DownshoreDrift

Earlier today I received an email from a young lady regarding my Bonhoeffer post of this morning. It really touched me and she said that I could post it. I thought it might cause us all to think a little bit more deeply about the consequences of NOT being the type of community of believers that God calls us to be. I also thought it was quite prophetic as she calls us to look for the people around us instead of just looking out for ourselves. Here it is:

Alan,

                                  

I read today's blog.  I would've posted a comment, but the computer I'm working from won't allow it.  I wholeheartedly agree with Dietrich Bonhoeffer . . . But I'm frustrated.  I have experienced the need for church fellowship and true community for a long time.  I've said for many years that if I could, I would live in the church.  Unfortunately, it hasn't happened...  By "live in the church" I meant live in the community in which wish dreams are not a factor, grace is abundant, and like-mindedness and common goals are the norm.  I have inwardly begged to be a part of this type of community.  I have cried out to the people of the church to possess this type of mind-set.  I have NEEDED to feel like I could go to my Christian friends and tell them my struggles and hear real truth.  Yet I feel more comfortable going to non-Christian friends.  I have NEEDED to spend time with Christian people who know my life and faults and love me just the same.  Yet my non-Christian friends are more available and less judgemental.  I have NEEDED people to be all up in my business and pull things out of me for accountability purposes.  Yet my non-Christian friends pull things out of me, but have no truth to give me in return.  I have felt the sting of feeling like an outcast many times for sharing my life's history and current struggles with people of the church, not receiving the grace that I know God gives me.  I have experienced the frustration of seeing people on Sundays, smiling, laughing, singing, and praying and leaving not to hear a word from any of them until the next week.  All the while, I am crying inside, begging them to help me, be my friend, and tell me truth without judging my faults.  I KNOW my faults.  No one has to tell me that I'm doing something wrong.  I KNOW when I'm doing something wrong.  What I need is someone to hold me accountable to it and someone to pull things out of me and someone, ANYONE, to love me anyway.  I know the wish dream Mr. Bonhoeffer is talking about, and I have been aggravated.  I couldn't have written that excerpt better myself . . . .

                                                                      

. . . . I feel as if I come to church with a veil over my face, but not purposely.  I have nothing to hide.  I admit that I have faults.  I admit that I still do wrong.  I admit that I struggle in many, many areas and I struggle hard.  But I also admit that I love my Jesus just as much as any other believer. I admit that I would be among the lowest of the low without God's grace and love in my life.  And I admit that no matter what good or bad I do, or how the church changes or stays the same, I will ALWAYS have Christ in my heart.  So, I WISH everyone in the church knew me, cared to know me, and hear the things that I have to say.  But it seems some people would just rather live in their wish dream, get their business done with God, and go home to their earthly family.  They don't have time to get to know other people; they have their own lives to live. Or they would rather not hear that someone's life has been/is messed up; they have their own lives to worry about.

                                                                     

Perhaps I seem to be coming across as extremely negative and, again, I apologize.  I've just recently been in that place of need once again, so I'm extra frustrated with the church.  Don't get me wrong, I'll get over it.  I LOOOVE the church.  I don't know if I can ever express how much.  And I am not innocent of ever being part of any kind of wish dream community.  But I realize more and more how much change in all of us needs to be done. 

Thoughts? How can be we a type of community that really sees people the way they are and engages with their life in a way that helps them, instead of being communities that see people the way we wish they were and does not want to get our hands dirty? Sometimes, I feel like if anyone has a problem, they become a project to fix so the church is not defiled, rather than a person to love because God loved them first. What about you?

Probably one of the best statements I've ever read on the church and Christian community comes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. It comes from pages 26-29. I have been preaching through Acts and this fits quite nicely. Stop everything you are doing and read this right now!  You won't be sorry!

Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusonment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

In 1994, I was a 19 year old college sophomore from Mississippi State University who went on summer missions with the Baptist Student Union. I was sent to California where I met Greg Sumii, who was the director of the summer missions program for the California State Baptist Convention. We had an orientation in the mountains at the state baptist camp called Jenness Park and two life changing events happened to me there. First: I met my future wife, Erika. She was a college student from the University of Alabama who was also a summer missionary. And, she was really hot. She still is. I remember the first time I saw her. We talked later, and while everything was very spiritual and godly in nature, a connection was formed that we nurtured throughout the summer by writing letters. When we returned to our universities, we stared dating (MSU and Alabama are only 90 miles apart). But, I digress.

Second: I was taught the mantra of the California BSU Summer Missionary: Pray. Be Flexible. Have a Good Attitude. I was so open and teachable at the time that it made an incredible difference. I digested that teaching and incorporated it into my spiritual DNA. I did Vacation Bible Schools all summer, and I prayed for the kids each and every day. I prayed for them until my heart was broken and I found myself weeping over them. I prayed for their souls, and before every presentation of the gospel with either children, youth, or adults that summer, I prayed that God would break me and anoint me with the power of His Spirit. We saw over 60 decisions for Christ that summer from our little team of myself and another girl from a community college in Mississippi. God answered prayers.

I also learned to be flexible. Plans were changed at the last minute. Things did not go as planned. Host homes fell through and supplies were not available. It didn't matter. I was flexible, right? Along with that came a consistent practice of having a good attitude. Whatever came my way, I made it a habit to praise God and not complain. After a week in the mountains with 40 teenagers, I became deathly ill. Apparently, they meant it when they said that you were not to drink the water from the mountain streams. I developed some type of intesinal sickness that produced diarrhea that left me dehydrated. I passed out one day from it. The problem was, I had been placed in a home by my host family across the street from them. He was a pastor and he arranged for me to stay in the home of a neighbor while they were on vacation. While I was sick, neither he nor his wife came to check on me. Barefoot and delirious, I wandered over there one day and said that I was dehydrated and needed some Gatorade. This was after I had passed out on the floor of the bathroom. The pastor's wife gave me the keys to the van and sent me to a convenience store. Still barefoot and delirious, I drove to get myself something to drink. I did not complain or even see anything wrong with the way I was being treated. I was thankful for the Gatorade and the relief that it provided. After praying for myself profusely, I recovered and was able to continue with mission work throughout the rest of the summer. I wish I still had that attitude all the time now, but I was a missionary, right? How could I see things any differently?

I only tell that story because there was something very powerful in Greg Sumii's ministry to me that summer. I learned that when I am serving the Lord it is not about me. It is about Him and the people that He is sending me to. Problems may arise and difficulties may come, but our strength is in the Lord. My wife and I taught these three principles to the 23 from our church who went down to the Gulf Coast on the mission trip last week. We ingrained it into the children and whenever fatigue or crankiness would begin to set in, we would remind them of the 3 Rules for Missionaries. It worked great. We had a great plan of having a 4th of July Picnic for all of the people that we had met in Waveland, and when the skies opened with a deluge 5 minutes after the picnic started and we got completely rained out, no one complained. The kids had joy playing in the rain and we just changed our plans and delivered the food to the people instead. We had enough left over for a group of 15 teenagers who were helping work on a home as well. God was glorified through the food we delivered as well as through our attitudes.

Those lessons learned long ago have served me well. I am thankful to Greg Sumii and the Baptist Student Union Summer Missions Program. I am thankful that I met my wife there. I am also thankful that God taught me through all of that that we are all missionaries all the time and we need to always pray, be flexible, and have a good attitude! I confess that I often fall short of those ideals, but when I think back to that life shaping experience, I am reminded of the power of simplicity and obedience.

I heard this refrain quite a few times while we were down on the Gulf Coast this past week. Everyone believed in God. Everyone. They all pray. They all have some sort of faith. The Mississippi Gulf Coast is a heavily Catholic region and there is a pervading sense of spirituality and of faith in God.  Yet, so many really do not have a relationship with Christ. They are not sure if they are going to heaven. They hope that God is not wrathful toward them.

As I talked with our team, I told them that we were dealing with people who believed in both faith and works. Our job was to encourage them toward the faith side. We were to pray with them, to talk about Jesus be the only sacrifice for sin, to encourage them to place their full faith and trust in Jesus and to not believe in anything else. At times it was difficult, but at other times, the people were very open.

But, by and large, most saw their faith in God through an individualistic lense. They could pray and follow God on their own, so why did they need the church? Why attend church when God was personal or I could just engage in some type of abstract belief in Him and receive His blessing? All in all, spiritual life was about them, but it rarely reached into their everyday life. Yet, they were so very glad that the Baptists had come. Over and over again I heard from Catholics that if it had not been for the Baptists and the other Christian groups, they do not know what they would have done.

Fortunately for them, all of those Christians who came did not share the same individualistic notions of faith that some of them did. Many want to both believe in God and maintain their own independence. They want to have faith, yet have total freedom. Yet, God set it up where all followers of Christ would gather together in a church, the ecclesia, the called out ones. As we gather together loving God and loving others, we experience His presence and power, both individually and collectively. We also become His hands and feet and we bring His Kingdom into this world - together. Every group that goes down to New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast is giving a powerful witness of the necessity and beauty of God's people, the church, being who they are created to be.  If your church has not yet gone down, you are missing a historical moment that will likely not come around again anytime soon. Sow seeds into the lives of the people of the Gulf Coast region.

Yes, people still say that they don't need the church to follow God. But, they are saying it with much less confidence as they see God's people live out their faith and not just talk about it. Hearts are being turned and people are asking questions. They are opening up to the Lord. That tends to happen when a Baptist group that you have never met travels from Tennessee and rebuilds your house.

Jesus said it was loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. Paul agreed and said that he preached nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, which was the fulfillment of Jesus' love for the Father and for us (But God demonstrates His own love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us - Romans 5:8). Loving God. Loving People.

I'm in Waveland, Mississippi this week with a group from our church to work with Pathfinder Mission. We brought a bunch of families down with their kids to visit people, help them out some, pray with them, counsel them, and throw a big party on Wednesday for the 4th of July. I am seeing some people that I met last year (check out my posts from the Coast from July, 2006) and am catching up on how they have progressed. Over and over I am hearing one constant refrain: If it weren't for Christians and the church, we don't know where we would be. This is coming from many who are non-Christians. They are so thankful. They welcome us into their homes out of respect for all who have come before us. They welcome us and thank us because of all that have come before who have loved God and have loved them. Christianity has been lived out down here and it has made a difference.

But, we don't always experience this in the Church in America. I wonder if a big part of our problem has been that we have allowed "truth" to be taught to us by academics who have parsed every verb and split every hair. I wonder if we have allowed the pharisees, who are the experts in the Law, to dictate to us what it means to believe the truth and we have submitted ourselves to that interpretation to the point that it has affected our ability to work with others. Maybe we should take some time to listen to those swinging the hammers and leading the mission teams. There is a lady that I met last year named Hazel. She is in her 80's, and when I met her she was living in a FEMA trailer next to a home that had been stripped to the studs. Today, I saw her in a newly repaired home. It was fixed up by a church from Massachusetts who came down again and again. I don't know every jot and tittle of their theology, but they told her about Jesus and they showed her love. I have a good feeling that I'll see them in heaven. If I will be with them in heaven, shouldn't I find a way to work with people like that now? As a matter of fact, unless they are teaching something that will keep people out of heaven, do I not have a responsibility to find common ground with them and keep the unity of the saints in Christ? Once you really begin to face the desperate need and lostness of people, it is hard to understand why you would not want to work with as many Christians as you could to bring the love of Jesus to the Nations.

When Christians are on mission together, the world experiences the love of Christ made flesh. We become His hands and feet. Those hands and feet continue to make a difference on the Gulf Coast. If your church has yet to take a trip down here, you are missing an incredible blessing. So many are still in need and there is still so much work to be done. Everyone that could help themselves has already done so.  Much of the work that is left is among the elderly, the disabled, and those who are alone and have no means of support. They are good people and they are trying their best. They just need a helping hand. Please pray about joining the massive parade of Christians who have come down here and have made a difference in the lives of people on the Gulf Coast.

Something tells me that I am seeing the core of Christianity lived out down here. Theology makes a lot more sense when people are living it instead of arguing about it. When you are in trouble, there is little time to divide over every little doctrine. You roll your sleeves up, find out where you can cooperate, and you get to work building the Kingdom - one broken life at a time.

I'll have more reports and a lot of pictures later in the next couple of days. You really need to see the before and after pictures of Hazel's house!

Summer is almost upon us and every year our church travels . . . a lot. We also get pretty laid back as we slow down from a fast paced school year as we have a very young church with lots of school aged children. Plus, many of our folks have family that lives out of town. Combine all of that together and on any given Sunday, you have a good percentage of our church on the road. Those gone one week will be back the next, but then many others will be gone. Over the past couple of years, we have tried some creative things to keep our folks together, grow deeper in the Lord, impact the lives of others, and have a lot of fun in the process! Here are a  some things that we have done and are doing this year:

First of all, we do Bible study for adults and youth and have AWANA for kids on Wednesday nights during the school year, but during the summer we change it all up. We take a couple of weeks off in May and then embark upon a 7 week summer Bible study for adults. Two years ago we studied Jesus, God the Son, and last year we studied the Holy Spirit. This year, we will study God the Father. Our children do something called Summer WOW, which is pretty much a whole lot of fun activities with Bible study and stories mixed in. We kind of extend VBS over 7 weeks one night a week instead of having it for one week solid. We will go into the neighborhoods and try and make it an outreach as well.  After that is over with at the end of June, we'll take the month of July off on Wednesday nights. Also,

• We change up our Sunday School classes and have two month terms during the summer.
• We give our Sunday School teachers a break if they want one by finding others who will just teach during the summer. Everyone appreciates that!
• Between Thanksgiving and Christmas of every year, we have A Time to Serve, which is basically a series of about 8 service opportunities so our folks can pick a time to give back to others. This summer, we are going to have A Time to Share, where we will sponsor 10 or so evangelistic/service ministry opportunities so that our folks can serve others and also be in a situation where they can directly tell people about Jesus. We will do things like have a yard work day where we go into the neighborhood behind the church and do people's lawns for free, take a trip to the Gulf Coast where we will work with Pathfinder Mission and host a 4th of July Party like we did last year, have a neighborhood sports camp, do an outreach in a park through passing out water and a puppet show for kids, etc, have neighborhood parties, Back Yard Bible Clubs, etc. We have lots of ideas and all of them are pretty low overhead endeavors. But, they seem to make a high impact.
• We want to have a joint worship service with an African American church that we've been partnering with over the past 8 months or so. We are thinking that we might do this on a Sunday night in June.
• We'll have a couple of pool parties for the kids at a neighborhood pool. Then, in August, we'll get ready to go back to school by having the Fun Night @ the Y where we rent out the local YMCA with their basketball courts, waterpark, swimming pools, etc. We are inviting another church to join us this year for the event. It is a lot of fun!
• Intentional Family Discipleship - We are encouraging all of our parents to intentionally disicple their children this summer by using I'm A Christian Now!, published by Lifeway. We have had so many kids come to Christ over the last year, and we have so many children in our church, I thought this would be a great way for us to focus together on making sure that our children are grounded in the Lord. Plus, you can take this with you wherever you go during the summer.

All of these events and activities are VERY relational. So much so that you barely know that they're organized! We really just set up times to hang out together and accomplish some things for the Lord. Each get together and event involves a whole lot of sharing, listening, laughing, and prayer. God seems to have used these things in the past and we are praying for Him to do the same this year. 

We recognize that folks are often headed their separate ways a bit during the summer, so we try to have events that bring people together and make it easy to touch people's lives. All that I listed might seem like a lot of stuff for the summer, but most of it will not involve everyone at once. People can do different things as they are available and in town. We'll see how it goes.

What are some creative ways that you are adapting to the different pace of the summer months to know God better, share Him with others, and have a bit of fun in the process?