The gift of availability

I often tell people that I've been given the gift of availability.  Mike Yaconelli said several years ago, "I think the Christians will be known as the people who have time for you: 'Wanna talk?  Sure.  How long you got? Long as you need.'"  I took that to heart, and as I say, I've been given the gift of being able to take that to heart and put it into practice.

If you don't know who Mike is, here are a few quotes from a way-off-the-chain, passionate, flawed guy who had a lot of encouragement to share with us not-there-yet Christians.  More on him in a future post.

We used to go to a church that had a sign you could see as you exited the parking lot:  "You are now entering the mission field."  This news story from Wichita is a reminder of that truth, and an illustration of just how beautiful the light can be that shines into the very dark places of sexual abuse.  I doubt that anything in Shelly's church experience prepared her for this, but I'm certain that God prepared her for that time and place and family.  What did she do to prepare?  I have no idea, but I know that she chose to be available for two young girls, and changed their lives forever for the better.

Statistically, there's a rape/abuse or post-abortion victim on every pew.  Several, actually.  Now that's a mission field.  Who's being available for them?  I hope we all are...

Tomorrow, the story of a local couple who lost their 28-year old son to prescription drug overdose.  They decided to say NOPE, and make their grief available to others, that others might live.

Misfit Christian book PDF is now downloadable

The pdf (text only; no cover yet) of Between the Lines: Christianity for Misfit Christians is now online .  Free download.  No digital rights management (DRM) or anything like that.  Over the next few days I'll convert the master file into Kindle, Nook, and MobiPocket formats for e-readers (test readers wanted), and send it off to Amazon CreateSpace for paperback-ing.

You may be wondering, "Why is he giving the book away? Is he that desperate?"  Well, maybe.  Aside from believing that sharing is a cardinal virtue (see John Piper's website for a detailed explanation), I liked a lot of the book Free by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine.  But that's a maybe-future post.

Feedback welcome.  (Merciful feedback, please!  Flesh-and-blood human here...)

JC

They Like Jesus but...

Finding your voice sometimes means listening to someone else's.

One voice that has helped me since 2005 has been Dan Kimball.  Dan is a caring, thoughtful voice for change, in my opinion.  I first heard him speak at Youth Specialties' National Youth Workers Convention on how odd a lot of "Christian" paraphernalia ("Jesus bars," "Testa-mints" etc.) looks to non-Christians, and how it un-helps us.  Very refreshing.  He doesn't mock anyone; he's genuinely concerned that we pay attention to those we're sent here for.  (Even more refreshing!)

When he wrote the book They Like Jesus but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations, I knew it was a "buy" for me.  He's writing primarily to church leaders, so this book may not be for everyone, although it's a good read for someone who wants to hear a full-on encourager.  He basically interviewed friends who fit the title, and asked them "why."  (The fact that he has friends who aren't churchgoing Christians should be a clue; he's a pastor who spends a lot of time in coffee bars. On purpose.)

If you'd like to hear the vantage point of some people who love Jesus but not the churches they see (or, often, the Christians they see), I encourage you to consider this book.  For me, Dan let me know that I'm not the only crazy one out here who thinks Jesus band-aids are silly, that "churches" are too much like ecclesiastical bowling clubs, and that my time is best invested in Jesus and the ones he came to save.

Here's hoping you find blessing in the book.

Book status update: pdf posting tomorrow

My first book, Between the Lines: Christianity for Misfit Christians, is ready for print layout.  In this electronic age, the first thing that gets done is posting the pdf to the website.  That will happen tomorrow morning, God willing and internet working.

Pray for grace, please.  Thanks,


JC

Validation

I come from an aerospace background, some of which is about the business of system and software validation:  does this new system do what the specification says it should do?  There are lots of ways to do that, like simulation, test and analysis.  The goal is always to help the product be what it's designed to be.

This little video (16 min) illustrates what happens when someone decides to validate other people.

Peter Lord was recently interviewed here by Seth Barnes of Adventures in Missions, and said he wished he'd preached less and invested deeply in just a few people instead.  He described the American church as "better than nothing" but pointed out that the weak aren't heard in groups larger than 12.  And "church is particularly for the weak."

He also once said, "If you want to improve a product, find out what's wrong and fix it.  If you want to improve people, find out what they're doing right and commend it."

What would happen if we started validating the beautiful parts of each other that our good God designed into us? Maybe even more often than pointing out each others' (real) deep flaws?  There's a lot in the Bible along those lines. Let's give it a try.

I'm not those guys on TV

Televangelists troll up money and preach to camera lenses. Politicians spin and package their agendas. Many of both pretend to somehow represent Christians.  Even worse, they pretend to represent Jesus.

In talking to normal people, I find that I often have to overcome a bunch of damage done by these politi-vangelist people.  Their fog of disinformation keeps getting in my way and deceiving folks who really want to know Jesus better.

I know I’m not the only one, but I got a huge reassurance a few days ago.  Janet Conrad of Christians Tired of Being Misrepresented has a blog and Facebook page – the name says it all.  Her Google alert query found this site.  Her site has hundreds of fans who are also tired of being sterotyped.

From that link also came Mark Sandlin’s blog, The God Article.  He’s a pastor in North Carolina.

I think the lesson the politi-vangelists can teach me, by negative example, is to jettison stereotypes.  I live a better life when I keep my eyes open and know people one at a time instead of by labels.  Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would guide me into all truth, to help me to distinguish right from wrong, evil from wounded.  He’s always been trustworthy.  Why not now, too?

Prayer

I was re-listening to a favorite talk from a few years ago by Mark Oestreicher, then-president of Youth Specialties (YS).  He called the talk "A Rant from a runt on what the church is doing wrong in America."  You can read the text version here if you like.

He reminded me again that prayer can be aided by silence and time.  One way that has been used in the history of Christianity is to have things like prayer walks, stations, gardens and such.  One that shows up in architecture is the labyrinth, which is a path with designated locations to pray about specific things.

Two years ago I walked through a labyrinth at a YS youth workers' convention.  They had assembled a quiet place, with an audio "tour guide" and relaxed background music to lead you from station to station.  It was a wonderful time between  me and the Lord, where just for a season he made an ordinary place into a holy space.  (If you think this sounds a little creepy, it wasn't.  Actually, the creepy New-Agey stuff is mimicking Christian tradition, not the other way around.)

There, the idea crystallized for me that we are held, and beheld.  Held by God, in his arms; beheld, as in gazed upon with love and acceptance.

I also heard the phrase, "Living as the body of Christ hasn't been tried and found wanting; it has been tried and found hard."  It's hard in the sense that living as a no-kidding inter-dependent community is counter-cultural.  But it's very, very rewarding.

Perhaps it isn't a coincidence that two of the major themes of the book are along those same lines.

Having told you a little of why I think labyrinths are a good thing, I'll suggest you consider learning a bit more.  Maybe you need a way to help yourself get alone and quiet with God.  Maybe you need encouragement to be quiet and still, in the midst of our noisy and busy worlds.

The one I walked was developed by Johny Baker and a very small but very creative group of Christians in London.  The details, including an online version, are here.

If you're feeling stuck and prayerless, perhaps using a new-old format will help.  I hope so.

Obviously, I overestimated my abilities...

...at incorporating edits in the book manuscript, doing layout, etc.  It'll be a couple of days, because the lady who edited/reviewed this for me did a wonderful (detailed) job.  (Thanks, Christina!) I needed this!

Hope for the desperate

He looks and acts kind of like the postman he was; tall, quick-talking and moving.  He hasn’t handled mail for ten years now.  He’s been too busy.

The Clearwater Center of Hope (aka Clearwater Dream Center) exists for the purpose of helping men escape drug and alcohol dependence.  But it never exactly had a master plan.  You could almost say it crept up on Dale and Vicki Hendry.

Dale went to Countryside Christian Center in 1993 after a rough divorce because he thought it would be a good place to look for a new wife.  (Hey, you’ve done some funky stuff, too.)  There, Jesus met him and saved him.  The wife, Vicki, came later, in 1998.  She too was newly Jesus-found.

They started helping people who needed help.  Dale started giving people groceries, eventually handing out 6000 pounds per month.  One person led to another, and another.  By 2000, Dale felt like God was asking him to quit the post office and go to school (Bible, etc.) full time.  I’m pretty sure people said he was crazy.  I’m pretty sure he said he was crazy, a few times.  And more people kept coming.  Somehow, God kept providing enough housing and food for them.

There’s never a shortage of people who need help escaping their chemical prisons.  Even today, partnering with over a dozen other churches and organizations, there’s always a shortage of resources to help them: people, housing, money, and so on.  These men are addicted to powerful drugs.  It takes the strongest drug of all, God, to overcome them.  But God works miracles.  Strangely enough, we’re usually surprised.

God raised up a ministry in the rough High Point neighborhood.  He raised it up independent of traditional churches, but connected to them.  He didn’t insist that the ministry sit under a particular label or franchise.  He just gave a couple a calling, showed them one step at a time, and kept building.  One step at a time.  One man at a time.

The Dream Center program is intense; Monday through Friday are 12-14 hour days.  Study, work, study some more.  Other activities and work fill the weekend.  Accountability is very high.  Not everyone makes it.

Men come in with multiple DUIs, arrests, and often years of jail time.  Many are homeless.  Desperation is pretty much a prerequisite.  Men who choose the God-drug often graduate from the program and stay clean.  Those are the stories that make your heart sing.

Sometimes the stories don’t end so well.  Jason was a major-college graduate, with lots of potential and a crack addiction.  He cycled in and out of the program several times.  While out the last time, he said, “Pastor Dale, I’m going to die out here!”

A few days later, he jumped off a 13-story building.

Those are the stories that break your heart, leave you asking how to go on.  Dale’s buried 9 men who died from their addictions; about one a year.  But God’s call on his life is why he keeps on.  That, the graduates’ success stories, and a couple of core beliefs.

“If you fall, it’s just another step to your recovery.”

“I think of us as standing between these guys and the world; we show the world how we oughta be loving these guys.”

That’s the kind of Good News I need to hear.  And do.  Thanks to all the people who work in and with the Center, a whole bunch of people get to hear and do it, too.

Book status update: post this week?

The book manuscript came back from the editor today. Reading it tonight, incorporate edits/revisions tomorrow, format for paperback, final print/look, then off to CreateSpace for them to produce proof copy. Post on website for download Wed/Thursday. 

Optimistic schedule?  Yes, actually. Why not? :) I love electronics!

Vantage points

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

– Albert Einstein

I lived for 50 years in a community devoted to learning and dreaming big in the world of missiles and rockets.  Learning was valued.  Technical imagination was encouraged.  How about non-technical?  Well, we might not be as good at that, necessarily.

Engineers are stereotypically organized, straight-line people.  I once saw an engineer sighting down his row of beanpoles, making sure they were all the same angle and height.  Maybe we’re sometimes too busy making things look alike, to recognize something “outside the lines” as a good thing, not an aberration.

Is your imagination limited by what you see around you?  Limited to what you have already seen?  Limited to who you know?  If so, embrace a different vantage point.  “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray.”  Lonely, desert places of the body and soul can rejuvenate a tired, canalized imagination.  

Leave enough “white space” in your calendar that you can look around and see, and imagine.  Get off alone, regularly.  Change vantage points, physically, environmentally, emotionally.  It’s more important than “doing it all.”  The whole world’s waiting for you.

Tomorrow, the interview with Center of Hope leader Dale Hendry.  “If you fall, it’s just another step to your recovery.”