Perspective

My Dad’s extended family shares a lake cabin outside of Spokane, Washington, where we are currently enjoying a paradise-like existence. Someone asked my cousin, Jenny, how it works to maintain a shared place like this. In her words: “when you see something that needs to be done you do it.” She said this after driving out after work to replenish the supply of clean towels, sheets, and drinking water for us after their stay here the previous week.

I loved the simplicity of her response. No ego. No martyrdom. Just a recipe for mutuality and servanthood.

Cabins can bring out the best in people I think.

Literally

Two good Mercy stories from this trip:

1) The other night Mercy and I were engaged in our Seattle before-bed routine of lying on my old twin bed together, singing and talking. As we were lying there her stomach growled, a good long gurgly growl. I looked at her with big eyes and told her the frog in her tummy was awake (it's all about frogs right now in her world so that was the first animal that came to mind). She looked at me with those blue saucer eyes and she slowly reached down to touch her tummy.

That next week we were down in Portland at Doug's dad's house, and Mercy was running around in their front yard before dinner. All of a sudden she stopped dead in her tracks and got the funniest, most sober look on her face. She looked up at me: "Frog. Aweeeeeeeek." It took me a second to figure out what she was talking about. I laughed out loud and called her over. I was holding a cracker and I held it out to her and told her that frog must be hungry. She took the cracker, lifted up her shirt, and pushed it into her side.


2) Grandma Peggy bought those fun foam letters that stick to the side of the bathtub for Mercy to play with during her bath. At one point, she picked up the letter J. I started rattling off "J is for..." with as many of her favorite J words as I could think of: Jordan, jam, Jack (yes, as in Bauer), jammies, etc. I ran out of good J words to name so I said, "J is for..." and left it for her to finish the sentence. She paused for a second and then looked at me with a big grin: "Jouch!" (as in, Oscar the...).

Seattle Crack

So Doug and I decided that I was not allowed to go to the little coffee shop down Richmond Beach road while I am here in Seattle. They have the best lattes--even Doug thinks so. So much so that we went there three times last time we were up here. But I got to buy new shoes finally, so the Security Council gave strict instructions that lattes would not be in July's monthly budget. I am totally craving one but I gave my word. I guess I should go put on my shoes and walk around a bit.

Missional?

I regularly read Scot McKnight's blog, and this past week he profiled some discussion about the closure of Axis, an age-specific worship gathering within Willow Creek, the famous first megachurch in Chicagoland. This ministry began while I was a student in Chicago, and I remember friends talking a great deal about it. I also new people who became leaders within this ministry.

There was a link to another blog entry discussing Willow's decision to end Axis that Scot deemed a "must read." So I went to it and found an interesting discussion by Dan Kimball about how existing churches, with set worship, mission, and leadership cultures, do or do not embrace the needs and desires of the "emerging" generation.

What struck me in the entry was an assumption that makes what I am a part of seem absurd. The assumption is that worship and mission and fellowship should be aligned with whatever current trends are in culture and are in fact most "missional" when they do this.

If this is true then Church of the Redeemer is missionally impotent.

The author assumes that the best way for churches to embrace differences, be they cultural, generational, stylistic, is to encourage the birthing of new worship gatherings to cater to them. With this assumption, then, his biggest complaint is against the leadership of the pre-existing churches that seek to maintain control and only allow for independence or change that is cosmetic at best.

Dan Kimball writes:

"However, when launching a new worship gathering in an existing church, the question is - are the changes occurring out there, mainly generational (music style, appearance, language) which changes every generation? Or are the changes bigger than that in worldview(s) and more about how people learn, specific values people have, how people think of God and the spiritual world etc."

He obviously believes that for him and his peers, the latter is true. That is why he left a "mother church" situation to start a new ministry altogether.

I guess what struck me in reading his post is that we believe we are missional at Church of the Redeemer precisely because we are doing the opposite of this. And I guess I knew we were a little strange, but I am realizing more and more that our vision for mission which demands each of us to relinquish our "right" to those things that divide ("how people learn, specific values people have, how people think of God and the spiritual world etc." -- just sit in for five minutes of one of our board meetings and you will know what I am talking about!) for the sake of another is more foreign than even I figured.

I don't know a thing about Dan Kimball and I am certainly not judging him or his ministry (again, I know nothing about either) but I am wondering if the "emergent church" that he represents is not embracing yet another outpouring of the spirit of homogenous church growth principles. And maybe they are okay with that--again, I am not sure.

I'll have to do some more reading...when the nap gods smile upon me again soon :)

Visual aids

Our church meets in an elementary school, and there is little about our worship space that is visually appealing. It's not that our space is unattractive, it's just that it's a school cafeteria. Many of us have a desire to incorporate visuals and art into our worship gatherings, and our sister church in Pasadena has been working for a while on a set of four worship banners for us to use for this purpose. The images on the banners are replicas of banners we noticed hanging in their sanctuary years ago and they depict a seed becoming a sprout becoming a tree with the final banner showing a tree heavy laden with fruit. These images feel especially helpful to us in thinking about our desire to see the Spirit author new life in our community, and in our desire to be a church that may, like a tree with great branches, offer shelter and rest for the vulnerable.

Last week, we were presented with the completed banners at the conclusion of our "Day in L.A." work project with Pasadena Covenant. They are simply beautiful. And I loved that they were officially "presented" to us in a little ceremony of sorts at Chabelita's taco stand on Western. It just seemed fitting for us to receive these gifts of beauty and worship not in some sterile, safe environment, but in the midst of the grit of life in our neighborhood.

Two days ago, both kids took naps at the same time (oh, the glory of it) and I had some time to play on the internet. I found an online publication put together by some old friends from my North Park days who have organized within my denomination around justice issues. Inside one issue I found a piece of artwork that shook me. It is a rough drawing of a face with a gaping, open mouth. Inside the darkness of the open mouth, in what looks like the tongue and throat, is an image of the globe, with the continent of Africa most visible. In fact, when I first saw it all I saw was Africa--only later did I realize it was the entire globe. The title of the piece is "Third Lament."

I am excited to hang our new banners at Church of Redeemer. I am excited by the metaphors of life and growth they visually give and for the ways they might inform our acts of corporate worship. But I have to wonder, what would the impact on our worship be if we hung a banner of "Third Lament" in our sanctuary? How would the songs we sing, the scriptures we read, the sermons we preach change if we had an image like that in our midst?

At the feet...

I am one of those people who has always seen the early church as pictured in the Acts of the Apostles as romantic, winsome, irresistible. This idea that people would literally bring their possessions to the feet of an elder so that the needs of a fellow worshipper could be met runs so counter to how we see life lived around us, one cannot help longing after something so foreign; so free.

This past week I received an email from one of the pastors at our sister church. The week before I had shared with their congregation about some of the things we were seeing God do here in South Central. I had shared with them about the families and individuals who regularly attend our weekly worship services who only speak Spanish. These wonderful folks sit graciously, participating to the fullest extent of their ability, while worship, prayer and teaching unfold around them in a foreign tongue.

As a board, we have been looking into the possibility of purchasing translation equipment that would enable these members to listen with headsets while someone translates the service from the sound board. As a board we have been praying for the means to purchase this equipment, and I shared this with Pasadena Covenant.

After the service, a husband and wife talked together and shared with each other how they had each felt stirred by this need while I was talking, and how both of them had, independently, felt nudged by God's spirit to make the purchase of this equipment possible. The email I received this last week informed me that this couple would like to make a financial gift to cover the expense of purchasing the translation equipment for our church.

I am grateful and humbled and glad to be in a time and place where the church today can look like the beautiful picture I have spent my life longing to see.

Quotation of the Week

"Does George W. Bush have enough faith to keep America in God's good grace? Perhaps. But we should join our faith with his."

From the TBN documentary, "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House", that Doug stumbled upon last night. Anyone who knows my husband AT ALL can imagine the conversations that followed :)