No room for competition

Since beginning The Well at Springfield, we have emphasized the importance of being a collaborating community of faith. We not only wanted to be a welcoming presence, but a church that is cooperative and interactive with others in our neighborhood and city. This includes other churches. Early on, I met co-pastors of a Lutheran congregation in Springfield, and I could tell right away that we were like-minded in our understandings of what it means to be church. They immediately became friends and partners in ministry.

This is not always the case. Often times, churches treat one another like competition. We don't want to help one another out because of fear we will lose out some how...like we are somehow creating a business of religious goods and services and vying for the same consumers. That is so far from my understanding of what it means to be church that I don't even know where to begin; yet, at times, I too find myself uncomfortable in the midst of collaboration. I think it is so ingrained in me/us to be the best at what we do that we prefer to work alone, even in the church.

I guess I've chosen to go against the norm. I can't preach a gospel of inclusion and then try to set out on my own course of separation from others. This past Sunday was a great example of why.

On the ten year anniversary of 9/11, we worshiped with St. John's Lutheran Church and the service was jointly-led by our two congregations. People of differing faith traditions joined one another, sang, prayed and even broke bread together. I believe we recognized that there is something much bigger than our differences and much more important than our distinct doctrines. We sensed God bringing us together to express our common pain, to confess a belief that God is our source of hope, and to encourage one another to be good neighbors. God's love and healing transcended our human-made boundaries and together, we experienced more of God.

In a world where tragedies like 9/11 are a reality here just as they have been abroad, there is no room for competition. We must find ways to participate in what God is doing in places and people everywhere. It will make us uncomfortable at times, but it can only serve to further the peace, love and healing that make God's kingdom known here and now...and, oh how we need it to be known and experienced here and now.

The gift of feeling prepared

Over the last few weeks, we have done our share of back to school shopping. School supplies, a couple of new outfits for the girls, and even new backpacks. Some of these things are required, and some are not, but they represent the ways we enthusiastically anticipate and prepare for the start of a new school year. It's an exciting time as the girls wait to hear who their teachers will be and count down till the first day of school!

A couple of days ago, as a family of five came to the church hoping for financial assistance, I experienced a very different perspective on the school year. This family had undergone financial hardship since their move to Jacksonville last year. While one of the children was excited about starting school, the others were less than thrilled (admittedly, because they had no clothes or school supplies). While the dad explained their situation, he expressed his frustration over not being able to provide for his family, particularly during this time of year. After a few minutes, another minister and I led this family to a room of clothing that was not yet organized, but might help them get started on some back to school clothing.

As we entered the room, the youngest child (a seven year old boy) lit up when he immediately spotted an over-sized gray sweatshirt. It was worn and twice his size, but he called it "so cool," then asked if he could please have it. My heart sank, and I was humbled by his unexpected gratitude over something I had so easily taken for granted - the feeling of being prepared to start a new year of school.

While we have had our share of financial crunches, we have never failed to find a way to make ends meet. We've never faced eviction or the threat of having our utilities turned off. We've never had to send our children to school feeling unprepared or inadequate to be there. I imagine that feeling unprepared to begin school can have a definite impact on a child's enthusiasm for learning and confidence to achieve success in school.

This Saturday, The Well is partnering with Northeast Florida Community Action Agency to host a Neighborhood Back to School Bash in Springfield. It's not only about providing for families in need, it's also about fostering a sense of community and an atmosphere of anticipation at this critical time in the lives of families. We are celebrating the start of a new school year, eating together, playing games, honoring teachers, and sharing supplies with children who may not feel prepared to return to school. It's going to be an exciting time, and a great opportunity to support one another in preparing our kids for a new school year. I hope to see some of you there!

Change is not easy

Now that Kevin is back in Jax. with us for good, I am trying to return to a more healthy, balanced life. I have my new running shoes, and I've started back to running a few mornings a week. I knew that it would take a while to get back in the groove, but I underestimated how difficult it would be to ditch my early morning leisurely coffee and reading routine. Change is rarely easy, but in my experience it is worth the hard work.

The neighborhood in which we are planting The Well has been undergoing change for quite some time. While the statistics show a reduction in crime and other illegal activity, change has been a slow process. Making matters more difficult, residents and community activists disagree on what types of changes need to occur and how they should be carried out. One of the most recent breakthroughs came with the beginning of the demolition of a long-time vacant inn that had served as a haven for the homeless (but not a good one, since the building was unsafe and unstable). The picture above shows the work that has begun, but like the rest of the road to new life in the community, it's going to take a while.

I find that the road to starting a new church is similar. Like community development, church starting and re-starting requires patience and determination. Even more than that, it requires confronting those habits, routines and assumptions that keep me from seeing all of the options available for the path ahead. This week, I realized just how limited my imagination can be as we began looking at alternative meeting spaces. One space almost looked too tied to the past, and the other too lacking in history. As a friend and I began to talk about reconfiguring the seating and adding a few elements, things started to look different. It never fails that when I feel "stuck", it is because I am reverting to old patterns of the way things have always been done, to what is comfortable and familiar. Pioneering a new way of doing and being church is difficult because it challenges me to risk that new, untried, innovative options are more effective, and sometimes they are not. The willingness to choose a new path, the willingness to change, inevitably involves failure. Some of those failures will be really small and others will be big, there for all to see....another thing that makes change so difficult for me.

I've decided that there is no better place to be trying something new than in Springfield. There seems to be almost no limit to what people will try to create new life in this community - neighborhood bike rides to expose suspicious activity, community gardens to improve health and environmental stewardship, a Relay for Life to bring the neighborhood together around a great cause, new and unique businesses (organic candy, the best coffee shop in Jax., yummy ice cream combined with financial literacy , and an awesome home-style Caribbean cafe to name a few), and a chili-cook off to have fun and support a local charity. Yes, change is challenging and is certainly not the easier path, but it's nice to be in like company. It's fun to be pioneering with other dreamers who don't mind failing to help pave the way for a better, more hope-filled future for a community.

Just beyond our busynes

Last Sunday night at The Well, we had a discussion about the role of Sabbath in the biblical story and in our lives today. Sabbath is about more than physical rest, it's about reflection and re-orienting ourselves to the ways of God. In The Rest of God, Mark Buchanan describes how, by observing Sabbath, we discover the rest of God - yes, rest from work, but also that rest of God that can only be experienced when we stop our busyness.

I am not good at Sabbath. I am often so consumed with my to-do list that instead of stopping, I move on quickly to the next thing on my agenda. This week has been a great example - I have had multiple meetings, conversations and surprise encounters. Yes, it was a busy week, but when I stopped to reflect, I was reminded of its richness and I began to feel full.

This week began with a meeting with my Clearness Committee, a group of friends that take time from their busy schedules to guide me through a discernment process. It was not an easy hour, but it brought self-awareness, focus and courage. This week also brought several occasions for me to sit with struggling Springfield neighbors who have lost hope due to financial hardship. I heard first hand of programs and people that are doing their best to find real solutions for these individuals. This week also brought an important vision team meeting, dinner and great conversation with a long-time friend, encouraging emails, and unexpected offers for help with our upcoming back-to-school event...and, it will end with a much needed day with my girls and the much anticipated homecoming of Kevin tonight! There have been low and high moments, but when I stop, I am made aware of a depth and richness that is both present in the busyness, and yet surpasses it. I sit speechless at the overwhelming sense of the divine and mysterious Presence that has sustained and stirred without my notice.

These moments of Sabbath are invaluable to us as human beings, and to us as faith communities. At The Well, we have been having potluck and Bible study on Sunday nights for 4 months now, but for the next 3 weeks we are breaking from our routine. This Sunday, we are taking a walk around the neighborhood. It's about having fun, getting to know one another, getting a little exercise (all those potlucks can take a toll) and it's also about becoming more aware of our surroundings. As we walk, we'll be challenged to become more mindful of that which we rush past every day. I hope these next few weeks will be a good starting point for considering ways to build Sabbath time into the rhythm of our life together. Walks and picnics in the park help us to see and encounter the rest of God, the part that we miss in our routine and sometimes repetitive activity, the part that lies just beyond our busyness.

Just living

As I have re-familiarized myself with the religious landscape of Jacksonville, I have engaged in numerous conversations with church-goers of different denominations and affiliations. One such conversation occurred shortly after I returned to Jax. I was introduced to a woman who attends a local church, and I asked her about the congregation's involvement in social justice in the community. "What are some of the ways your congregation is meeting to the social needs of those in the community?", I naively asked. I guess I assumed that because the church was well-endowed with resources and people and was located in the center of downtown, this would be the beginning of a lengthy conversation. I was wrong. She gave me a puzzled look and responded, "We don't really do social ministry. We are more concerned with winning souls for Christ." The end. (Can I just say...awkward moment?)

I really believe that this is one of the biggest disconnects that many people today experience with the Church and with Christianity in general. We have somehow acted on a misguided belief that life is somehow lived in compartments - the physical, spiritual, emotional are separate and are to be addressed separately. One consequence of this way of thinking is fragmented living. Instead of guiding people into understanding ways to follow Christ in their day to day lives, we make Christianity about a place we go to enhance our spiritual lives - and, often there is no connection to the day to day challenges and choices that permeate our living.

I was excited to run across this video on TheOOZE.TV promoting Julie Clawson's book, Practicing Everyday Justice. She talks in the video about just living as a deeply spiritual discipline that is grounded in our desire to holistically live out the gospel in practical ways. Following Christ through just practices will impact our choices and should cause us to think about all of life in a new way (including where we shop and what we eat). Truthfully, this is much more challenging than showing up at church on Sundays for a spiritual "fix", but it certainly seems like a more true expression of our claim to be resurrection people. I'm reluctantly ordering my copy this week...

Wanted: More Imagination

There is no lack of imagination in our household. Very often, blankets are turned into caves, bedrooms become classrooms and cats become targets of "kitty hunters" (our poor cat!). I have often said in all seriousness that buying our children toys really is a waste of money. I must admit that I feel like one of the unfortunate signs of growing older is a decline in imagination. Instead of seeing things as they can be, we become all too comfortable accepting things as they are (or were), and fail to challenge, risk, and do the necessary work to move toward any dream of what things can become.

As we participated in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's (CBF) 20th General Assembly gathering in Tampa last week, I was reminded of how difficult it is to imagine things differently than they have been in the past. The dinner that kicked-off our celebration of 20 years focused on CBF's dissent from the Southern Baptist Convention and the humorous (yet, evidently very painful) divisions that resulted in CBF's setting out to form a new "fellowship". While the next few days certainly took on a more positive tone, the impression of this opening event stayed with me. It bothered me that our identity seemed so centered around who we were not, and less about who we had become - the next few days did communicate in a powerful way who and what is at the heart of CBF, and for that I was so grateful.

Often, I do not think the problem lies in our not moving in the right direction, but rather in our ability to see and imagine who we are becoming and where we are headed on the journey. We are so used to the same language, jokes, explanations, and rhetoric that we miss the amazing way that God is moving and re-shaping us for God's purposes. We will miss the fullness of participating in what God is doing if we continue to see ourselves as a reaction to the past - we must see ourselves as what and who we sense God is calling us to become.

I could use a fresh dose of imagination. In church starting, in CBF, and in life, we must remember that while the past has brought us where we are, it is what lies ahead that deserves our energy, attention, courage and wisdom. In the words of Andre Gide, "People cannot discover new lands unless they have the courage to lose sight of the shore."

Cleaning up the neighborhood

Over the weekend, I participated in a work project in the Springfield neighborhood. A group of concerned residents who want to improve the quality of life in the community met to clean-up a row of homes that have been vacant and used for a variety of illegal activities. Several of the porches were serving as makeshift homes and there was trash, clothing and drug paraphernalia strewn about. The place was a mess before we started, but after a couple of hours, it looked like a totally different place.

As I worked, I reflected. Several thoughts and questions kept coming to mind:

1. Why is it so much easier to clean up other people's weeds and garbage than to deal with my own?!
   



2. Initially, I asked what drives a person to live in a state of such despair and hopelessness? A few minutes later, I remembered that I could be that person if I were to lose my job, my family, or my health.



3. How can we be effective in treating the systemic issues that only perpetuate the problems we "cleaned up" today? It's the more difficult work, but it's necessary.

In Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster classifies service as a spiritual discipline. According to Foster,

"Radical self-denial gives the feel of adventure. If we forsake all, we even have the chance of glorious martyrdom. But in service we must experience the many little deaths of going beyond ourselves. Service banishes us to the mundane, the ordinary, the trivial."

I admit sometimes I am more attracted to the grander expressions of faith and to those things that help me escape the mundane. In service, though, I am moved to recover my place, to see my connectedness to God and other, and to humbly acknowledge what I have failed to really "see" in my frantic pace.