am intensely loyal. This can be a good thing, as I am deeply committed to my friends and to not letting anything come between us. This can also be a bad thing as I have been in bad relationships or jobs longer than I should have. But all things said, for good or for bad, when I commit to someone or something, I remain loyal.
I began discovering this characteristic about myself when I began looking for the next church I wanted to minister to. When I graduated from USC in 2006 and decided I wanted to pass up a business career for a career in ministry, I put two filters on the churches I would apply to. They had to be in Southern California (close to my then girlfriend) and they had to be offering a position in Jr High or High School ministry (preferably the latter). Well, the first church I applied to fit that criteria. Trinity was actually the only church I applied to. God was really watching out for me. It was a great fit and experience and it is still the place that I consider home.
When I knew it was time to move on to a different experience I gave myself two new pieces of criteria for the next opportunity. It had to be in high school or college ministry (to broaden my experience) and it had to be in the Denver or Seattle area (for a lifestyle change of pace). However, over the last year, as I have been applying to churches around the country, I have began to place more filters on my search. A lot of that has to do with my evolving understanding of what I believe church should look like. I'll explain more about that below. But a lot of it has to do with my feeling that wherever I go next, I want to be there for a significant period of time. I don't want to go to a church where I think I'll want to leave after only a couple of years. That's no good for the church, for the people, or for me. So churches in certain parts of the country don't appeal to me, because I have a hard time imagining I would enjoy the area. Certain denominations are out of the question because of the direction they are going in theologically. As a result, I'm applying to fewer and fewer churches these days. Not because I don't want to be in ministry, but because I want to be able to fully commit for the long haul.
One of the difficult bonuses of this last year away from full time ministry is the opportunity to attend different churches. While I was in Southern California I hopped from church to church week after week. It wasn't because of fickleness, but curiosity that this was the case. I wanted to experience church as a first-time visitor. I wanted to see how other churches did "it". During my summer in Alaska I went to four different churches. Unfortunately, they were the mega churches because they were the only churches that offered a service I could attend (on Sunday nights). These experiences coupled with a course I took in my last semester at Biola on the family nature of the church left me feeling unsatisfied with what I saw in most churches.
Don't hear me wrong. I'm not the type of person that likes to tear things down. It's true, I can be idealistic at times. But I'm more for fixing something from the inside than scrapping it all together. I have a broken motorcycle at home that proves my point.
But what I continue to see in most churches is a model that doesn't line up with Scripture and something that cannot offer what I believe a church is intended to offer: deep family community.
Like many people of my generation, I'm drawn to the mega church model. It offers attractive worship, engaging messages (generally), and a community that can easily stay at arms length. It's facebook.
I have over 500 friends on facebook. Yep, I'm kind of a big deal. People like me. Umm....not really. If I'm honest with myself, I probably have about 50 solid friendships. Sorry to my other 450. You are people whose name I know, probably like and care about, and may see each other every now and again. But we aren't friends with any real deep interaction. We stay at the surface. That's fine. But to say that we are really friends is to redefine what it means to be a friend. Friends do more than click "Accept" and occasionally talk. At least I hope they do.
I hate the phrase "I go to church." Ummm....I go to the gym. I go to the coffee shop. I go to bathroom. I go to the grocery store. These are all places we can go to get something. I don't think church is some place we go to "get something." At the heart, we are the church and we come together to be. It's a place to find ourselves known by those sitting around us, to explore and fight for the faith, and to engage in deep family community. It's not facebook. It's not a place where we come to interact with others from a distance, be entertained, and walk away feeling like we gained something. I just don't know how you get that from a church of a couple thousand where you can sit next to a new person every week for the next fifty years. How exactly can you have community with that many people?
The second thing I struggle with is the model where there is a senior pastor at the top of the leadership pyramid. I don't see this hierarchy in Scripture where the church depended so greatly on the influence of one person. Sure Paul and Peter were influential, but they referred to themselves as slaves and servants. They established elders at the churches they planted. It was a leadership team. No person had any more power or authority. It's no wonder scandals, and arrogant or faulty pastors rip churches a part. They are put in an unhealthy position where the church depends almost entirely upon them. Granted, I know several senior pastors who operate with humility and yield much of the authority they been assigned. But as a whole, I don't think this model is good for the church or the pastor. As a result, I won't apply to a church where I would be "reporting" to the senior pastor. It just ain't good for the church.
I guess what I'm getting at is it's becoming harder to find a church that I feel comfortable committing to. As much as I hate to admit it, I've been thinking about planting a church. I hate that idea because there are soooooo many churches out there. But it's hard to find churches that are offering family community.
Here's my hope....A church dreamed up by a group of leaders who would be volunteers or work bi-vocationally for the church. The goal would be community, not growth. We would seek to plant churches and not to build bigger buildings and offer more services. 300 or something to that effect would be the absolute largest the church would become. There would be more details obviously, but that would come about in community for community sake.
Sorry for the ramble, this is just something I've been thinking about a long with a coffee shop/beer pub and choreographing a line dance. It's all fun and it may happen soon or it might be down the road. For now, I hope to be involved in the lives of students again real soon. Until then, I'll continue to explore what it means to be church and how best that happens. I don't have all the answers. I have three. God is God. I am not. USC will beat Stanford on Saturday.
Grace and Peace
Well, over these last few months I have driven from Alaska to Utah by myself, spent countless hours hiking, and been on the saddle of a bike for hundreds of miles. As a result, I've spent a lot of time thinking and reflecting about where I'm at, where I want to be, and who I am in the midst of it all.
I have re-discovered in these last few months that I am intensely loyal. This can be a good thing, as I am deeply committed to my friends and to not letting anything come between us. This can also be a bad thing as I have been in bad relationships or jobs longer than I should have. But all things said, for good or for bad, when I commit to someone or something, I remain loyal.
I began discovering this characteristic about myself when I began looking for the next church I wanted to minister to. When I graduated from USC in 2006 and decided I wanted to pass up a business career for a career in ministry, I put two filters on the churches I would apply to. They had to be in Southern California (close to my then girlfriend) and they had to be offering a position in Jr High or High School ministry (preferably the latter). Well, the first church I applied to fit that criteria. Trinity was actually the only church I applied to. God was really watching out for me. It was a great fit and experience and it is still the place that I consider home.
When I knew it was time to move on to a different experience I gave myself two new pieces of criteria for the next opportunity. It had to be in high school or college ministry (to broaden my experience) and it had to be in the Denver or Seattle area (for a lifestyle change of pace). However, over the last year, as I have been applying to churches around the country, I have began to place more filters on my search. A lot of that has to do with my evolving understanding of what I believe church should look like. I'll explain more about that below. But a lot of it has to do with my feeling that wherever I go next, I want to be there for a significant period of time. I don't want to go to a church where I think I'll want to leave after only a couple of years. That's no good for the church, for the people, or for me. So churches in certain parts of the country don't appeal to me, because I have a hard time imagining I would enjoy the area. Certain denominations are out of the question because of the direction they are going in theologically. As a result, I'm applying to fewer and fewer churches these days. Not because I don't want to be in ministry, but because I want to be able to fully commit for the long haul.
One of the difficult bonuses of this last year away from full time ministry is the opportunity to attend different churches. While I was in Southern California I hopped from church to church week after week. It wasn't because of fickleness, but curiosity that this was the case. I wanted to experience church as a first-time visitor. I wanted to see how other churches did "it". During my summer in Alaska I went to four different churches. Unfortunately, they were the mega churches because they were the only churches that offered a service I could attend (on Sunday nights). These experiences coupled with a course I took in my last semester at Biola on the family nature of the church left me feeling unsatisfied with what I saw in most churches.
Don't hear me wrong. I'm not the type of person that likes to tear things down. It's true, I can be idealistic at times. But I'm more for fixing something from the inside than scrapping it all together. I have a broken motorcycle at home that proves my point.
But what I continue to see in most churches is a model that doesn't line up with Scripture and something that cannot offer what I believe a church is intended to offer: deep family community.
Like many people of my generation, I'm drawn to the mega church model. It offers attractive worship, engaging messages (generally), and a community that can easily stay at arms length. It's facebook.
I have over 500 friends on facebook. Yep, I'm kind of a big deal. People like me. Umm....not really. If I'm honest with myself, I probably have about 50 solid friendships. Sorry to my other 450. You are people whose name I know, probably like and care about, and may see each other every now and again. But we aren't friends with any real deep interaction. We stay at the surface. That's fine. But to say that we are really friends is to redefine what it means to be a friend. Friends do more than click "Accept" and occasionally talk. At least I hope they do.
I hate the phrase "I go to church." Ummm....I go to the gym. I go to the coffee shop. I go to bathroom. I go to the grocery store. These are all places we can go to get something. I don't think church is some place we go to "get something." At the heart, we are the church and we come together to be. It's a place to find ourselves known by those sitting around us, to explore and fight for the faith, and to engage in deep family community. It's not facebook. It's not a place where we come to interact with others from a distance, be entertained, and walk away feeling like we gained something. I just don't know how you get that from a church of a couple thousand where you can sit next to a new person every week for the next fifty years. How exactly can you have community with that many people?
The second thing I struggle with is the model where there is a senior pastor at the top of the leadership pyramid. I don't see this hierarchy in Scripture where the church depended so greatly on the influence of one person. Sure Paul and Peter were influential, but they referred to themselves as slaves and servants. They established elders at the churches they planted. It was a leadership team. No person had any more power or authority. It's no wonder scandals, and arrogant or faulty pastors rip churches a part. They are put in an unhealthy position where the church depends almost entirely upon them. Granted, I know several senior pastors who operate with humility and yield much of the authority they been assigned. But as a whole, I don't think this model is good for the church or the pastor. As a result, I won't apply to a church where I would be "reporting" to the senior pastor. It just ain't good for the church.
I guess what I'm getting at is it's becoming harder to find a church that I feel comfortable committing to. As much as I hate to admit it, I've been thinking about planting a church. I hate that idea because there are soooooo many churches out there. But it's hard to find churches that are offering family community.
Here's my hope....A church dreamed up by a group of leaders who would be volunteers or work bi-vocationally for the church. The goal would be community, not growth. We would seek to plant churches and not to build bigger buildings and offer more services. 300 or something to that effect would be the absolute largest the church would become. There would be more details obviously, but that would come about in community for community sake.
Sorry for the ramble, this is just something I've been thinking about a long with a coffee shop/beer pub and choreographing a line dance. It's all fun and it may happen soon or it might be down the road. For now, I hope to be involved in the lives of students again real soon. Until then, I'll continue to explore what it means to be church and how best that happens. I don't have all the answers. I have three. God is God. I am not. USC will beat Stanford on Saturday.
Grace and Peace
