"Be Not Afraid of Greatness"

I have been thinking a lot lately about the Kingdom of God and how difficult it can be to live in that tension. People simply don't like it. To have a Kingdom church means to have a somewhat unpopular church, because such a church lives and desires to continue to live in constant tension. It just isn't safe.

There is such a tendency in our faith lives to want immediately out of tension. Tension makes us uncomfortable, and it challenges our boundaries. As we start to explore the power of the Holy Spirit in our church, this will become even more evident. The Spirit goes where it will and does what it will. It will heal someone here and set free someone over there. This makes such an experience difficult to pastor. Churches will tend to go to extremes when encountering the "already and not-yet" nature of the Kingdom of God.

One extreme is to get extremely goofy with the Holy Spirit stuff, where manifestations and experience become the end, rather than the means to the end. They will then fall into triumphalism, declaring victory over all things and proclaiming healing in all situations. This puts human demands on the Spirit, short-circuiting the will and sovereignty of God. This is gnostic at its very core, because it then causes a divide between the physical and the spiritual, placing all things spiritual on a much higher plane than the physical. No thought is given to faith or Biblical exegesis, because why bother? It's all about the experience. The Bible exists for God to give us secret messages when we pop it open during some euphoric, eyes-rolling-back, flopping on the floor, spiritual state of manifest, mystical glee. We will have all the money we need, we just need to claim it. You want to be healed? Believe, and God has to do it. The end result is to invalidate the pain and suffering of people in need and to write them off as unbelieving or weak (in the "flesh"). This is an overly strong focus on the already-inaugurated nature of the Kingdom. The declaration that the Kingdom has fully come (and we just don't know it yet) can lead down a path that takes us far from our reliance on God and far from a healthy, real faith journey.

On the other side, a church may well go to the extreme of ignoring or rejecting the move of the Spirit altogether. This is understandable at times, because the emotionalism and "experience as the highest order of faith" approach can be so distasteful when seen in its true light. But to reject the move of the Spirit is also to circumvent God's sovereignty. It is the declaration that God no longer moves today, and we are in this on our own. It is an unhealthy focus on the fact that the Kingdom is not fully consummated yet. There is nothing but sin and death in this world. This leads to a fatalism and stoicism that kills the fire in any believing person. People become automatons, simply waiting to go to heaven. They end up having to perform all kinds of exegetical gymnastics in order to produce a fantastical account of the end times that sells books but fails to truly inspire a life-transforming faith. There is no urgency or desire to be active in the world. No one will be healed, because God no longer does that kind of stuff. Suck it up and hide like the rest of us in church, peaking your head out into the world only when Walden Media releases a film or there is another protest at Walt Disney World (protests are a great excuse for a family vacation). Toe the line, don't make waves, and everything will be good and safe.

Well, neither of those extremes are acceptable options, as far as I'm concerned. I choose to live in the tension. The Vineyard as a community of churches has chosen as an international body to stay in the tension. We are a Kingdom Church that exists for the sake of the world. God does move today. He does heal, cast out demons, restore broken lives, and set people free! The Kingdom is here! Yet, it is not fully here. There are times that people are not healed. There is sin and death all around. Yet, the good news, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is a message of hope, for this life and the next. We can be saved now and we will be saved for eternity. The Spirit is moving, and we don't control the Spirit. Yet we realize that we are useless as a Kingdom movement if we don't engage the world. When we pray, we pray with expectant faith, but we pray according to what God is doing, not according to what we want to see happen. We are rooted in the Word of God, seeking to explore the mystery of God and to find more questions that spur us on in our faith, not to dissect God or get simple answers. We think, we feel, we believe, we experience. We have an intellectual faith that is empowered by the Holy Spirit so that we can physically do the stuff of the Kingdom. There is no separation or division within ourselves. Mind, heart, and strength (body) are what we use to love, worship, and obey our God.

What does this mean practically? It means that we move as people who are already set free yet have a journey to complete. We are moving toward what he created us to be: a People in His likeness and image. That, my friends, is something worth living and even dying for. Will we have to be with messy people and see some Spirit stuff that is out of our control? Yes, but only if you don't want to go back to being a stoic who never trusts God to do what he will outside of our scripts and expectations. Will we have to think and work out our faith? Yes, but only if you don't want to be a mindless revival junkie going from one spiritual high to the next. I believe that God is looking for a People to walk that radical middle line.

I want to live out a faith that challenges every part of who I am. I want to walk out that faith with like-minded people who will rise to the challenge and not cut and run when things get messy or tough. I can't do this on my own. We believe that God built the church that God wanted to build in Adullam in order to have the vehicle to take us down that path. I am sick of the status quo. I have been there, and I found it to be bankrupt. I am ready to strap on my helmet, buckle up, and go for the ride.

"The course of true love never did run smooth..."

Teresa and I were ordained this past weekend during the regular Sunday gathering. Pat and Lisa Mulcahy came up from the Cedarburg Vineyard to ordain us. They were our sending pastors, and we were with them for their early years of growth as a church plant. It was so awesome to have them here, and the morning was very powerful for us. It was so good to see Pat and Lisa again, and to have them see our new church building and all of the incredible people that we have in our church. Pat and Lisa are two of the dearest friends that we have. They have always supported us and have always cared for us. They have been our biggest (and sometimes only) cheerleaders when things were rough with a struggling young church plant. Now to see the church flourishing, I know was a real encouragement for them. The Vineyard seems to take a bit of a different approach to ordination, and I really like it. Instead of having ordination be a ceremony that legitimizes someone to do ministry and then sending them out, the Vineyard starts out by having their new pastors be licensed. After the church grows to the point of being an actual church, the pastor(s) are then ordained within the body, recognizing the work, efforts, and accomplishments that have been done though them already. In this way, it is the community that chooses and ordains its pastoral leadership, affirming the gifts and calling that the body sees in them.

Being ordained is cool, but I am still struggling a bit. After getting this new building, which is a total God thing, I am still struggling at times to see myself as qualified to be a pastor. I am not sure if I thought ordination would make me feel more like a "legitimate pastor". I don't think that I was looking at it that way. Still, I woke up this morning as a newly ordained pastor, and I am still feeling the cold sweat and the feeling like I am tilting too far back in a chair. You know, it's that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach that it is falling away from you.

We had a dear couple leave a couple of weeks ago. They left without warning or explanation and cut off all opportunities for communication. They broke off a relationship of more than a year with a simple email asking us to not contact them again. Trying to be a good pastoral leader, I ignored that request and responded out of care for them, only to make them angrier. That was not my intent, but I was desperate to bring reconciliation. Scripture tells me to seek reconciliation. I tried to act like it is no big deal, but that's not true. I tried to figure out what I did to hurt them, and I just don't know. I get really messed up when my friendships are not in order or solid. This building thing is threatening to bury us financially as a church. We are being nickeled and dimed to death, but in this case it's more like $2500 for an appraisal, $1000 for a usage form, $500 to have some damn curtains cleaned, $3400 to have a roof repaired, and the list goes on. I am most likely going to have to get a job again next month. I cannot continue to ask for more from our relatively small church, or we will start doing the opposite of growing. Growth is the other issue that keeps me up at night. We are growing so fast, and I am having trouble connecting with people. Without a doubt, the true gift of our community is the value we place on relationship. Everyone knows everyone's lives, and we connect, eat, cry, laugh, pray, and most importantly, heal together. Just coming to Sunday mornings does not allow someone to experience the fullness of what our incredible church has to offer. This is nothing I have done. Rather, it is the transparency and genuine love of the people we have. I panic when I see lots of faces that I don't yet know, and I have to hope that they are connecting somewhere. All of this makes me feel that, once again, the chair is tipping back.

I have no idea what I am doing as a pastor. I think that's why it's such a difficult job. Any pastor who says that they are good at pastoring and that they have a real grasp of what's going on in their church is either a liar or just silly. The more you pastor, the more out of control you feel and the more you realize you don't know anything. I white knuckle my way through most of my days. My ordination was incredible, but it made me realize just how out of control I am here. I love pastoring. It is my passion. I just feel like I am so bad at it sometimes. All I can hope is that this is a good place to be. If I am not in control, then God is. That's the only way that this whole thing is going to work anyway.