White Wave Manifesto: Re-entry

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(They were babies once! Christmas 2010)

For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of sabbath rest, a sabbath to the LORD.  Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. (Leviticus 25:3-4)

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon, and learn from me, for I am gentle an lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28030)

We try to be intentional as a family.  We try not to over-schedule or over-commit. We try to keep a Sabbath weekly. We try to speak kindly to one another and be kind to one another. We work on sharing our things and sharing in household chores.  And our life together, with the exception of a few hiccups here and there, is pretty good.  However, my wife and I have noticed that for several years, there is something we call "re-entry."

Re-entry is that period of intensity at the very beginning of Christmas break when all three of our boys get to spend, not just a few hours a week, but entire days together.  Superficial niceness can't cover all the close contact.  And, at first, it is kind of  hard.  They have to re-learn life together.  There are more dishes to do. There is more sharing that is required. There is just more time...more time for fun, but more time for frustration.  But once we get past that moment of re-entry, the atmosphere changes and the boys rediscover just how much they enjoy being together.  It is Christmas magic...for them and for us.

In a similar way, in many of our congregations, life is pretty good.  We try to get together on the Sabbath and speak kindly to one another.  We try to be kind. We work on sharing our things and sharing the chores that come with life together. With the exception of a few hiccups here and there, is pretty good. However, after a few years, it can be...even for all of it's pleasantness...pretty superficial.  

Our churches need an intense time to be together without all the distractions that keep us from running deep with one another. This is where church-wide sabbatical comes in to play. Not for a week, but for a whole year everything that is non-essential is allowed to lay fallow.  There are no more committee meetings. The choir sings familiar music.  There is no mission trip. There is no Easter egg hunt or Trunk-or-Treat, and there aren't five services on Christmas Eve.  We take a deep breath and then hit re-entry. 

After fifty-six years, the little church that my wife and I were serving dared to do just that. We took a break and put programs on hold. We limited church work to the bare essentials.  There was still one meeting a month for essential business, but we tried to keep it short.  There was no Easter requiem or Christmas cantata and we dusted off some old hymns and used resources from the lectionary.  The youth did mission work around town instead of across the country.  The senior ministry went on hiatus.  

It was hard, at first, but once we got past re-entry, the whole atmosphere changed.  We had always felt good about ministry, but we rediscovered that we actually enjoyed being together.  We ran deep with one another and fell in love again with the One who first loved us.  We learned not only that we could rest as a church, but that we should. It was a little bit of Christmas magic.

I have come to the conclusion after nearly fifteen years of professional ministry that the best thing that the church could do for the church and for the world, is stop.  After all, His yoke is easy and his burden is light.

Church Stopping. Less doing. More being.

White Wave Manifesto: Ecclesiastical Vacation

In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength,

            but you would have none of it. (Isaiah 30:15)

                     He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. (Psalm 23:2)

"In our product-driven society, work, especially networking, makes us feel important and productive.
Of course it may also make us feel cranky, put upon, overtired, frustrated, thwarted,
bored, and miserable-but who has time to think of that?
Who wants time to think of that.
We do. We just may not know that we do." (Julia Cameron, Vein of Gold)

We still talk about it.

That trip we took to the Redwoods two years ago. We had driven all day to get there. The sun was starting to set, so we pulled over into the nearest picnic area we could find and entered into a whole new world. It was amazing. Some of the trees had been standing there since the days of Christ. Our middle son, seven at the time, bailed out of the car before I came to a complete stop and began running from tree to tree until he found a snag that he could climb.  Up he went and from his elevated rostrum shouted joyfully into the maritime dusk, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for taking me to this place. I have been dreaming of this place my whole life!"

We need to get away. We know it...even if we don't because when we don't, we get cranky and miserable and bored. Life loses it's liveliness. There's a reason that many employers encourage their employees to take vacation time...they are more productive when they do and those around them like them better when they get back.

It's the same way with the church.  We need time off. We need to re-consider the idea of ecclesiastical vacation.  When was the last time we took a vacation as a church family?  There isn't a Biblical mandate to take four weeks off, but there is a mandate to rest; to enter into quietness and trust.  How much vacation time do you receive at work?  Do you take it all. You should. It isn't just a good idea, it is "your salvation."  

But do we believe it?  Do we really trust that the church can exist for four weeks without our input and our wisdom and our hard work?  It really is the question.  It isn't a question of whether or not we can stop. It is a question of whether or not we really trust that God will move when we stop.

There are, of course, some practical considerations when taking an ecclesiastical vacation just as their are practical consideration when heading to the Redwoods.  For example, the chickens need to be fed and the mail needs to be picked up and the flowers need to be watered. The point in leaving home is, in part, that we can't do the things that we normally do.  Likewise, when we leave our church home it has to be long enough and far enough away that we can't do the things that we normally do. Arrangements will have to be made for the lawn to be mowed and the bills to be paid.  Staff needs to be informed that they are not to stop by the office and answer phones or do correspondence.  The point is that we actually leave the church.  It will be okay.

And we will be freed up to go see the Redwoods or experience a different kind of worship. Our souls might be fed while hiking a fourteener in Colorado. We can listen to God's word and not worry about preaching or singing or ushering or greeting. Or, perhaps our sacred desk is a fly-fishing stream or a week taking in the culture of the city. Maybe we can find our very own, two-thousand year-old Redwood snag and clamor up to new heights and exclaim with new excitement in our voices, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you, Lord, for taking me to this place. I have been dreaming of this place my whole life!"

Church Stopping. Less doing. More being.

White Wave Manifesto: A Congregational-Sabbath Blueprint

(www.freeimages.com 1307880)

I wonder...

I wonder what would happen if the church didn't rely on our own strength and actually trusted God for strength.

I wonder why we insist on making the church move when the church is a movement of God.  

I wonder how effective the church has been for all of our hard work and how much more effective it would be if we allowed room for God to work.

I have enclosed a "blueprint" for a new church development or for churches wanting something new. It would take courage.  Major things would have to change. But imagine how different things would look if we gave control of the church back to God.

Over the next five weeks, I will look at each of these steps in more detail.  Until then, I have offered them to you in toto.  

White Wave Manifesto: A Congregational-Sabbath Blueprint

A. Stop: For four weeks every year.

·                     In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength,

            but you would have none of it. (Isaiah 30:15)

·                     He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. (Psalm 23:2)

           

B. Stop:  For one year every Seventh

·                     For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops.

                But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of sabbath rest, a sabbath to the LORD.  

            Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. (Leviticus 25:3-4)

             

C. Stop: Paying full-time staff

·                     For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God

            prepared in advance for us to do.  (Ephesians 2:10)

*         For by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles              of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. (Hebrews 5:12)

            

D. Stop: Counting Members.

*          Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? (I Corinthians 6:15a)

*          It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you             and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples...

E. Stop: Maintaining church buildings.

·                     All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and

            possessions to give to anyone who had need. (Acts 2:45)

.·                     Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you

            have received from God? You are not your own; (1 Corinthians 6:19)

Church Stopping: God of Rest

(Shirk Ranch, photo from www.lesstravelednorthwest.com)

"Be still and know that I am God." (Psalm  46:10a)

"The industrial era at climax, in the panic of long-anticipated decline, has imposed on us all its ideals of ceaseless pandemonium. The industrial economy, by definition, must never rest. Rest would deprive us of light, heat, food, water, and everything else we need or think we need. The economic  impulse of industrial life (to stretch a term)  is limitless. Whatever we have, in whatever quantity, is not enough. There is no such thing as enough. Our bellies and our wallets must become oceanic, and still they will not be full. Six workdays in a week are not enough. We need a seventh. We need an eighth.  In the industrial world, at climax, one family cannot or will not support itself by one job. We need a job for the day and one for the night. Thank God for the moon! We cannot stop to eat. Thank God for cars! We dine as we drive over another paved arm. Everybody is weary, and there is no rest. (Wendell Berry, from the forward to Living the Sabbath by Norman Wirzba)

You all might have guessed from the delinquency of this post that it has been anything but a restful week.  It was a busy week with school and practice and getting ready for company to visit. 

In addition, the boys and I have been spending every waning daylight hour on an addition to the tree house. Actually, it is a brand-new tree house. We are thinking something akin to the Swiss Family Robinson version...so we have a long way to go!  We closed the pool and cut some firewood. I preached on Sunday and noticed a leak in the ceiling below our one working bathroom on Saturday. I guess when it rains it pours.

And on top of all of this, after several weeks of illness for the boys, double pneumonia for my wife, I was called in to work at 8:00 pm on Saturday and stayed until 1:00 am on Sunday.  In the midst of the madness on Saturday night, my wife sent me a text at work, "We so need a Sabbath!"  She was right, of course, but a late night call on Sunday sent my wife on an impromptu, 2.5 hour road trip to take care of a family member that is being admitted to the hospital.

Whew!

Everybody had gone through seasons like this. It seems hard to rest.  Sometimes, it seems impossible and we paddle like mad just to stay afloat. We hold on for dear life as our life lives us and God whispers, "Be still and know that I am God." 

It seems that life is less about doing more as it is about being more alive.

So on Sunday night, after preaching my sermon and working in our yard, I sat down and didn't get up. I couldn't move, so it was easy to finally be still.  My wife and I agreed that the bathroom leak could wait. Instead of working on it, we made some popcorn and had a family devotion with my parents who were visiting all the way from Wyoming.  Then we watched a movie.

Sure, the bathroom is still leaking, winter is fast approaching, daylight hours are shrinking, and a loved one convalescing...but even in the midst of this whirlwind of a life, God still commands us to be still.  It's a commandment because it's not natural, but it's a commandment wrapped in a promise.  The promise is that even when our lives are spinning out of control and we can't keep up, we can know that God keeps us.

Church Stopping. Less Doing. More being.

Church Stopping: God of Peace

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4:2-3)

(Photo courtesy of Rev. Charles Smith)

To the biblical  mind menuha is the same as happiness and stillness, as peace and harmony. The word with which Job described the state after life he was longing for is derived from the same root as menuha. It is the state in which there is no strife and no fighting, no fear and no distrust. The essence of good life is menuha. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters' (the water of menuhot). In later times menuha  became a synonym for the life in the world to come, for eternal life (Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath)

I've been watching the World Series with some interest this year. Of course, I'm thrilled that the Royals are in it (again!) this year and one game away from winning it all in front of the home crowd.  It has been so exciting  for me personally and something our whole family  has been able to enjoy together.

I'm also curious.

I haven't seen, in the the four games played so far, anyone leaving in the middle of the game. It's puzzling to me, for someone who has been going to church my whole life and read a little bit about church history, that there haven't been any boycotts among those in attendance of all the supporters of Amendment 14F.  And surely, there's a closet postmillenialist that can be singled out for the error of their ways. Furthermore, there must be a conservative pro-lifer sitting by a progressive supporter of the ordination of women that should be separated for the sake of purity.  And I'll have to ask Charles, who was actually at the game, if there was anyone vocally opposed to the color of the bathrooms and the quality of the announcements.

But I haven't seen it. I haven't read about the Royal fan base dividing into those that prefer American League Rules and those that would prefer National League Rules.

Maybe it isn't a fair comparison. After all, I know that the people that attend these World Series games have paid good money to attend and churches have free admission,  However, even those who haven't purchased a ticket to watch in person seem united in their support of the team.  There is "no strife and no fighting, no fear and no distrust." There is menuhot. There is peace within Royal nation.

Not so in the church.

In churches that I have attended and in churches that I have read about, there is often fighting and fear and distrust.  As Christians, in our effort to stand for what is right and in our zeal to act on deeply held priniciples, we willingly separate ourselves from friends and family members.  Sometimes, there is nothing but strife and fighting and fear and distrust. There is no menuhot.  There is no peace. And we do it in the name of God.

What's the difference?

It seems to me, at a baseball game, the issues that divide us simply don't matter because the thing that unites us is so much bigger than any of the issues that might divide us.  On the other hand, at church, we believe that being faithful to the issues that divide us is being faithful to One that died to unite us.

I'm not saying that we should compromise our principles on marriage, on eschatology, on ordination, or on bathroom color.  But maybe we should stop. Maybe we should stop trying so hard to be right and maybe we should stop being so willing to divide on principle.  Maybe we should stop and return to the "waters of menuhot" and remember that we have been called to "be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4:2-3) Indeed, for this God has died.

Church Stopping. Less doing. More being.

Church Stopping: God of Wonder

(Photo from freeimages.com # 1404961)

You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 

but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that  you eat of it you shall die. (Genesis 2:17)

For one whole year were were a fallow field, resting, listening, waiting, fermenting. We put up a bulletin board - a big one - with dayglow orange and chartreuse letters saying, "People with a Passion for Jesus".  If somebody had a nudge from the Spirit or a passion they's write it out and post it on on the board and if somebody else wanted to join in that with them they's sign their names. I, frankly, didn't think it would work for a minute. I was wrong. People signed up for all kinds of things - people who'd never worded on a committee or done anything. I kept having to sit back and trust God to run the church because I didn't have a clue about what was going on. (Pastor David Digby in A Concise Compendium of "The Ames Story"

It really isn't that big of a deal, is it? We don't really die after all when we reach for the tree of knowledge of good and evil...do we? Our hearts keep beating. Our lungs keep breathing. Our blood keeps pumping. So why does God make such a big deal about the tree of knowledge of good and evil anyway? Isn't knowledge...especially of good and evil...a good thing?

These are all questions I have asked of the Fall.  After all, I like knowledge.  Maybe you do to. I like to know what I am doing and why and with what results.  And there are a lot of things I know and there are a lot of things you know...we delight in knowing. We know praise and worship music. We know high-church liturgy. We know that we are right on a particular theological or social justice issue.  We know who has the authority to preach and serve communion and baptize.  

And this Room of Knowing in which we live is not a bad place.  It is just small.  There is a library in the corner with a book we have read again and again. Again, we reach for the knowledge we know so well and die to the wonder of what we don't.

The Unknown Country, just outside the Room of Knowing, is vast and full of wonder. It is a land wild and free, and sometimes fierce; where Jesus walks on water and prophets run for their lives. It is a place where axe heads float and herds of pigs rush into the sea.  It is a place where the dead are raised and the the mountains quake and the sea monsters roll. This is the place where the dying believe and the child plays by the cobra's den and the lion lies down with the lamb.  This is a place where Santa still makes his midnight ride and God still whispers that some day, and some day soon, and in some way that we cannot plan or coerce or program, they will no longer hurt or destroy in all His holy mountain and the knowledge of God will be like oxygen-completely filling the earth and quickening our hearts.  

I'm not suggesting that the church operate from the seats of our pants.  I'm not suggesting that we don't plan and meet and figure out how to do all things well.  I'm just suggesting that maybe, sometimes, we stop, put down that book and reach for the door.  Let us venture out where we "don't have a clue what is going on" and see what God might be up to.

Church Stopping. Less Doing. More Being.

Church Stopping: Job Site or Candlelight?

(Photo from www.freeimages.com #1569226)

I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don’t tolerate evil people. You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they are liars. You have patiently suffered for me without quitting.

But I have this complaint against you. You have forgotten your first love!  (Revelation 2:2-4)

Churches need sabbaticals as much as individuals. Spiritual stagnation deepens in the soil of freneticism. A congregational sabbatical can be a time for nurturing spiritual roots, a time for slowing down and taking the time to listen, to pray, and to learn. But it means just what it says--taking a sabbatical from the routine and schedules that define a church's life. The usual work of committees and departments is suspended, especially the development of programs. Only the bare essentials to keep the machinery going are maintained during sabbatical time. The governing body can attend to necessary business but this, too needs to be kept at a minimum. Established groups, such as church school classes, women's and men's groups should also be involved in sabbatical time, either by choosing not to meet or focusing their time on prayer an study. The point is to step away from customary activity. Renewal will not occur if the old routine is maintained. it would be like a teacher taking a sabbatical but continuing to teach  It is the break form routine that helps to create the space for something new to emerge. (Reclaiming Evangelism, Jan G. Linn)

It was during my continuing education at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary I kept reading about the benefits of sabbath and sabbatical...not just as individuals, but as congregations. There wasn't a lot specifically written about church sabbatical, but there was enough to keep me hunting. It was as if I had discovered gold in the bottom of my pan; it was new, it sparkled, and there had to be more of it if I just kept looking!

At the time, I was serving a little church that ran as much on elbow grease than it did on prayer. It was a church that valued a solid work ethic sometimes more than a solid soteriology.   I knew that sabbatical was what we needed to get past our good work and become reacquainted with our first love.

Oh! We knew the value of a job well done. We enjoyed the praise of our peers.  We knew that our work was God's work, however, we weren't moving forward.  We were losing steam. We found our palms a little thick and our souls a little thin. We found that we had fallen out of love.

It is easy to do in any relationship.  Instead of a wonder-filled romance, we become a good team. We drive the kids to soccer and we mow the lawn and we do the laundry...and we do all these things because we love the people we serve.  After all, we are good Ephesians. We work hard and endure patiently.  Sometimes, we burn the midnight oil but we never quit and, sadly, we forget our first love.

"What happened?" we ask.  "How did we get here?" The answer is found in the middle of our good intentions. There we discover that we are so busy working that we forget that Jesus is out in the front room with Mary at his feet, just waiting for us.  But we simply don't have time. There is just too much to be done. (Luke 10:38-42)

Or is there?

While it is true, even in our smallest churches, that there is always a project that needs to be done and there is always a position that needs to be filled, is our inability to stop an unspoken declaration that the church has become an unrelenting task masker of our own design?  Or is our sabbath resistance the piercing revelation that our faith is simply not strong enough to let God sustain us...not even for a year...while we sit at His feet and fall in love again?

Church Stopping. Less doing. More being.