A helpful reminder for the day...

credit

Does God play golf? I think I found his ball(s).

I left Montana on Wednesday afternoon. About two hours after I landed in Minneapolis, my phone started to buzz with pictures of a hail storm that hit Red Lodge. The hail was merciless and soon the pictures started to tell a different story; damaged car roof, broken neon sign, leaking roofs. Three days later, I'm still working the phones trying to do damage control but it's just not working. I'll be getting on a plane Monday to get back so I can lend a hand with the recovery efforts in person.

I'm supposed to be doing some deep discernment of how God is working in my life right now. Instead, I'm being handed nothing but hassles. What is going on? Is there deeper meaning to this challenge? Or is this just the crappy side of life? I'm praying for strength; for me, for my folks and for my amazing staff. Maybe you would too?

Competent? Getting there.

I've been asked to review a set of "educational leadership competencies" that I was first introduced to in the fall of 2008, my first semester at Luther. The competencies are divided into three categories: knowledge, attitude and skill. Each category then is comprised of six defined statements that attempt to articulate how the desired competencies are experienced. Go here if you'd lie to see the full list. Rather than go through the entire list here, I thought I might share a few of the more interesting reflections I have.

Given my context as an intern with Jacob's Well, a faith community I've been a part of for over two years, I've been challenged in ways I could not have imagined when first addressing these competencies. This community tends to be highly educated yet unfamiliar with the historical and literary traditions of the church. In addition, they are skeptical about much of the language and classic approaches to Christian education. This puts a lot of pressure on the leadership in preparation for preaching and small group curriculum development. As a result, I'm thankful that my own familiarity with the scriptural witness has given me the confidence to engage this community theologically in entirely new arenas. Where I struggle is not being too bound by the traditions I'm familiar with in order to see other learning methods as opportunity for this community. These are my current experiences with the knowledge competencies.

As for the attitude, back in 2008 I assessed each aspect of this competencies as "relatively strong." I don't think anything has necessarily changed here as I continue to be deeply interested in the ways in which to engage the world, find God at its center and frame the challenges of the day in that respect. As for skill, I still have lots of growing and learning to do here, but as I recognized in 2008, this is something that will always be in front of me. I've been enjoying my current context but I'm also curious to see how these skills will continue to develop in alternate settings.

You're doing what?

So... Jacob's Well (the church I currently serve as intern pastor) is doing something that I've never heard of another church doing. Quite honestly, because we've never heard of another church doing it was probably the main motivator in taking the idea serious to begin with. That's what I love about this call. As the tag line goes, Jacob's Well is "church for people who don't like church." I think that's even more true for the leadership. It's a collection of leaders who want to lead a church but fundamentally don't like church. At least not "church" as it's commonly understood and experienced.

Jacob's Well is about to celebrate its 5th anniversary and as an institution that wants to be anything but, that's a frightening thought. As we look around at what we're doing, we can't help but wonder, "is this really the church that God is calling us to be?" So rather than keep doing what we're doing but not knowing, we've decided to push the pause button on the week in and week out activities so we can make some time to listen for God and maybe learn where we're being called to next. And that's what it's called; Pause, Listen & Learn. During the next four weeks of July, we won't be producing our own worship experiences but encouraging our community to engage the world around them and maybe, just maybe, find God speaking in some unexpected places. I, along with a number of others, will be leading "Field Trips" to a variety of other worshiping communities around the Twin Cities. We'll also be intentionally engaging our neighbors in a variety of other settings. To learn more about the whole initiative, go here.

Thought for the day...

Driving

Anne, Bjorn and I left MN about 2pm on Monday afternoon June 27th, headed for MT. Just before hoping behind the wheel I downloaded a few books from Audible.com to listen to on the drive. One title that had been sitting in my wish list for a few months was "Drive" by Daniel Pink and it seemed more than apt for killing a few hours in the car. The subtitle for the book is "The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" and makes a few interesting arguments. Though I haven't finished listening yet (I nodded off when Anne took over the wheel just east of Bismark) there have been more than a couple examples and citations also mentioned in another book I recently read for my Media & Technology class earlier this month. "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky also draws heavily upon similar research. Shirky's book was published in 2008 whereas Pink's book came out late last year. In particular, both authors use the same examples of Wikipedia to make comparable points of how social and business relationships are being created. Both authors put forth compelling reasons for how and why social media is changing culture and certainly how relationship are formed and leveraged.

I had this interesting experience, both while reading Shirky's book and listening to Pink's, that could only be described as something akin to multiple personality disorder. My mind would wander between the multiple worlds I live and operate in: restaurant owner, intern pastor, graduate student, parent and spouse. I became easily distracted by the myriad of ways the material applied to the various aspects of my life and after finishing both I have this desire to revisit the material but this time trying to limit the "hat" that I'm wearing while engaging the content. Ah well, perhaps another time...

The Word on the Street

I happened upon a strange sight last night. A group of ten or so 16-25 year-olds were sitting in a circle having a bible study. That's not the strange part. Let it be known, I'm pro-bible study and I'm especially impressed with the ages of the group that was gathered. If anything, that's exactly the age demographic that seems least likely to invest any time gathered in community with an open bible in front of them. Note that it was Saturday night, which seems to underline the uniqueness of this particular bible study of young adults. They could have been at the movies, or bowling or even at watching the Twins win their 5th in a row at Target Field but instead, they're studying the bible. But that's still not the strange part.

The strange part is not who was studying the bible or when they were studying the bible. The strange part was where they were studying the bible. They were seated right on the sidewalk in downtown Minneapolis, just outside the doors of Dream Girls, a night club that features female strippers and table dancers. Even stranger was that the Twins game had just gotten over and there were crowds of people filing past, first the velvet ropes of the entryway to the strip club, then the cross-legged bible studiers. I'm guessing that the circle of young folks was very intentional about the when and the where of their bible study. Perhaps it was some form of non-violent protest or maybe they had just gotten kicked out of the pizza place on the corner and needed a place to continue their study. I didn't stop and ask but maybe I should have. Honestly, the whole thing made me feel uncomfortable and a little sad.

"Your Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." Psalm 119

I need to ask my kids what they thought of the whole scene. I wonder what they found to be more weird, people lining up to watch naked people dance or people sitting in the middle of a sidewalk reading the bible. The culture that was present last night probably thought the bible study was the more "unusual" of the two. I would probably be on that side too. It's not that I think the Word should be kept in particular places. The Word can speak to much more than we tend to allow it space for. The strangeness of the sidewalk bible-study suggests to me how some prefer to "use" the bible in contrast to culture rather than have the Word speak directly to culture.

The Word will shine its light onto many things; good, bad and, from time to time, strange.