Epic

The Perils of Individualism

Three of these kids belong together
Three of these kids are kind of the same
But one of these kids is doing his own thing
It's time to play our game

These are the lyrics to one of the songs on my favorite childhood television show, Sesame Street.  A coworker in Augusta, GA told me not long ago that I "seem more the type to create molds rather than filling them."  Her words came as no surprise to me.  I've known that about myself for much of my life.

When I was a little kid my dad worked at a printing company.  I had a pretty steady stream of comic books and magazines like "Mad" and "Cracked" coming into my possession.  I remembe quickly reading them but then moving on to using them for something that I enjoyed even more.  I would take several sheets of blank paper and staple them together in book form.  Then I would spread my comics and magazines out on the floor and with scissors I would cut out different parts of them.  I would then reassemble and glue all of the different clippings onto the blank pages in front of me and make my own "book."

Getting my first tape recorder was a huge catalyst in my "career" as an individualist.  Listening to the radio was okay.  But what was even better was creating my own taped programs.  I would make tape after tape of "radio programs" complete with music (recorded from my record player), commentary, D.J. banter (me being the bantering D.J. of course), interviews with my friends, and commercials (recorded off the radio).

For as long as I can remember I have always loathed uniformity.  I remember as a kid my credo being something like, "Don't ever tell me I can't do something because doing so will drive me to do it at all costs just to prove to you that I can."  I doubt that I articulated it that well back then.  I probably just shouted, "shut up!"

As an adult I have always approached every job, every project, and every responsibility I've ever had with a desire to find new and different ways of doing things.  I don't want to do things the way other people do them.  Not that there's anything wrong with the ways other people do things; I just believe that the world would be a drab, boring, unchanging place to live if everyone just did things the way everyone else does them.  If that had been the only approach to life through the centuries, how many inventions would not have been invented?  How many voyages would never have been taken?  How many works of art or musical scores or literary masterpieces would never have been created?

I have found, however, that people don't tend to appreciate people like me being around.  We get a lot of blank stares.  We get a lot of polite, patronizing nods.  We get a lot of obstacles placed in our way.  We are often told to just follow the rules, color within the lines, don't confuse people, and don't disrupt the status quo.

I think the people who react as I just described are simply afraid that our individualsim will in some way threaten their stability.  They like things to remain calm and uneventful.  They don't want there to be even the possibility that our way of doing things will create ripples that eventually reach the placid serenity of their waters.

I don't think the answer is for me to repress my nature.  And I don't think the answer is for me to expect others to become like me.  I think the answer lies in a mutual pact.  In this pact, I need to be patient, kind, and understanding with those who need sameness and stability.  And others need to become more open to the new hues of color that people like me may be able to bring into their world, yet patient and gracious with us when we do manage to create nothing but chaos.  That happens a lot.  But every so often, something beautiful emerges.

"One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.  It makes you think that after all, your favorite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill founded.  Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it."     ~Walter Bagehot

In The World

Addressing Christians' involvement in the community, the Christian writer Tertullian wrote:

"Do we not dwell beside you, sharing your way of life, your dress, your habits and the same needs of life?  We are no Brahmins or Indian gymnosophists, dwelling in woods and exiled from life...We stay beside you in this world, making use of the forum, the provision-market, the bath, the booth, the workshop, the inn, the weekly market, and all other places of commerce.  We sail with you, fight at your side, till the soil with you, and traffic with you; we likewise join our technical skill to that of others, and make our works public property for your use."

Wow!  The early Christians were not a society of separatists.  They engaged in the life of the city.  They socialized with their neighbors.  The looked out for them.  What about your church?  Is it part of the warp and woof of the community?

Entire post quoted from: The Externally Focused Church by Rick Rusaw and Eric Swanson

Other People Exist

I'm the kind of person who prefers to be original.  Someone told me not long ago, "You seem the type to create molds instead of fitting into them."  Though that tendency can be a thorn (which I'll talk about in another post) I took it as a compliment.

Because of that tendency, I rarely copy writing from other people in my blog posts.  However, I ran across a post in one of my favorite blogs that I want to introduce you to.  Brad Leach is the blogauthor of Bleach.  In his February 5th post, Brad makes the bold assertion that "other people exist!"

Here's an excerpt followed by the link for you to follow and read the article in its entirety.

"Yesterday I talked about Life Outside Church of the King and developed one foundational truth.

Other people exist.

Personally, if I spend too much time in my office, I forget that other people exist.  All my work becomes in-house.  But the church is unique in that it is the one organization in the world that exists for the benefit of those who are not yet members.   Other people exist!

You'll then want to read his follow-up post in which he tells the story of God making the point to him in a very personal way the night before he preached the sermon.  That post is here.

Thanks Brad.  I've enjoyed reading your blog for several months now.  Always good stuff!

Free Hugs

Tag!

I've stood by silently on the playground of the blogosphere watching, waiting, hoping that I would someday be invited into the game of tag.  My friend Bob from Missouri paused from the chase, looked my way, and with his heart stricken by my forlorn countenance gently reached out his hand, donned a mischievous grin, smacked the side of my head, and yelled, "Tag, your it!"

Okay, so it wasn't really that dramatic.  Nonetheless, I have indeed been "tagged" by Bob and must now share with you five things about myself that you probably don't know.  Follow this link to read Bob's list.

1.  I am a direct descendant from Mayflower passenger Henry Sampson and some of my ancestors accompanied William the Conqueror during the Norman conquest of 1066.

2.  I was once told, "You have the right to remain silent.  Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law..."

3.  I have been married to the best wife in the world (sorry guys...I got her) for nearly 17 years.

4.  During those seventeen years we have lived in six different states, three of which we have lived in twice.  And we have changed residences ten times during this time span.

5.  I am an apprentice in the Christian Writers Guild with the hopes of being able to support us in retirement as a writer.

That's it!  Thanks Bob for inviting me to play.

Fingerprints

How many things have you touched today?  The snooze button on your alarm clock.  Your robe.  The shower faucet.  Your toothbrush.  The toilet flusher thingy.  Your coffee cup.  Your car door and steering wheel.  Your keyboard.  Your cell phone.  Your fingers touch something thousands of times every day, and at the end of the day you can probably only remember a tiny fraction of them.  Here's the interesting part.  Every single time you touch something, you leave a part of you behind.  Your fingerprints are literally all over your portion of the world.  Those trained to do so can trace your every move through the marks you leave behind every moment of every day.  Even as I type this I continue to be annoyed by the monitor in front of me (I'm at work) because it is covered with probably a hundred smudged fingerprints from the person who had this office before me.  I can't find any Windex.

Just as we leave physical marks behind every moment of every day, we leave other marks as well.  We leave behind "fingerprints" of influence.  This has become very real to me over the past week.  My first Sunday back at our church here in Columbus somebody ran up to me and told me about the Angel Tree Christmas project.  I began the project here back in December of 2000.  We put a tree up in the church, hung paper angels on the tree with names of children from low-income families, and people in the church took the angels and bought gifts for those children which were then delivered to their homes on Christmas Eve.  That first year we had 25 children on the tree.  This person who approached me Sunday took the project and kept it alive after our departure and this year we will have 150 children represented on the tree.

I walked into church this past Sunday morning and saw a mentally handicapped young black man talking to Pat.  I first met this young man in 2001 after I had led our community outreach team to begin a project of opening the church from midnight to 3:00 am on Friday nights and serving a full-course, cooked breakfast to the intoxicated patrons leaving the night club across the street.  This young man, though not a night club patron but a passerby, became a regular on those nights...and he is still coming to church on Sundays.  By the way, Pat is the person who took the project and kept it alive after we left.

During my first week at work I found many of the processes and procedures and materials that I initiated from 1997 to 2001 when I worked here before still in place.  I even found "my shelf" in the storage room, still labeled with my name, and with many of my materials sitting on it.

Every moment of every day we are leaving behind traces of influence.  And those traces have the capacity to bring life to people or to drain life from people.  They have the capacity to bring hope or steal hope.  They have the capacity to leave people feeling loved and cared for or despised and neglected.  They have the capacity to carry people closer to the Savior or push people away from the Savior.

What kind of fingerprints are you leaving behind today?

Reminder To Self

We could be homeless in less than a month.  After two weeks on the market our home is now under contract and we will close the sale on December 18th.  This means that we will have to be completely moved out of our home on December 17th.  And therein lies the problem.  As of now, I see no prospects for living arrangements in Columbus.

Saturday was a trying day.  I spent all morning and afternoon visiting rental home after rental home because we would prefer to rent for a year and take our time looking for a home to purchase.  I started feeling pretty desperate after about the third house I saw.  For a rental payment equal to or higher than the mortgage payment we were making on our beautiful home in North Augusta, the best I could find here was barely a notch above slum-level housing.

The other problem is that housing here is much more expensive in Columbus than it was were we lived.  To maintain the same quality of home here we will most likely pay $40 - $50K more than what we paid for our current house.  And therein lies another problem.  We were really hoping to be able to put large portions of my income each month into an adoption fund.  Our adoption will cost anywhere from $15K to $35K over the next year or so.

So...needless to say, by about 3:00 pm Saturday afternoon I was sinking quickly into a pit of worry.  That combined with the grief I am feeling over the fact that we have a perfectly fine home that we really love sitting in North Augusta...well let's just say that it wasn't a good day.

So now I take a deep breath and remind myself of this reality:

"Can all of your worries add a single moment to your life?  Of course not!  And if worry can't do little things like that, what's the use of worrying over bigger things?  You're father already knows your needs.  He will give you all you need from day to day if you make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.  Wherever your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be."

~Luke 12

Incomplete

It's 11:28 on Saturday night and I'm lying in a strange room by myself.  Tonight is my first night in Columbus, Georgia.  My wife won't be joining me for at least three weeks.  While driving here this afternoon I had about four hours to think about all that has transpired in the four years since we moved away from Columbus in 2002 and all that God has done in and through both Lynn and me.  I believe we are returning to Columbus much different people than we were when we left; better people, I hope.  And if we are indeed returning here better people than we were before, I believe that the past four years and the events we experienced during that time were all vital to that transformation.

One change is very apparent to me right now.  Lynn and I have been married for sixteen and a half years and we've gone through this kind of temporary separation due to relocation three times now.  The first couple of times were difficult.  But this time feels especially hard for me because for the first time in sixteen years I am feeling incomplete apart from Lynn.  I have always loved Lynn and have always hated being apart for lengthy periods of time.  But I have always been a pretty independent spirit who enjoys solitude.  Therefore I usually fared pretty well while apart.

This time is different.  I don't like this.  I feel as if a huge part of me is missing; a part of me that is absolutely vital to my existence.  In Mark 10 Jesus is being challenged by the Pharisees and this time the challenge comes wrapped in a question about marriage and divorce and whether it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife.  Jesus answered by explaining to them the nature of marriage.  "A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.  So they are no longer two, but one."

When we left Illinois a little over a year ago after three years of stating a new church, I knew that we were entering into a season during which our focus would be turned back to ourselves.  We had spent those years focusing all of our time and energy on the people around us and "the work of the ministry."  I knew that our time in Augusta was specially ordained by God as a time for Bill to focus on Lynn and for Lynn to focus on Bill.  It was to be a time in which all of the other voices and demands upon us were to be silenced and for a season, the world would revolve around Bill, Lynn, and God.  I know now that this had to be the case because if we don't have the priorities of our relationship with God and our relationship with one another in their proper place then we are of no good to anyone else as "ministers of the Gospel."

So, here I am back in Columbus.  And I am returning here as a man who is very much in love with his wife, is woefully incomplete apart from her, and is going to be a much more effective minister to others out of a life that is wholly completed by my God and my wife.

Homecoming

When you have committed your life to God's agenda, life becomes a puzzle.  Most of your life you see not much more than a table full of random puzzle pieces that, if you could ever put them all together, form a beautiful picture.  Puzzles frustrate me.  The disconnected pieces hint at the picture, but I am the kind of person who so impatiently wants to see the completed product that I often try to cram pieces together that don't fit.  God is the only one who has actually seen the box top and knows what the picture is supposed to be.  In fact, he's the artist.  We humans have to wait until the end of our lives before we see the finished puzzle.  Oh, it becomes clearer over time as more and more pieces are put together...but it's a long, puzzling process (pun intended).

Lynn and I are rearranging some puzzle pieces.  During the past six months or so God has given us  what seems to be a very clear picture of the kind of church we are to invest our lives into planting and leading.  Back in August we met with our superintendent and the Georgia state church planting director in Columbus, GA to share our vision with them.  They both believed in and embraced the vision and encouraged us to begin moving forward; which we assumed we would do in Augusta since we live here.  No more than 24 hours after that meeting I was contacted by the newspaper that I used to work for in Columbus, GA to see if I would be interested in interviewing for the position my boss held when I was there before. 

Columbus is like a second home to us.  Christ Community Church is our home church.  I was on staff there.  I did my church planting internship there.  The pastor is my best friend and mentor, not to mention that he is the Georgia state church planting director for our denomination.  This is the church family that stood with us through a miscarriage, cancer, and later sent us out to plant our church in Illinois with incredible support and provision.  When I got the call from the newspaper, it felt like a God thing.  If it had been any other newspaper I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought. 

Long story short:  I interviewed for the position.  They offered it to me.  I accepted.  I start there on Monday, November 13th.

I called my friend and pastor, Keith, shortly after being contacted by the newspaper and asked him to help me make sense of what God was calling us to do in ministry and how that could fit with a return to Columbus.  Keith was pleased to hear that we were returning, as are many of our friends.  Keith shared with me that on that day in August as I shared my heart for church planting in ways that are somewhat different from traditional church planting projects he was moved and excited because he had been feeling much the same way about what church planting in this and future generations would look like.  He is also passionate about his church, Christ Community, working to plant daughter churches around the Columbus metro area, much like the kind of church that we envision.

How does our time in Augusta fit into the puzzle?  Well, this time in Augusta - working for the newspaper here - was essential in opening the employment door in Columbus.  I had to succeed in my work here first to give me the credibility to be offered the position in Columbus, since I had been out of the newspaper industry for a few years.  Like I quoted from Mark Batterson in a previous post, God is in the resume building business in order to get us where He wants us.

I don't know how all of the pieces will fit together down the road.  What I do know is that this job opportunity will allow us to begin the process of adopting a child next year without financial worry.  I do know that we are returning to a very healthy, loving, missional church family that is passionate about reaching and discipling lost people.  I do know that we'll be back in relationship with many, many people who love and care about us.  I do know that ministry opportunities await us upon our return, most likely including an opportunity to lead a church planting project in the not too distant future.  I do know, that today I see the picture behind the puzzle pieces becoming a little more clear, and I like what I see. 

Changes

I am caught up in the beauty of this day.  It's Sunday morning and I'm sitting at Panera Bread in Augusta, GA enjoying a fresh cup of Columbian and a banana nut muffin.  My table is near the window and the first thing I notice is the sky.  It is as blue as I've seen it in a long while.  Aside from a few aged jet contrails off in the distance, there isn't a cloud to be seen.  I notice the clarity of the air.  No fog or haze today.  The trees - some of them still green, some hinting at yellow, and one blazing red - are sharply illuminated by the sun in brilliant contrast to the blue-sky backdrop.  There is a chill in the air.  For the first time in many months the warmth of the blankets complicated my efforts to arise from bed and begin the day.  It's autumn; one of my two favorite times of the year.

Every autumn my mind is flooded with memories.  There were the hayrides and bonfires and weenie roasts of my youth.  I still recall autumn in Minnesota later in life with the aromas and tastes of apple cider and bratwurst cooking on the grill as we lived life in a valley between bluffs blanketed with a technicolor tapestry of leaves anticipating the first flakes of snow.

People say that there are four seasons.  I'm not convinced.  I believe that there are only two seasons separated by breathtaking moments of transition and it's in those spring and autumn moments of transition that my heart and mind is most profoundly stirred. The gray, cold months of winter seem to drag on lifelessly as I long for the explosive moments of awakening and rebirth that the warmth of spring will bring.  Minutes, hours, and days all seem to slow down under the oppressive heat and humidity of summer until finally one day the hum of the air-conditioning unit is replaced by the rush of a north breeze shaking the leaves out of their lethargy for their grand finale performance.

I believe I am most caught up in the beauty and anticipation of seasonal transitions because that is where I seem to live my life; in transition.  I can't explain why.  Some people are born, live a few decades, and die without ever really experiencing dramatic transitions.  My first twenty years of life were like that.  I lived the first eighteen years in the same town of five-hundred people.  All but one of those years were lived on the same plot of land.  I had the same friends all through my childhood.  I grew up under the noses of the same people who watched my dad grow up and knew my grandparents and their parents before them by name.  Nothing ever really changed except my growing discontent with the sameness.

The past sixteen years have taken Lynn and me through times of dramatic and frequent changes in geography, vocation, health, and spirit.  There have been moments of adventure, disappointment, joy, sadness, hellos, goodbyes, and reunions.  Most of those moments have come unannounced; simply showing up on the doorstep one day.  Though they are a blend of good and bad, happy and sad, I am grateful for those moments.

I believe I am becoming a better man.  And I believe that I can credit this to the transitions of life.  Sameness begets sameness.  Change begets change.  Every transitional moment brings with it both the opportunity and necessity to dig deep within oneself and challenge previously unchallenged attitudes, fears, hopes, and weaknesses.

There are times when I think to myself that stability and sameness might be a nice change.  But ultimately my prayer is that God will never stop transforming me until there is nothing left to transform.  And I believe that this prayer in itself is ultimately a welcoming of continued transition.  There is a paradoxical sameness about transition, and it seems that in transition we find ourselves most in rhythm with the world around us and the consistency, stability, and sameness of God.

"The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.  The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round, ever returning on it's course.  All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.  To the place the streams come from, there they return again."

~Ecclesiastes 1