Call

so what’s your call?
we had a couple over for smores and peppermint hot chocolate; and to talk about London. we had asked them to pray about supporting us financially, and they wanted to know more about what we were getting ourselves into. i know the woman a little better than her husband, and it was she who asked me about my call to London.
my initial response to the question was: calling is a load of crap. this of course was not an appropriate answer, and she told me so. but i was speaking out of personal dissatisfaction with the way the term “calling” is used in the church in the USA.
it seems like much that passes for “calling” is little more than a strong desire. a guy likes to speak, and wants to do it in a way that people will listen to him…so he starts to think he’s “called” to preach. those who are not “called” into leadership in the church use the fact of their non-calling to abdicate responsibility. i have actually heard people say that it’s the responsibility of the pastor to preach the gospel to the unsaved (because that’s what they’re called to do) and other people in the church should just bring their friends to get preached to.
i'd rather have people say “hey, i like to preach” or “i don’t feel like sharing the gospel with my neighbor…it’s too scary,” and be done with it.
Os Guinness in his book The Call says that we are first and foremost called to belong to God. anything else we do in life is in response to that first call. i love that! whatever i do, i do it in response to the fact that i belong to God. hence the title of this blog.
so maybe i'm ranting a little, but i wish we’d spend more time responding to our call to belong to God, and less time worrying about what we’re being “called” to in life. what was it St. Augustine said? love God and do as you please?

Change

lots of changes going on in our home over the past week. our housemates had their baby yesterday - baby erika was born at 9:10 am. the other three kids are eagerly waiting for the new addition to arrive home.
we began contacting people about providing financial support to our family while we minister in London. the humble place of a receiver in a society that is built on the exaltation of self-sufficiency. just think of the twinkle you get in your eye when you hear about someone being "financially independent" and how much you want to be them. we are totally financially dependent - not exactly something most people strive for - not something i particularly want to strive for. but so it is.
we've begun to talk to andi and jodie about the move to london. so far, they want to bring their blankets, their pacifiers, their clothes, and their potties. i'm sure the list will grow.
the certainty and urgency of getting to london in January still feels a little surreal. especially given the way our lives have gone the past two years. here's how our friend michelle describes the course of our life in a recent e-mail:

ready, set, go
stop!
pause
switch tracks--go!
WRONG TRACK GET BACK TO THE FIRST ONE
RUN RUN RUN HURRY GO

Contemplative Prayer

ever consciously started to pray by being quiet and just listening? on sunday i led our adult sunday school class in an exercise in contemplative prayer. on of our elders began the morning by reminding us that prayer is about conversation with the living God. in conversation, we don't always talk...sometimes we listen.
so, we had people begin by reading a passage from Isaiah and listening for a word or phrase that spoke to them. they read either Isaiah 25:6-9 or Isaiah 53:1-10. we then took 3 minutes of silence to be quite and listen for God's voice in the passage.
then, because God speaks through the Bible, we read Matt 26:26-28 in conjuction with the Isaiah passage, and then took silence to listen for how God's message grew richer.
finally, we had people look at one of several paintings that were done in response to the last supper, and again took silent time to allow the visual images to draw out the multi-faced beauty of God's word.
we asked people to take five minutes to write a short prayer of response to whatever the Lord had been saying to them that morning. some people responded with repentance, others with adoration and praise.
then, the scary (and some would say bold) part: we asked for volunteers to read their prayers to the congregation during the celebration of the Lord's Supper at the main worship meeting that morning.

here's why i'm so excited about this: first, it was just plain cool. people who did the exercise were blessed immensely by it. second, it puts into practice a number of the values that i think are key in the emerging church. things like the need for "white space" as my buddy Dan Macha would say - a conjunction of time and space that is consciously carved out for listening for the voice of God. things like valuing the input of all members of God's family. modern churches called this "every member ministry" but didn't execute it practically in the way they run their worship services...Paul called it the way things were in the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 14:26 and following. I had always read these verses as a condemnation of the chaos caused by various people having things to say during the "service", of of the reason for why we only let the pastor speak and plan things out ahead of time, but lately i'm wondering if he wasn't saying that since everyone has something to offer, they should each be given a chance to offer it in an orderly way that demonstrates the value of what each person brings. maybe i'll post on this more later. Emerging Worship first turned me on to this way of understanding the passage.)

Election Perspectives

is president bush this country's David, or is he our Saul? In the book of Samuel in the Old Testament, Israel asked God for a king - and the Lord delivered...but it didn't exactly turn out the way Israel thought it would. saul was a man who appeared to be just what Israel needed at the time. but in the end, he led Israel away from her God. then the Lord replaced him with a man after his own heart - David.
i've heard a lot in the media lately about how the church got bush elected. so i'm wondering - will it turn out the way we hope it will? or will God maybe give us what we've asked for, only for us to realize we have no idea what we've really asked for?
Andrew Jones asks Is God up to something in USA? the ensuing discussion is great. certainly i don't agree with everything that's been posted, but people raise some great questions. i especially resonate with the post that connects the church's calling with God's call to Adam to fill the earth and subdue it. in Jesus, our true existence as humans is restored. we take our place as God's representative rulers - his "vice-gerents" as my seminary profs used to call it. this is what it means for the Kingdom of God to come.
what's all this mean for the USA? i'd love to read your thoughts

We're Going to London!

we heard from London City Mission today. they have invited us to spend a year at one of their outreach centers. the biggest news for us is that they want us to arrive in London the middle of January! that gives us just two short months here in the States before we leave. in a sense it's sooner than we expected...but in another sense, it's fantastic. our lives have been in limbo for a while - not a bad place to be, needing to meet Jesus in the midst of uncertainty - but it's also nice to meet Jesus on the road to London.

London City Mission

for the last two years the city of London has been on our hearts. the entire story of how it got there and what's happened as a result has interesected nearly every part of our lives. we were ready to move there a year and a half ago to be part of an effort to see new fellowships of Jesus-followers raised up in the city. the group we were going with, however, asked us to wait for a year. we had been living a whirlwind that involved seminary in three years and bringing two children into the world. we needed a break. we needed to learn to be near our Father. rest. intimacy. at 24, it's pretty hard to hear someone tell you you're burned out and your marriage is heading for trouble if you don't do something about it (that's a problem 40 year olds are supposed to have). but it was what we needed. it was what our Father knew would woo us into deeper romance with him.
but in the midst of all that, he never took London off our hearts. in the coming months, we are hoping to move to london for a year to learn more about the city and be involved in the movement of our Father's kingdom there. we have asked London City Mission if we can join the work at one of their outreach centers. on tuesday, they will be making their decision. pray with us that our Dad would make his will known to us in the decision of LCM, and that through it all his heart would become ours.

Maturity in the Emerging Church

we had a good time of prayer and laying our hearts out before each other and the Lord this morning. thanks to all of you who were joining us in prayer.
one of the issues that came up i think merits a wider discussion: what is the role of older, more mature christians in the emerging church? for many boomers in the american church, the emgerging church looks young and feels too 'hip' for them. we saw it when we started having a public worship gathering led by our college group at church. the older people who came to the first one felt like they were out of place. i don't think they disliked what was going on...but they felt like they didn't fit in. they didn't stick out to me, but they said they felt like they stuck out.
how do we as young leaders in the church draw from the experience and wisdom of those who have gone before us, and at the same time not push them into the background? it seems to me that the emerging church is a place for anyone who genuinely desires to express their devotion to Jesus in real, personal ways, and wants to experience the nearness of his Spirit, no matter the age. how do we empower the grey-haired (or no-haired) among us to be turned loose for powerful ministry in the emerging church?

London Prayer

We're meeting tomorrow morning at 9 to pray with two other couples about church planting in London. these couples are significantly older than Somer and me, and we would be privileged to minister alonside them. they have been serving in the church in america and in africa for many years. we have much to learn from them.
pray the Holy Spirit will make clear whether he's calling us to be a team together in london.

Lectio Divina

sunday night during our regular meeting with group of young adults from our church we practiced the ancient method of meditation on scripture called lectio divina. we used the story of Zachaeus from Luke 19. i had done something like it once before when i was in north africa, but it was the first time most of the rest of the group had done anything like it.
i really enjoyed it because it allowed each member of the group to seek the Lord on their own, and then to bring what the Lord was teaching them in the passage as an offering to the rest of the group. the primary focus was on listening to the Lord in his word, and out of that experience of him encouraging each other.
part of lectio divina involves looking for a word or phrase that sticks out from a passage, and then repeating that phrase silently, seeking to hear the voice of the Lord. at the risk of cheapening the experience, i'll share with you the phrase that hit me:
"here and now i give half my possessions..."
no further explanation...just let that sit with you for a while